In the homily of the Mass, Fr Á.F. Artime began by quoting Benedict XVI and recalled how the core of Christianity resides not in some abstract concept, but in the encounter with a person, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. “If our faith were a doctrine or an ideology, like all those that have followed one another over the centuries, it would have already ended, and there would have been no need for Mary.” The feast day of the Immaculate Conception celebrates that “worthy abode” that God the Father wanted for His Son, preserving Him from every stain of sin. “This is the essence of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception,” said the Rector Major, who immediately afterward drew from it an important corollary for all the faithful: “It is something beautiful as it means that in our being in love with God, we have received even the gift of a 'mother'! And feeling Our Lady as a mother is what saved thousands and thousands of Christians in different times and circumstances.”
Reflecting on the passage from the Gospel of the day, he focused on the exhortation of the archangel Gabriel to Mary: “Rejoice, Mary!” When one accepts God's plan in one's life, there is no other way to live than the one expressed in this first “Rejoice!” Mary's rejoicing is not limited to the sweet and hopeful moment of conception and pregnancy: it is a rejoicing that extends to Mary's whole life, even to the years of misunderstanding, when her Son was deemed mad by the authorities of the epoch, and even on Golgotha, when Mary sees Jesus dying as a criminal. “There too She believes she must rejoice because everything is part of the mystery of God.” Fr Á.F. Artime exhorted the faithful to ask themselves if they truly, as Christians, have so much faith that they rejoice even in difficulties or problems. Because the risk, he said very clearly, is that of living life by letting oneself be carried away by its patterns and movements, amid work, tiredness, pain, good times and difficult times ... And limiting oneself to a few touches of religiosity here and there, like occasional splashes of holy water. For this, he concluded, asking and wondering: “Wouldn't it be possible to spread our faith much more? I think so; but this requires living with permanent joy, even when nothing is seen, when everything seems dark, as Mary did for so many years.”
The Rector Major also recalled the first meeting of Don Bosco and Bartolomeo Garelli, a small event, which took place almost secretly in the sacristy of the church of San Francesco d’Assisi, in Turin; but contemplating the extraordinary subsequent development that followed - a vast movement of people who over the centuries dedicated themselves to the salvation of young people - he observed that: “When something comes from God, it resists time, wars, difficulties, enemies ... everything.”
After Mass, recalling that first Ave Maria “said with fervor and right intention” by Don Bosco and the young Garelli - that the Saint of Youth himself later indicated as the origin of “all the blessings rained down on us from Heaven” in the following years - Fr Á.F. Artime joined the other members of the General Council, the Provincials present in Rome for the course dedicated to them, the Salesians of the community of the Salesian Headquarters, the other members of the Salesian Family and the faithful present; all together, in a circle, they recited a Hail Mary in the courtyard of the Sacred Heart, thus creating the traditional Salesian Marian circle.
