RMG – The Marian choice of Don Bosco
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22 May 2023

(ANS – Rome) – It is enlightening to recall, even if only briefly, some details of the process by which Don Bosco arrived at his intense devotion to Mary under the title of Help of Christians. They may lead us to a better understanding of the physiognomy of his and our vocation.

We know that John Bosco was born and educated in a deeply Marian environment of local church tradition and family piety. Suffice it to recall the event of October 1835, a few days after he had been given the cassock and on the eve of his departure for the seminary, Mamma Margaret called him aside and gave him that memorable advice: “John, when you came into this world I consecrated you to the Blessed Virgin; when you began to study I recommended you to be devout to that same Mother; and now I advise you to be entirely hers: love those of your companions who are devoted to her, and if you become a priest always recommend and spread devotion to Mary.”

It is of special interest, I think, that in the famous dream when he was only nine - a dream many times repeated and one to which Don Bosco attached great importance in his life - in his faith awareness Mary appeared as an important personage directly in a mission project for his life, a woman showing a particular pastoral preoccupation for the young; in fact she ap- peared "as a shepherdess". And we should take note that it is not John who chooses Mary; it is Mary who takes the initiative in the choice; at the request of her Son, she will be the inspirer and guide of his vocation.

This deep awareness of Mary's personal relationship with him was to help Don Bosco to develop spontaneously in his heart a care and affection that go far beyond local Marian feasts and titles, though he certainly appreciated and celebrated these with enthusiasm.

This mark of personal relationship with the Madonna will always be characteristic of him; his Marian devotion leads him directly to the living person of Mary and in her he contemplates and admires her greatness, her numerous roles and the many titles of veneration attached to her. Thus a Marian devotion was grad- ually built up in Don Bosco's heart of a kind which was not compartmentalized or partial, but comprehensive and total, centred directly on the living and real aspect more ecclesiastically proper to the person of Mary.

Fr A. Caviglia writes: “When it comes to his devotion to Mary, we leave aside every celebrational, ornamental and devotional title. For him she is above all Mary, the Madonna. It would be natural to ask the question: to which Madonna was Don Bosco inclined? To which one was Dominic Savio devoted? The answer would have to be all and none. In Don Bosco's dream at the age of nine there appeared not a Madonna as such but the Madonna, Mary the Mother of Jesus. At the time of which we are speaking our Father was devoted to Our Lady of Consolation, the Madonna of the Turinese- the first little statue in the Pinardi Chapel was of her. And then with the religious movement that led the Church to define the Immaculate Conception, he turned to Mary Immaculate in love and devotion and with an intensely Catholic spirit and a very clear understanding. And because of certain aspects Mary Immaculate became his Madonna for a long time; it was to her that he led Dominic Savio, for whom the encounter provided the first big moment of his life and explains why the historic sodality he began was named after the Immaculate Conception.”

A similar attitude, combined with his practical genius and historical sense, led Don Bosco to give his active support to the Marian movement promoted by the Church at the time. And so in the first twenty years of his priesthood we find him expressing his comprehensive Marian devotion by emphasizing Mary's singular privilege of the Immaculate Conception, and the feast of the 8th December remains a central feature of his pastoral and spiritual methodology. It coincides too with the starting date of his most significant undertakings. Don Bosco lived with intelligent enthusiasm the ecclesial climate which preceded and accompanied the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception (1854) and that saw the apparitions of Lourdes (1858).

We can recall, for example, the importance in his educational work of the "Sodality of Mary Immaculate" at Valdocco; it was the school that formed his first boy saint, Dominic Savio, and the first members of the future Society of St Francis of Sales. And it is significant that a parallel preparation was taking place at Mornese of the first members of the future Institute of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, which took its rise from the "Union of Daughters of Mary Immaculate".

The choice of Mary Immaculate shows us therefore a Don Bosco who was involved in the Marian movement to an extent that went beyond titles and local devotions; it was a following of Mary, his inspirer and guide, in the vital way that was being realized in the Church at the time.

But it is clear too that Don Bosco tended to transcend the formal aspect of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception; he did not limit himself to the prerogative of the absence in her of original sin; he never stopped simply at the greatness of Mary's individual dignity (her fulness of grace, her virginal integrity and her glorious assumption), but he tended to consider them objectively in relation to her personal role of Mother of Christ and of Christ's brethren.

Don Bosco's apostolic vocation led him to discover and to emphasize what had been the original picture of his "Mistress" since his dream at the age of nine: her role of spiritual motherhood. In practice therefore one can easily recognize Don Bosco's clear tendency to assign to Mary Immaculate a role of help and protection in his educational activity, and to value her fulness of grace as a source of patronage for salvation.

Since 1848 he had begun to write the title "Auxilium Christianorum" on several pictures arranged on his desk. Before 1862 such a title does not appear officially, either as a main or a con- trived title. But there were already growing indications, arising either from circumstances in the Church or from the very nature of Don Bosco's vocation, that he considered Mary Immaculate as the protectress who overcomes and crushes the wicked serpent's head.

It was in the 1860's, the years of Don Bosco's full maturity, and especially from 1862, that his choice emerged clearly for Mary Help of Christians. And this was to remain his definitive choice: the point of arrival in a continuous vocational growth and the centre of the Founder's charism. In Mary Help of Christians Don Bosco finally recognized the true image of the Lady who had established his vocation and had been and always would be his inspirer and guide.

Finally, no little influence was due to the construction of the Basilica of Mary Help of Christians itself at Valdocco, completed in only three years and in a way considered by Don Bosco as quite prodigious. It was to be a shrine to Mary for the city, the country and the world itself, open to more universal spiritual and apostolic needs.

The way in which Don Bosco speaks of this "House of Mary Help of Christians" emphasizes not so much the historical associations but rather the affirmation of a living presence, a fountain overflowing with grace, of a continuous renewal of apostolic action, of a climate of hope and of willing commitment to the Church and to the Pope.

From the time this sanctuary came into existence the Help of Christians became the Marian expression that would always characterize the spirit and the apostolate of Don Bosco: his entire apostolic vocation he would see as the work of Mary Help of Christians; and his many great initiatives, especially the Society of St Francis of Sales, the Institute of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians and the big Salesian Family would in his eyes be foundations desired and watched over by her.

Source: Cf. E. Viganò, Our devotion to Mary Help of Christians, in «Acts of Superior Council» 59 (1978) 289, 13-20.

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