7. Priest and tailor 1834 When I was young, I dreamed that I had become a priest and that, dressed in priestly vestments, I worked as a tailor. But I was not sewing new fabrics, but mending torn clothes.
--
With this dream, Heaven informed him that his job as an educator would be not only to dedicate himself to perfecting young boys who were already saints, but above all to collect troubled boys full of defects and vices and to make them good Christians and honest citizens.
--
One of his most famous pupils (St. Dominic Savio) would later say to him: "Don Bosco, you be the tailor. I will be the cloth. Make with my life a good garment of holiness for Our Lord". And so it happened.
--
8. His method of education must be based on kindness, 1836
--
While he was a seminarian, one day he met his great friend José Turco who asked him: "Now you are a seminarian. Soon you will be a priest, but what will you do next?
--
Juan answered him: - "My intention is not to be a parish priest, but to dedicate myself to collecting poor and abandoned boys to educate them in a Christian way and to instruct them and prepare them well for life".
--
And then he told him about the following dream he had had: "I saw a large city in whose streets many young boys were running about, playing and saying bad words. Because of my horror of bad words and because of my impulsive and strong temperament, I went up to the young men and scolded them for saying such improper words and threatened to punish them if they did not keep quiet. But they kept saying horrible things. Then I started to beat them. But they reacted and came at me with punches. I ran away, but a man came up to me and told me to stop and go back to those rude young people to try to convince them to behave themselves and not to speak badly. I replied that I had already tried to tell them that but they had responded with blows, and that if I went back to them, they would beat me even worse.
--
Then that person introduced me to a most noble lady and said to me: "This is My Mother. Get along with her."
--
The Lady, giving me a look full of kindness, spoke to me as follows: - "If you want to win these young people over, you must not treat them roughly, or with blows or in bad manners, but you must strive to attract them with kindness and goodness, and in good manners, until you convince them that it is good for them to become good."
--
And then, as in the dream of the nine years, I saw that the young people were transformed into wild beasts, and then into sheep and lambs, and that by order of the Lady I was in charge of directing the whole flock. -- Thus was fulfilled what God announced through the prophet Isaiah: "Even those who were as fierce as the wild beasts of the field will give me glory by their good behavior" (Is. 43:20). We see how God is announcing to him what his principal office will be throughout his life, and what is the method he should use to educate the youth.
--
In the first dream he shows him that he must turn wild beasts into lambs. In the next he warns him not to put his trust in human means but in God's help. In the dream of 15 years of age, the Virgin promises him that he will not lack the help of Heaven for the work he has to do. Now She warns him that his work will be in a big city (he lived in a village) and that all his work as an educator must be done on the basis of goodness and kindness, trying to convince the young people by good and never by brusqueness or violence.
--
No wonder his former seminary companions, when they arrived after many years in Turin and saw the great educational works of Don Bosco, exclaimed excitedly: - "All this John had already announced to us when he was a young seminarian".