From Bosconian to Salesian

In the midst of the preparations for the coming feast of St. John Bosco, I go back to something that I have written in 2001. It is timely that I publish it this year as I am celebrating 25 years of entering Don Bosco as a student.

In the Salesian world, Tarlac will always be remembered as the locality of the first Don Bosco school in the Philippines. This is Don Bosco Tarlac that I hold dear in my heart. In the beginning it did not strike me as it does today. To the people of Tarlac, Don Bosco has always been known as the private school where the boys usually go. As a little kid I looked forward to studying there when I reached the fourth grade. My elder brother spent the latter part of his elementary years in this school. I first got to know Don Bosco from the school uniform that my brother wore.

My first day in Don Bosco was one I eagerly anticipated. How would it be? I had been there for the entrance examination, interview and enrolment, but I had no idea what to expect. The awaited moment arrived. It was neither a hall of cashiers’ windows nor a corridor of offices that greeted me. It was not even the sight of students lining up for class. It was the scene of basketball courts full of boys sweating it out in spontaneous games; and of the football field, with several balls flying to and fro. This was minutes before the assembly time! What a way to start the day! I smiled and felt at ease.

But it was not merely the start of a day; it was the start of another episode in life. In due time I came to know Don Bosco the person more profoundly, as also the people who bore his name—in their initials ‘SDB.’ They were all around, they, the brothers and priests who were visible among the students during breaks. They mingled with us. We talked; we played. One impressive image that recurs in my memory is that of a priest, in his cassock, in the middle of the football field, usually running and kicking the ball surrounded by the boys.

In Don Bosco Tarlac I found practices unique in Don Bosco: the weekly Mass (and the daily “free Masses”), singing practices, sodalities and youth groups, visits to the Blessed Sacrament, rosary at lunch break. There was a confessor who was available all the time. And you know what? My first year with Don Bosco was made even more special because it was the year of the visit of the Rector Major, Don Egidio Viganò. On this occasion, I was chosen to be one of the emcees under Bro. Dennis Paez.

One thing I liked about Don Bosco was the familiar air that was all around. Everybody knew one another, from Grade 4 to the Fourth Year. The physical structure of the school was ideal: except for the gym, one could see practically the whole compound. The chapel was accessible, as were the classrooms and the playground. When the principal stood in the middle of the football field, everyone else saw him and vice versa.

Days, weeks, months; a year, and another. From the world of the home, I ventured into another. The school became the tambayan. On weekends, I found myself at Don Bosco—not for curricular activities, but for extras: serving mass, Boy Scout activities, hanging around the rector’s office, and so on. Before I knew it, Don Bosco had become a second home.

That was why when the call to be a Salesian came, it did not come as a surprise. It had been there all along. God had been paving the path so that when the proper time came, I was ready. For my assent, I needed only the amplification of His voice through the Salesians themselves, and in my youthful vigor, I entered the high school seminary of Don Bosco Juniorate, Pampanga. However, though each life story is a continuum, that is another episode and this space does not allow me to dwell on it. Suffice it then to say that one episode led to another, and yes, eventually took me to where I am now as a Salesian.

Whenever doubts plague me, I look back at my experiences as a student at Don Bosco Tarlac and I end up saying, “I was a boy of Don Bosco,” in the same way as Rua, Cagliero and the other Salesians of times past and present have been boys of Don Bosco. Yes, I have basked in such a Salesian atmosphere and I realize this has been God’s way of encouraging me and sustaining me all these years.

Once, as a young Salesian, I had the chance to visit Don Bosco Tarlac. I was given the opportunity to give the good morning talk to the student body. A surge of exuberance filled my heart; a knot made its way to my throat. Some of my teachers were present. I told the Bosconians that it was a joy for me to come home and to see reflected in them what I had been years ago. It was with nostalgic incredulity that I looked at the part of the gymnasium where I had first stood as a grade four student. “Have I really been there?” I asked myself. And I told everyone that I was now in front, something I never imagined when as a boy I looked at the Salesians who normally stood before the assembly.

In my 25^th year as a Bosconian, I write as how a grateful son eulogizes a parent in a celebration meant for tribute, because this is how I look at Don Bosco Tarlac: a parent who has both sired and nursed in me the incipient call to follow Christ. I cannot but make references to my own humble beginnings. I am here, a Salesian, because Don Bosco was there in Tarlac. And to keep the paean ringing: in this school called Don Bosco lived the spirit of the man named Don Bosco. In this school lived year after year, Salesians who have carried on the task of preserving the spirit, keeping it alive, sharing it with Tarlaqueños.

In my good morning talk to the Tarlac Bosconians, I asked them, “Are you proud to be Bosconians? I’m sure you are.” There was an ardent wish within me: “I hope many more among them will take that step from their place to where I am.” From Bosconian to Salesian. From Tarlac to wherever Don Bosco is. After all, like them I am also a Tarlaqueño.

(picture shows me as a young Salesian in theology, the time I wrote this article)