In the dialogue between Don Bosco and the first boy (he himself wrote this dialogue) there is the expression at once. It looks like an ordinary expression but in reality it is Don Bosco's password. In fact Don Bosco is drawn to action by the urgent needs of the young and the impossibility of waiting any longer. In the face of the incertitude of the industrial revolution, in the impossibility of finding good and ready made plans and programmes of action, Don Bosco and the first Salesians used all their energies to do something at once for young people in trouble. What directed their programmes of action were the urgent needs of the youngsters.
And young people needed a school and a job that would guarantee a more secure future for them; they needed to feel as if they were really boys, that is, they needed to let loose their desire to run and jump in open green spaces, instead of feeling sad beside city sidewalks; they needed to meet God to discover and live according to their dignity. Bread, catechism, professional training and work protected by a good work contract were the things therefore that Don Bosco and his Salesians tried to offer right away to these youngsters. If you come upon somebody who is dying of hunger, instead of giving him a fish, teach him how to fish, it has rightly been said. But the contrary is also true: If you come upon somebody dying of hunger, give him a fish so that he may have the time to learn how to fish. Immediate intervention is not enough nor is it enough to prepare a different future because meanwhile the poor may die of misery.
In the following years, Don Bosco, working almost to exhaustion, accomplished many imposing works. Besides the Salesians, he founded the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians and the Salesian Cooperators. He built the Sanctuary of Mary Help of Christians at Valdocco and founded 59 Salesian houses in six nations. He started the Salesian Missions in Latin America sending there Salesian priests, brothers and sisters. He published a series of popular books for ordinary Christians and for boys. He invented a System of Education founded on three values: Reason, Religion and Loving kindness. Very soon people saw in it an ideal system to educate the young. When somebody would tell Don Bosco the list of the works he performed, he would interrupt the person and immediately say: I have done nothing by myself. It is the Virgin Mary who has done everything. She had traced out his road in the famous dream he had when he was nine.
Don Bosco died on January 31, 1888, at dawn. To the Salesians who were keeping vigil around his bed he said in a whisper these last words: Love each other as brothers. Do good to all and evil to none... Tell my boys that I wait for them all in Paradise.
After one hundred years Don Bosco has still a message for any youngster. The following could be his words:
I was a person like you. I tried to give meaning to my life. With God´s help I decided against having my own family to become a father, a brother and a friend to those who do not have a father, brothers or friends.
If you want to be like me we will walk together sharing our life with people living in South American shanty towns, with lepers in India or with so many poor people living in the slums of an Italian city: people deprived of affection, of meaning in life, poor people who need God and you to go on living. In any case, if you do not feel like living as I did, I still want to remind you of a very important truth: life, this great gift which comes from God, is to be spent well. You will spend it well if you do not hide egoistically in your shell but open yourself to love, committing yourself to the good of the one who is poorer than you.
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