News
From the School of Osaka at Rome
Roma (Japan)
Rome (Italy). On August 21, 2017 some Japanese teachers of the Giosei Gakuen School of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians in Osaka visited the FMA General House in Rome. The Principal of the FMA School in Osaka, Ikuta Kazutoshi; the Director of the Elementary School, Kametani Kazuhiro; and the Vice Principal of the Elementary School, Nakagawa Miki, were accompanied by Sr. Mie Shimamoto who has just finished the Course of Salesian Spirituality in Mother Ersilia Canta Community.
After the greeting of the Animator, Sr. Bernarda Santamaria, and the Secretary General, Sr. Piera Cavaglià, they visited the chapel, the Exhibit of the Charism, and the Marian Room. The aim of their visit was to know the Mother House and to have direct contact with the universality and spirituality of the FMA Institute, born in Mornese and spread over the five continents.
These Professors went to the ‘sources of the charism’ by first visiting Turin, Colle Don Bosco, and then Mornese. They had read a lot about the Founders, Don Bosco and Mother Mazzarello, to prepare themselves for this trip, but as they said, to see the places, to meet the people, and to listen to the voices of nature and of time made the experience more beautiful and unforgettable.
What amazes us in these encounters is the discovery that the charism, although born in a determined culture and circumscribed in an historical period, can be lived and enculturated with efficacy in Japan and in all countries. Its dynamic power lies in the source from which it derives: the inexhaustible vitality of the Holy Spirit who made it rise up in the Church and in society to respond to the educative needs of the young of the whole world, without any exclusions of race, language, or religion.
These professors communicate their deep capacity to listen, to let themselves be questioned by the charism in order to understand it, to study it, and live it even more faithfully in the Osaka School frequented daily by 1,500 students.
In order to continue to make its Salesian identity shine forth over time, it must continue to confront itself with the Salesian Charism and with its prophetic potential to be for all the students and professors, a large laboratory of culture, of humanity, of Salesianity where Don Bosco and Mother Mazzarello are ‘alive’ and are contemporaries of the face of Japan.