Don Bosco Converts Police Sent to Spy on Him | Ep. 192

Описание: Don Bosco wanted to have photographs taken of the boys of his Oratory School in church, to show their number and their grouping. It didn't even have to be a photograph, a painting would suffice. He went on: I'd especially like to have a painting showing the uniformed policemen sent by the city authorities to find out if I was preaching revolution and lawlessness. You can see the picture: several hundred lads docilely hanging on my words, with six uniformed policemen, two by two, standing stiffly at attention in different spots of the church, arms folded, listening to my sermon. They were a great help in supervising the boys, although they were there to spy on me. The painting might even be more interesting if it showed the policemen wiping away a furtive tear with the back of their hand or muffling their faces in their handkerchiefs to hide their emotions. Or they could be shown kneeling among the boys who thronged my confessional, waiting their turn. My sermons, you see, were directed more to them than to the boys, because I spoke about the four last things: sin, death, judgment and hell. They had to report to their superiors and to the mayor, who wanted to know if Don Bosco had preached revolt. "He certainly made me revolt against myself," each one would reply. "I too made my Easter duties after years of neglect. . . . He talked of death as though we were already laid out or about to die in minutes. .. . And then hell! I've never heard such a description! And to think that Don Bosco ended by saying his description was but a shadow of the real thing!" This reflected Don Bosco's belief that the most effective weapon to save souls in a priest's arsenal was through preaching. He mostly preached about the frequent reception of Holy Communion, which he considered to be a must for faithful Catholics. But what was Don Bosco’s method for writing a sermon? This video is far from a definitive study of his method, but I would like to share some excerpts from The Biographical Memoirs of Saint John Bosco in which he expressed an opinion on how a priest should give a sermon.


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Thank you to Salesiana Publishers for their kind permission to use the English translation of The Biographical Memoirs of Saint John Bosco by Fr. Giovanni Battista Lemoyne et al. (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Salesiana Publishers, Inc., 1964-2003).


For further reading on Saint John Bosco: https://tinyurl.com/SalesianMissions