Pracharbon (Italy). From’8 to 12 August 2025, around 100 people, aged 92 to one year of age, gathered in Pracharbon, in the Aosta Valley, to participate in the ADMA Spiritual Exercises aimed at families, on the theme of the Our Father.
After a year of journeying, month after month, meeting again is a special gift from God the Father, with Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and Mary Help of Christians. From the lawn in front of the house, She welcomes with open arms and prepares the hearts of the fourth group participating in the Camp, with the blessing embrace of the Father.
We arrive at the Salesian House in Pracharbon tired, with the small and large hardships of life, and we all return home refreshed, with great joy in our hearts to share with all the people we will meet.
The certainty of the presence of a Father who loves us unconditionally and infinitely gives us a gaze of hope on everyday life and the strength to say ours “yes” every day. The catecheses of Fr. Roberto Carelli, Salesian of Don Bosco, are rays of light that reach hearts directly from God and illuminate, warm, console, help to repent of sins, ask for forgiveness, and start again.
The day is marked by the prayer of Lauds, then catechesis, meditation in silence, Eucharistic Adoration, sharing, Holy Mass, Salesian Goodnight and Compline. The last night is dedicated to shift-based nighttime Adoration, where everyone asks for the strength to carry out their resolutions once they have descended ‘from Tabor’, entrusting their intentions to Jesus.
All this would not be possible if there were no older children and some animating friends who take care of the little ones. With children and teenagers divided into age groups, they undertake a formation journey suitable for them, in an atmosphere of play and friendship. This group had a meeting with Sister Lucrecia Uribe, Daughter of Mary Help of Christians, World Spiritual Animator of ADMA, who introduced them to Sister Maria Troncatti, an FMA missionary who will be canonized on October 19, as a woman capable of living “against the current”.
This year’s theme was the Our Father. Jesus teaches how to enter into the eternal conversation of love between the Father and the Son, into the exchange of love between Christ the husband and the Church the bride. Testimony from some couples:
“With Cardinal Martini, we discovered that to say father there needs to be someone to call me son/daughter. Father is not the first word; it is the second. The first is that of someone who tells us ‘child, my dearest child, my beloved child.”
“As a couple, we understood that God does not want to be endured; He wants to be loved, as Sequeri wrote.”
