Get involved to take care

Milan (Italy). With the end of the school year, the experience of the summer oratory begins in the diocesan and Salesian realities throughout Italy. In the Diocese of Milan, almost a thousand oratories will open their doors to around 300,000 children and teenagers, with the invaluable service of around 40,000 young animators and 10,000 adults.

The Ambrosian tradition is strong, which finds its point of unity in the theme proposed every year by the Foundation for the Milanese Oratories (FOM), with a preparation that involves adolescents, priests, and religious including various Daughters of Mary Help of Christians of the Lombardy Province of the Holy Family (ILO), together with adults and volunteers, with meetings and formation camps, up to the mandate that the Archbishop of Milan, Msgr. Mario Delpini consigns to all the animators.

“You x all – and who is my neighbor?” is the 2023 theme. Starting from the Gospel page of the Good Samaritan, children and adolescents are called to get involved to take care of others, to become neighbors.

Furthermore, this year the oratory will be “like Don Bosco’s”. His experience, his story will be told day by day and will help the boys and girls to reflect and grow together. Through thirty verbs, six evangelical passages, and the story of Don Bosco’s Oratory, the main theme of the “You x all” proposal will be developed, which is “taking care”, as explained by Fr. Stefano Guidi, Director of FOM:

The keyword is ‘care’, a word that opens and closes. It opens up to the sense of being with each other in the oratory, where each one, growing up, discovers oneself ‘for everyone’. But first of all, they discover that there is a ‘You’ who anticipates one in the gift, the Lord Jesus, encountered in the experience of good relationships that in the oratory are always unbalanced towards ‘taking care’ of the other. Care is the word that closes, because the sense of care is what remains in the memory for the love received and given, the smiles, the time, the effort, the enthusiasm”.

The second point of unity that characterizes the Ambrosian tradition is the mandate of the Archbishop. Every year at the end of May, all the animators of the Diocese meet in Milan in Piazza Duomo to discover the theme of the summer oratory, learn to dance together the hymn composed on the theme, and receive the mandate.

On 27 May 2023, 5,000 animators colored the square, gathered around Msgr. Delpini who during the mandate,  spoke to them ‘with an open heart’:

“The confusion in the world, with the messages that stun, and the confusion inside me. And yet, in this confusion, I pass by an oratory. I go into it and decide this year to be an animator. In this confusion, I receive a revelation. I have learned that I am capable of loving. I am capable of caring for others. I am capable of doing good”.

In conclusion, he gave them three ‘revelations’ as a wish:

“I wish you this for your summer, that through the service you render, you may have these three revelations:

1° you are capable of loving;
2° you are authorized, authorized, to esteem yourself;
3° dedication is not the whim of a day, but the vocation of a lifetime”.

From Piazza Duomo, full of joy and enthusiasm, the animators returned to their oratories in every corner of the Diocese to ‘take care’ of the little ones, in a reciprocal gift that helps to grow together.

To all the animators and children, have a good summer!