Young people at General Chapter XXIV

Rome (Italy). In view of the XXIV General Chapter, young people and lay people were asked, through an online survey, about how the communities and works of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians are generative.

From 11 September 2021, the XXIV General Chapter has been underway at the FMA Generalate in Rome and young people continue to be present, asking the Chapter members to walk together with young people to generate life and hope in the world.

A young woman from  Holy Family Province, Lombardy and Switzerland (ILO); Middle East, Europe Interprovincial Conference (CIME), shares expectations and dreams about the mission of the FMA Institute.

What is important to you and what do you want to propose to the Chapter members gathered in Rome to plan for the Future of the FMA Institute?

“Today, as at the Wedding Feast at Cana, we receive Mary’s invitation, ‘Do whatever He tells you’. I too received it one day three years ago and since then I have felt that this invitation is repeated many times in my life.

I was a little over 19 years of age and I had arrived in Milan only a few months before from a small provincial town. I was catapulted into the rushing tangle of roads and relationships of the metropolitan city. I contacted the Youth Ministry Councilor and asked her if I could participate in some activities. I wanted something more than studying and I had known the Salesian charism and style from my High School years. I still remember that day with emotion… There I felt welcomed by the Institute, which was able to see the ‘point accessible to the good’ in me.

In these three years, I have had the joy of being a formator of adolescents at the Animators School. I was given the opportunity to form myself, to make ‘my talents bear fruit’ in the artistic field with writing texts, editing some videos, and many other services. Definitely a moment of great intensity, in which everything I  studied over the years in the theatrical and performance fields acquired a different and truer meaning, because they are at the service of others and to praise and thank for the time given to us.

I thank the Institute because it allows us young people to truly be ourselves, with our talents and also our fragility, to follow Him and follow His plan for us in a current way, with the language of our time, being close to  children poor in spiritual and moral resources, lukewarm in getting the best out of life.

Therefore, I feel to propose, precisely by virtue of the charism with which the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians and the Salesians illumine the world, the witness of being able to be close to the least. There are within the FMA Institute family homes, reception centers, and services and assistance for children most in difficulty. The love with which these young people and children are followed is a testimony of the free love of the Lord. My dream is that all the poor will be reached by you FMA and by us young people who work together with you.

At times, these realities of poverty are little known by the most committed young people and adolescents. I have lived experiences in VIDES and I know how important and formative they have been, but if I look at the teenagers I accompany, I imagine how difficult it is for them to find someone who can propose what I have chosen to look for.

I think of how important it could be at an educational level to know that even today, within our Salesian Family, there are those who ‘go to see the young people in prison’ as Don Bosco did, in the prisons of the world today”. (M. A. S.)