To understand who we are, one has to look at how 15,298 of us from 132 nations have become members of the Salesian Society. Each of us has his vocation story – how we felt called by God to join him in his great plan for youth the Don Bosco way.

This common calling brings us together to live in communities that are made up of clerics and laymen who complement each other as brothers living out the same vocation.

Our ‘vocation’ is lived through our apostolic consecration, that is, the act of offering ourselves totally to God - our will (the vow of obedience) our possessions (the vow of poverty) and our entire being (the vow of chastity). Through our consecration we dispose ourselves to follow Jesus Christ more closely and work with him in building up the Kingdom.

“We live as disciples of the Lord by the grace of the Father, who consecrates us through the gift of his Spirit and sends us out to be apostles of the young…Our apostolic mission, our fraternal community and the practice of the evangelical counsels are the inseparable elements of our consecration which we live in a single movement of love towards God and towards our brothers.” (C.  3)