St Ambrose Day

In Milan (we were saying at breakfast) this is the day when the Winter Season begins. For some that means skiing, but what it really means is that the Opera Lirica opens its season at the Teatro alla Scala, and the social and political life of Milano and Lombardia move into their most engaging time.

How interesting that in sophisticated, post-modern, post-industrial Milano, everything wonderful about the city's life and culture is still gauged to have its yearly beginning on the feast of St Ambrose!

It just occured to me that our Salesian parish in Berkeley, which is under the patronage of St Ambrose, can increase the celebrating by engineering a piazza in front of the church, building a habitat for morning doves, and endorsing the arts (oh, but this last element is something that they already do).

As for beginnings at the UPS: this morning the latest issue of the "Salesian Spirituality Notebooks" (Quaderni di Spiritualità Salesiana) hit the shelves of the bookstore. This is a kind of popular journal developed by the Institute of Spiritual Theology here at the UPS. The theme of this issue is "Da Mihi Animas": Pastori dei giovani (Give me souls: Shepherds of young people).

This edition of the Quaderni is a contribution in the reflections for the next General Chapter, and was edited by Aldo Giraudo. We actually discussed the theme for this issue back in May 2006, and Aldo has put a lot of work into this.

Along with others of our Institute, I too offer an article in this issue on the spiritual heritage of St Francis de Sales. It is an article that I worked on while at the UPS last Spring, and then made it into my presentation for last summer's symposium on the Da Mihi Animas motto of Don Bosco that we held at the ISS in Berkeley. That presentation was well received, and afterwards I reworked my intervention for publication in the Fall 2007 issue for the Journal of Salesian Studies. So far the Fall issue has not been printed.

My plan is to take the article that I have developed in the Quaderni and include it in the Italian version of my class notes (which I am developing for publication as a book). I will do the same with my Journal article for the English version. That is a project that has been on my agenda for two years already, but I cannot quite pull it all together. Maybe I need to have Aldo act as an editor for me too, as he has done for the Quaderni and for Arthur Lenti (hmmm… this is a thought!).

Still, it is all very exciting… and of course, we don't do it for the feast of St Ambrose, but for the feast of the Immaculate Conception, which begins this evening!