From a historical point of view, the title and devotion to Mary Help of Christians in Don Bosco's life took a gradual form. It was especially in the climate that Italy experienced between the years 1848 and 1870 (the taking of Rome) that Don Bosco matured his devotion to Mary Help of Christians. These were years marked by dramatic events that deeply troubled the souls of many Catholics: anticlerical laws, the spread of Protestantism, the Roman question, the absence of bishops in many dioceses. In such difficulties and trials, the Church turned to Mary as Help and Presidium.
In particular, in May 1862 Don Bosco recounted the famous dream of the two pillars, where the Church's struggle in the world's sea is described, and only the anchorage to the pillars of the Immaculate - Help of Christians and the Eucharist is a source of salvation for the Church itself and for the papacy. Another decisive fact was the apparitions of Our Lady in Spoleto, a city located in central Italy and belonging to the Papal State, which had a wide echo and were interpreted as a sign of Mary's powerful help in the tormenting affairs of the Church in Italy.
From Piedmont, then far away and divided by political barriers, Don Bosco turned his far-sighted gaze to Our Lady of the Star, which the archbishop of Spoleto, Msgr. Arnaldi, had named on May 8, 1862, with the glorious title of Auxilium Christianorum. Don Bosco announced on May 24, 1862, in the "Good Night," as we read in the Biographical Memoirs: "Don Bosco announces in the evening with great contentment the prodigious manifestation of an image of Mary that took place in the vicinity of Spoleto."
On December 8, 1862, Don Bosco declared to the cleric Cagliero, who was to be the first Salesian bishop and later the first Salesian cardinal, the reason for his devotion to Our Lady under the title of Mary Help of Christians: "Up to now we have celebrated with solemnity and pomp the feast of the Immaculate Conception, and on this day our first works of festive oratories began. But Our Lady wants us to honor her under the title of Mary Help of Christians: times are running so sad that we need the Blessed Virgin to help us preserve and defend the Christian faith."
In the Good Night of Jan. 11, 1865, Don Bosco said, "In Spoleto the image of Our Lady continually works amazing miracles. It is singular, forming almost an acrostic, which can be made to result from each letter of the Latin word SPOLETUM: S: sancta; P: parens; O: onnipotentis; L: legiferi; E: et; T: totius; U: universi; M: mater; or: et tutrix universi Maria (Holy Mother of the Almighty Lawgiver and Mother of the whole Universe; or Mary Tutrix of the Universe). This indicates the very title of Maria Auxilium Christianorum."
Don Bosco thus approached the cult of Mary Help of Christians definitively in 1862, the year in which the planning of the church of Mary Help of Christians would also begin. Commenting on this orientation, Fr. Egidio Viganò, Don Bosco's VI Successor, wrote: "This will remain his definitive Marian choice: the landing point of an unceasing vocational growth and the center of expansion of his charism as Founder. In the Help of Christians Don Bosco finally recognizes delineated the exact face of the Lady who initiated his vocation and was and always will be its Inspirer and Teacher."
This point of arrival is also a point of departure: we are in the last 25 years of Don Bosco's life; the years of his full human and spiritual maturity; the years that coincide with the Congregation's affirmation and final arrangement, with its worldwide and missionary expansion; the years in which the saint of Valdocco feels inserted in the often dramatic current events of the Church and the new Italian situation, as a priest and as an educator.
This period is marked by the ever more living and experienced presence of Mary as Help of Christians, of individuals, and of the Christian community.
Excerpted from "Dalla casa di Maria alle nostre case. Il Vangelo della famiglia alla scuola di Don Bosco," by Fr. Pierluigi Cameroni and Fr. Roberto Carelli.
