Rome (Italy). On 5 August 2025, the Rector Major of the Salesians of Don Bosco, Fr. Fabio Attard, Father and Center of Unity the Salesian Family, announced the theme of the Strenna for the year 2026:
“Do whatever he tells you – Believers, free to serve”
As the Rector Major recalls in the presentation of the theme, “the Strenna is an opportunity for the entire Salesian Family to come together around a particular theme, so that – through prayer and reflection, listening and sharing – the call of each Group can find food for its own spiritual, charismatic, and pastoral journey.”
If hope was the central theme of Strenna 2025 (“Anchor yourself to hope, pilgrims with young people”) in the special year of the Jubilee and with the event of the 150th anniversary of the first Salesian missionary expedition, “through which we rediscovered how for Don Bosco, the strength of hope generated in his heart the courage that supported him in the discovery of God’s plan and in the determined commitment to put it into practice,” the sharing and reflections that emerged from the World Consult of the Salesian Family, gathered at the beginning of June 2025, focused on the theological virtue of faith:
“if the strength of hope is based on faith, a truly hopeful life brings us back to a deeper and more authentic relationship of faith with Jesus, the son of the Father, made man for us and who continues to be present among us with the strength of the Spirit.”
The expression, “Do whatever he tells you” draws on the biblical passage of the wedding at Cana, from the Gospel of John (Jn 2: 1-11): “Mary’s words to the servants of Cana (Jn 2:5) contain a pedagogy of listening as well as of responding. A pedagogy that counteracts every form of passive obedience. Mary does not simply say ‘obey’, but invites personal, active, and pro-active listening, ‘whatever he tells you’. It is an invitation to trust in the person of Christ, a trust that becomes a gesture of responsibility which in turn generates authentic freedom.”
While the subtitle – “Believers, free to serve” – “completes the picture by tracing an existential trajectory: freedom is born from faith; service arises from freedom, that is, a freedom that – lived – makes others free.”
In presenting the 2026 theme, the Rector Major offers some ideas that will then be developed in the Strenna, including the commemorative dimension of the 150 years of the Salesian Cooperators, an anniversary which “is not just a memory of the past but a relaunch towards the future.”
He recalls in the conclusions that from the beginning, “Don Bosco imagined a great movement of people who, together with him and like him, could contribute for the good of youth. Well, this is Don Bosco’s dream that continues today. The 150th celebration of the Salesian Cooperators strengthens in all of us the determination to be servants of young people as they face today’s challenges. This determination testifies to our faithful and generous response to the words that Mary addresses to us today, ‘Do whatever he tells you’.”
