The Marian choice of Don Bosco

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."¹⁵

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 appeared "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, 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 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 gradually built up in Don Bosco’s heart of a kind which was not compartmentalized or partial, but comprehensive and total, centered 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."¹⁶

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 8^th 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 fullness of grace, her glorious assumption), but he tended to consider them objectively in relation to her personal role of Mother of Christ and of all men - 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 fullness 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 contrived 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 center 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.

"The experience of eighteen centuries —wrote Don Bosco, drawing from authoritative sources — makes us realize very vividly that from heaven Mary has continued with great success the mission of Mother of the Church and Help of Christians that she had begun on earth."¹⁷

We should notice that the choice of Mary Help of Christians is associated with several facts of particular interest for our reflection.

- Don Bosco was sadly aware¹⁸ of the special and increasing difficulties facing the Church: the serious problem of the relation between religion and politics, the fall (after more than a thousand years) of the Papal States, the delicate situation of the Papacy and the episcopal sees, the urgent need for a new approach to pastoral work and for a new relationship between hierarchy and laity, the incipient mass ideologies, etc.

It is essential to remember that the history of the Church in the middle of the nineteenth century "is characterized by a violent encounter between old and new, between liberalism and conservatism, and between the structures of an officially Christian society and the ever more decisive affirmations of the secular world." The whole life of the Church is involved in a multiplicity of ways: doctrinal questions, popular piety, pastoral methods, the first affirmations of the laity, singularity of the local churches. "There emerges the picture of a key period in the history of the Church, which once again spells out the terms of the confrontation between Christianity and the cultures of the various historical eras with which it comes in contact."¹⁹

Moreover, Don Bosco had been impressed by the Marian events at Spoleto, seen by Archbishop Arnaldi (who maintained contact by correspondence with Turin) and by the Catholic press as a sign of the intervention of Mary Help of Christians; from the very center of Italy she gave hope to the Church and to the Pope at a most alarming time. This miraculous intervention recalled the happy solution to the vicissitudes of Plus VII (and of Msgr. Franzoni at Turin), and so gave rise to a real enthusiasm for Marian devotion among the faithful of the whole peninsula as well as of Turin.

- We know too how Don Bosco retained and deepened in his heart the sense of the presence of Mary in his vocation and in the life of the Church. His meditations and personal intuitions in this regard can be seen either from his various statements, e.g. the one to Don Cagliero already quoted, or in the dream of the two columns which occurred precisely in 1882, or in the particular kindness and goodwill on the part of Pius IX in the naming of the basilica then under construction.²⁰

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 not a parish church to serve local needs: the local people were already well served pastorally. 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 basilica is well known as a place that offers the world the presence of God and Christ as well as Mary. The theology of the temple is linked to God’s free initiatives for his insertion into history for the salvation of men, and we can say that for Don Bosco the building of the basilica became in fact a positive and palpable expression of this profound theology of the temple seen through the maternal and active presence of Mary. The basilica is to be a "Marian sanctuary" that becomes the "privileged sign", the "holy place" of the protective presence of Mary Help of Christians: "haec domus mea, inde gloria mea!"

This also explains why Don Bosco dedicated himself so completely during those years to this undertaking. "Only one who actually witnessed it - Don Albera tells us - can really know of the work and sacrifices that our Venerable Father imposed on himself for three years in order to finish the work; many thought it a rash undertaking, beyond the capacity of the humble priest who had begun it."²¹

But whatever may be the concrete reasons for the choice of the title "Auxilium Christianorum", already weighted with history and with a vital urgency for the socio-religious situation, it seems that what subsequently became the determining factor for Don Bosco was the daily realization that Mary herself had well-nigh built this house of hers in the grounds of the Oratory, and had taken possession of it from which to spread her patronage.

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.

There is a real "factual lyricism" behind the construction of the basilica which vividly illumines Don Bosco’s Marian choice.

I think we should reflect at greater length on the spiritual consequences for Don Bosco (and for us) of the construction of this basilica, its effective significance and its creative role in giving shape to his charism, and its concrete consequences in the founding and development of the Salesian family.

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 Mary Help of Christians and the big Salesian family would in his eyes be foundations desired and watched over by her.

I think it true to say that, through the living experience of the granting of so many favors, the Sanctuary has become even more important than Don Bosco may have initially thought. The light that shines forth from the basilica at Valdocco transcends local pastoral anxieties and even the history of its title, to became a partly new and even greater reality: a place privileged by the motherly and helping presence of Mary.