Fr. Javier’s second installment of getting to know Don Bosco, enjoy!
Don Bosco´s somewhat scattered sequence of elementary and secondary education can easily be understood when you take into account his origins, he grew up knowing the life of the country as his were a small farming family.
If God had not called him to be a priest, John Bosco’s life would have been configured by the rhythms of the small farm worker and the share cropper. Mamma Margaret’s interpretation of her son’s dream at age nine (a video of the dream is posted below), was that it meant that he had to get a full education in order to become a priest. Because of that, she made it possible for her Johnny to take the first steps of his education and spared no efforts and sacrifices to insure the completion of his studies all the way to the priesthood.
A good neighbor taught the young boy how to read and work with basic arithmetic. Johnny showed from the beginning outstanding learning gifts and his reading abilities at an early age were put to good use during the cold wintry nights when neighbors gathered together to hear his readings. The elementary years of schooling were somewhat irregular but thanks to a good mind and an eager desire for learning he covered the requirements of the eight basic years of elementary schooling and had exceeded them as he had started taking Latin classes.
By age sixteen (school year 1831-1832) he started the equivalent of the first year of high school and by the end of the year he had completed the equivalent of three years of high school. The following two school years he completed the years of Grammar (1832-1833) and Humanities (1833-1834). He was eligible to skip one year and start the first year of college. He opted to take the final year preparatory to college by taking the course of Rhetoric (1834-1835). It was during this year that he read a whole collection (one hundred volumes) of the Latin and Greek classics.
In the fall of 1835 John started his first college year which was also the first year of his seminary. During the second year of philosophy he lived an experience of conversion. As he relates it himself: “I had some mistaken notions about my studies that could have had sad consequences had I not been saved by a truly providential event. Accustomed to reading the classics all during my school days, I had grown so familiar with outstanding characters of mythology and pagan fables that I found little satisfaction in anything ascetical. The very works of the holy Fathers appeared to me as the products of limited intellects… At the beginning of my second year of philosophy, I paid a visit to the Blessed Sacrament one day. I had no prayer book with me, so I began to read The Imitation of Christ (by Thomas à Kempis). I went through some chapters dealing with the Blessed Sacrament (in the fourth book). I was so struck by the profound thoughts expressed, and the clear and orderly way these great truths were clothed in fine language that I began to say to myself: ‘The author of this book was a learned man…” It was gradually borne in on me that even one verse from it contained so much doctrine and morality as I had found in whole volumes of the ancient classics. To this book I owe my decision to lay aside profane literature.”
Very nice!!