Visit to Goshen

The headstones were a dull gray, covered in weeds, moss, and algae blackened the names of the former Salesians of the Province of the Eastern United States. The deceased were honored with a marble crucifix covered in mildew from open exposure to the weather and a shrine to the Patron of the Salesian Brothers, St Joseph, in need of repainting. A statue of the founder, Don Bosco, surrounded by weeds, and a statue of Mary Help of Christians also graced the grounds. This was the state of the small cemetery for Salesian religious when we first arrived.

It was about ten o’clock in the morning when we got there. We Pre-novices had been given the task, with two other brothers and a priest, of cleaning up the small plot of land, hallowed by the bodies of our confreres. In the morning we worked at cleaning up the small plot of land. We worked through to the afternoon, stopping for a brief lunch. By two o’clock, the cemetery was looking like a vibrant testimony to the lives of the Salesians which they had spent working for the young people of our country.

It was very edifying to work in honor of some of our predecessors. As I pulled weeds from around a headstone I looked down at the writing on it. The man died a year after I was born. He was Italian, and was born in the 1870s. A chill went up my spine as I realized, “Any number of these men could have actually known Don Bosco. I could be working for some of the past pupils of the Oratory of St. Francis De Sales!”