Rome (Italy). On 26 June  2022, at the park of the Pontifical Faculty of Educational Sciences “Auxilium” in Rome,  renamed for the occasion “Laudato Si ‘Cathedral”,  a day of celebration was held, organized by the Preprovince  Mary Mother of the Church ( RMC), open to children and teenagers, families, friends, parish priests and Sisters of the parishes, neighborhood collaborators, the Laudato Si’ in the Jungle Circle, the Amico Albero Association, the representatives of District XIII and XIV, and all those who wanted to be there to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the foundation of the Institute of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, remembering and being together.

The Feast wished to be a “a day-long thank you” for all the FMA who in 150 years of history educated men and women for today and for tomorrow. All the Sisters who make up the four Communities of the Preprovince in Rome were present: Mother Angela Vespa House, Mother Ersilia Canta House, Mother Mazzarello House, and Sister Teresa Valsé Pantellini House.

Two students of the Faculty of Educational Sciences “Auxilium” presented and animated the various moments of the rich program of the day. In the “green living room”, they interviewed Sr. María del Carmen Canales, Superior of the Preprovince; Sr. Piera Ruffinatto, Dean of the Faculty; and Sr. Grazia Loparco, Vice Dean, about the meaning of history and of remembering, of being Daughters of Mary Help of Christians and of the vocation to be educators.

It was a short step from the memory recounted to the memorial of the Eucharist. “How to say ‘thank you’ for 150 years of education?” Asked Fr. Francesco Motto, a Salesian of Don Bosco of Don Bosco Study Center of the Salesian Pontifical University (UPS), who presided over the Eucharistic celebration.

The liturgy of the XIII Sunday in Ordinary Time offers an image and a thought, “The image is a triptych: Jesus in the center and on the sides Don Bosco and Mother Mazzarello.” A poor peasant boy from a remote village a few kilometers from Turin and a very young peasant girl, equally poor and with very fragile health, she too, from a village hidden in the hills of Monferrato, trusted God.

Fr. Francesco continued, “This is why their desires to do good to young people are now towns, houses, priests and sisters, millions of young people who in every part of the world are educated and educate.”  Trusting God is the message that journeys from generation to generation in the history and the years of the life of the Institute of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians “and reaches each of us to guide our life project, our vocation, and our place in the world.”

Thank  you then becomes shared conviviality in the fraternal agape, in the joy of the encounter, in the playing of children and young people, in the songs and dances of the various cultures of the FMA students, in the discovery of the natural beauties that the park – a green lung for the area in which the Faculty is inserted – up to the theatrical representation by the students of the UNI-TEATRO group who, led by Daniele Wlderk and Angelo Pasquini, Past Pupils of the Faculty, stage: “The Comedy of Errors” by William Shakespeare.

It is an early work, written between 1593 and 1594, which tells the story of two pairs of identical twins separated at birth. A story of equivocations and mistakes, of fictions and misunderstandings that transform the Aula Magna into an open theater in which the public is involved in the scenes and made part of the progress of the story. The commitment of young actors and young actresses, the result of evenings of rehearsals and educational theater workshops during the time of restrictions due to the Covid-19 pandemic, is rewarded by a long applause.

It is a long applause which, as suggested by the words of greeting pronounced at the end by Sr. Piera Ruffinatto and at the beginning by Sr. María del Carmen, reaches those who are present, those who have already passed, and those who will arrive tomorrow, because love for young people, not only studied, but lived and given, becomes life in each one, becomes a house that welcomes, a courtyard that educates and evangelizes, still today as yesterday.

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