Day 5 (January 26): Bearing witness to communion
The path of holiness is followed together, and the road to holiness is one lived in community and pursued together. The saints are always together, a company. Where there is one of them, others will always be found. Everyday holiness makes communion flourish and fosters “relationships.” We become saints together. It is not possible to be saints alone, and God does not save us alone: “no one is saved alone, as an isolated individual” (Gaudete et Exsultate, 6). Holiness is nourished by relationships, by familiarity, by communion because Christian spirituality is essentially communal, ecclesial, profoundly different, and very far from a vision of holiness that is elitist or heroic.
On the contrary, there is no Christian holiness where communion with others is forgotten, where one forgets to seek and to look at the face of the other, where one forgets fraternity and the revolution of tenderness.
Prayer to St. John Bosco
Saint John Bosco,
help us to understand as you did that only in Jesus and in his Gospel can we find true meaning and happiness in our lives;
help us to respond generously to God’s invitation to holiness, so that like you, we may help build here on earth a true civilization of love;
help us to be like you, signs and bearers of God’s special love for the young and the needy.
Pray for us the grace of holiness, so that guided by Mary Help of Christians, and living the spirit of the Beatitudes in our daily life, we may all meet to enjoy together eternal happiness with God.
Amen.