Central role of the individual (caring)

A Pedagogic treatise cannot overlook the person to be educated and this person’s central role in the educational activities.
Maìn had never read any pedagogic treatises, and she had never even dreamed of writing one! Nevertheless, she was a teacher, and had been ever since her years with her family. The apprenticeship she made had consolidated her abilities and skills and, with the addition of her Spirit-induced apostolic yearning, they were transformed into Charisma, which is still alive and vital in the world.
The concept of the central role of the individual was translated by Maria Mazzarello, with her usual simple and essential style, into the familiar concept of “caring”. This expression can be found repeatedly in her letters and it is clear that it expresses great attention to the other, young person or adult, and includes: a considerable interest for the things that they care about, an involvement in their needs, a constant monitoring of their human and spiritual lives and finally, an endless tenderness.
One cares for people individually, as every creature is unique and wants to be treated as such.
Through the pages of the Chronicle and of the Letters we discover a woman who cared for the girls and women entrusted to her and for whom she felt responsible. They were entrusted to her by the parents, by life’s events, by ….
Already at twenty-three, just healed from the illness that had sapped her energies, one day, when she was walking on the small hill of Borgoalto, she imagined a great house with many girls, and heard a voice saying: “I entrust them to you”. Was that imagination? Who knows!
It is certain that Maìn had never evidenced any tendency to hallucinate, and this episode was confided only to Don Pestarino who, on his part, was very strict with her when he thought she needed correction. He had guided her during her childhood and adolescence, in modifying her vanity that made her wish for acknowledgement and adulation, her tendency to ire and to torture herself with worries. It seems incredible: we certainly do not recognise our Maìn from this description. And this shows the power of a strong and expert educational action on a strong character enlightened by Grace!
Now her guide ordered her not to think about those strange things, and so she tried not to think about that kind of vision any more.
However, in the light of what happened afterwards, who can say that it had been an hallucination?
“I entrust them to you”. And Maìn cared for them. And after her, even today, other women continue to care full-time for the young women and girls, through a radical choice of life.