By Matters India Reporter
Guwahati, May 14, 2026: Journey of the Heart: A River of Grace, Faith and Life, the latest work by Salesian priest and educator Father V. M. Thomas Vattathara, has been published by Don Bosco Communications, Guwahati.
Archbishop John Moolachira of Guwahati released the book May 13. The 230-page volume, divided into 36 chapters, is a contemplative collection of reflections on faith, leadership, and the sacred ripening of later life.
Father Vattathara is a distinguished Salesian, educator, and institution builder from Northeast India.
Besides serving as chancellor of Assam Don Bosco University, he has held key leadership positions including provincial of the Salesian Province of Guwahati and president of the Conference of Religious India, representing thousands of religious men and women nationwide.
Widely recognized as the founder of the Don Bosco Institute, Guwahati, he has trained and mentored thousands of youth and leaders.
For 18 years, he served as a trainer at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie, shaping generations of India’s civil servants with his insights on leadership, ethics, and service.
Book frames aging as sacred ripening, not decline
Unlike a conventional memoir, Journey of the Heart invites readers into a spiritual landscape where memory, Scripture, and providence converge.
Father Vattathara, widely known for founding the Don Bosco Institute and mentoring thousands of youth, writes candidly of struggles, setbacks, and renewal. He frames life as a river — sometimes calm, sometimes turbulent — always flowing toward the Infinite Ocean of God.
In the preface, he describes senior years not as decline but as “a sacred ripening,” when vocation deepens into wisdom and ministry becomes presence.
He calls priests and religious to be “signs of transcendence in a culture of distraction, bearers of hope in times of fear, and witnesses to the eternal amidst the fleeting.”
The foreword by Salesian Father Joe Mannath emphasizes the author’s humility, noting that the book is less about achievements and more about the “Invisible Presence” sustaining them. Mannath recalls Thomas’s vision for youth empowerment in Assam but insists the real hero of the book is God’s providence.
Recurring themes include trust, surrender, and fidelity. “Authentic leadership does not begin with strategy, but with surrender,” Father Vattathara writes, urging leaders to see people not as responsibilities but as persons to be loved.
His imagery of the Amazon River pouring freshness into the Atlantic becomes a metaphor for how one life lived with integrity can transform society.
The book also offers profound insights on aging: “The fire remains, but it now seeks to warm more than to blaze.” Aging, he insists, is refinement, not decline — a time when memory becomes wisdom, suffering becomes compassion, and life itself becomes prayer.
(Photo supplied)