THE VENERABLE DON BOSCO
The mother treated the dream lightly, as an illusion, though in her heart she trembled with joy as she thought it might be a token that this beloved son was called to the priesthood. Anthony and Joseph pleasantly ridiculed it; one warned him not to become a bandit chief; the other prophesied that he would have a drove of pigs. Later in life, at Barcelona, he confessed that the mysterious voice was the Blessed Virgin's; disguised as a shepherdess she gave him the crook, saying that he would tame the animals, and even indicated how this was to be accomplished. In a vision later he saw that some of the lambs became shepherds and assisted in guarding and directing the flocks. And the whole world is witness of the miraculous manner in which this prophetic dream has been fulfilled in the stupendous moral transformations Don Bosco wrought during his long and active life of seventy-two years.
Some one has said and truly: "If in creatures there is any spark of goodness, it comes from an intimate participation of God's abundance." Baptism brings to every Christian soul this abundance of God, since from the moment of the pouring of the waters He dwells there, One God in the Three Divine Persons, as in His palace, His temple, filling it with the Light Invisible before which angels bow in reverence. But the soul must be active, must be trained to know its heavenly dignity, and to love the Eternal Creator and
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