The Mosaic

Looking at this "Fruit Basket" you realize how everything is harmonized in shapes and colors. A frame highlights the subject.

Then you start looking at the details and you realize that there is an aspect that may seem unimportant at first, but then you can't help but conclude that that is precisely its peculiarity: it is a mosaic. A painting on canvas would be another thing.

Each subject, shape, decoration is made up of many different colored tiles, each in its own place to give shape and color to the various components of the mosaic so as to represent the "Fruit Basket".

To preserve its beauty and uniqueness, it is not possible to put the tesserae* at random, remove some or use others of a different size.

Each must occupy a specific position so that the design is not altered and everything has the right shape and color effect. If I remove some of them the final result is poor, there are holes and the quality is compromised.

This similarity can be a nice way to highlight some aspect of our Salesian Family.

In practice, the wicker basket could be the Church and the various fruits could be the many Charismatic Families that are part of it.

Each of these fruits, of these Charismatic Families, is made up of many smaller pieces that are the groups that are part of it. Each occupies a place and with its own color it expresses a characteristic of that Family. It expresses a charism, a particular way that the Holy Spirit breathes in the history of humanity.

This is also the case for the Salesian Family. We are the breath of the Holy Spirit that raised up Don Bosco two centuries ago and who still breathes through us today.

Just as the fruits of the painting remain distinct from each other, even the Charismatic Families, while belonging to a single Church, retain the specific characteristics that distinguish them.  These specific characteristics do not create division, rather they make communion in Christ.

Just as the individual components of a single fruit have the same color but with different shades, so, too, the various groups of the Salesian Family have a particular nuance of being an expression of the Salesian charism, expressing their specific vocation as consecrated and lay people.

This implies the need to grow in the awareness of being a Salesian Family in order to safeguard the Salesian charism and make our specific contribution to the Church as a Charismatic Family.

I had almost forgotten to mention that the imaginative author of this "mosaic" is the Holy Spirit.

Antonio Boccia

World Coordinator

Association of Salesian Cooperators

*small cubes of roughly square pieces of stone, glass or enamel of different colors