Let us ask the question from a very practical point of view: the reply will serve to highlight those aspects of our renewal to which we should give preference.
Don Bosco is one of the greatest devotees of Mary in history. His devotion was a characteristic one, expressed in his own way but inserted fully into the reality of the most incisive Marian movements in the Church of his day. Let us note well that Don Bosco inserted himself into devotion to the Help of Christians: he did not devise it. He associated himself with an ancient specific tradition, but he was able to give it so singular a style that from then onwards the Help of Christians has also been familiarly called “Don Bosco's Madonna”!
Let us dwell briefly on some of the elements which were strongly emphasized by our Founder, and which help to give this devotion a characteristic physiognomy and style.
In the first place, the living awareness of the personal presence of Mary in the history of salvation brings to Don Bosco's devotion, as we have already seen, the continual desire to establish a living relationship with her (linking Mary with Christ of course, in a inseparable binomial of salvation: the two columns of his dreams!).
It follows that this Marian devotion always refers directly to the “person” of the Madonna herself with all her greatness and her titles; it is therefore never expressed in any form of rivalry with other devotions, but rather in a form of intensive convergence and operative projection, through which every Marian title and feast is loved and celebrated through emphasis on the help she brings to the salvation of man.
This awareness of the personal presence of Mary Help of Christians was felt positively by Don Bosco in his own life as a basic objective fact, a fundamental element of his whole vocation both as regards the objectives and style of his apostolic mission and the delineation of his own evangelic spirit.
Another characteristic element is found in the doctrinal postulates of devotion to the Help of Christians. Don Bosco took them from the most esteemed authors, but he marked them out and widened them with particular theological virility and pastoral concreteness. They elucidate the real nature of the devotion and cult of Mary “Help of Christians” and must be cultivated and deepened by her devotees. They refer specifically to Mary's victorious intervention in favour of the faith of christian people, and in helping the Catholic Church led by the Pope and the Bishops.
“The need writes our Founder — universally felt today - to invoke Mary is not a particular but a general one; it is no longer just a case of making more fervent those who are lukewarm, the conversion of sinners, the protection of the innocent. These things are always useful everywhere and for everyone. But it is the Catholic Church itself that is under attack. She is attacked in her functions, in her sacred institutions, in her head, in her doctrine, and in her discipline; she is attacked precisely as the Catholic Church, as the centre of truth and as the teacher of all the faithful.”
This characteristic aspect of “ecclesial help”, the source for Don Bosco of the title of Help of Christians, does not seem to have been connected to Marian titles by other devotees or charismatics. We have of course already a quite significant collection of literature of our own on these doctrinal notions, but after the developments of Vatican II it has become necessary to add other and topical reflections in line with the renewed concept of the mystery of the Church.
Let us begin by noting that Don Bosco had already added the title of “Help of Christians” to that of "Mother of the Church" which we rejoiced to see proclaimed by Paul VI at the end of Vatican II. We must emphasize that it is precisely the living sense of the Church that is the most characteristic element of the doctrine of the Help of Christians.
It will be of great help to the relaunching of this devotion in the present-day world if we make use of the interest with which the impressive relationship “Mary-Church” is developing at the present time.
Mary in fact is already what the Church is striving towards; she is its prophecy and its stimulus. She helps the Church to realize its role of “second Eve” in a motherhood of virginity and grace. In this way “the mystery of the Church is seen through the image of Mary. Looking at her, one can see the Church alive: her eyes explain its mysteries.”
Even a non-Catholic writer affirms: “It can be said that one does not get a correct vision of the Church unless there is room for Mary in faith and piety. The Church's renewal is strictly linked with the relaunching of a sound Marian devotion. Loss of the sense of the maternal vocation of the Virgin Mary leads to a loss of the sense of the Church as ‘mother’.”
Mary's maternal role is at the heart of her relationship with the Church: both exist and are holy in motherhood, and both give life in virginity. Hence there is a close link between “mother- hood” and “evangelization”, between “Mary-Church” and “apostolic action”.
All this is significant for our spirituality today and has practical and compelling consequences. Hence devotion to the Help of Christians, animated by a living ecclesial sense, seems to be in Don Bosco the harbinger of a prophetic doctrinal choice that links “Marian piety” with “Church sense” in a unique form of mutual inseparability and of common growth.
Such a doctrine of the Help of Christians implies, as a necessary consequence, an untiring and courageous attitude of practical commitment that was in Don Bosco one of the characteristic aspects of his Marian devotion: Our Lady of Consolation, or of La Salette, or the Immaculate Conception, would not have indicated an appropriate practical need characterizing him and his numerous followers (and in particular the salesian family) with the same force and the same apostolic physiognomy as did the Help of Christians.
A commitment therefore specifically defined by the concrete historical situation of Catholic life. Don Bosco led the way as he made devotion to the Help of Christians a real dedication to the Catholic Church, always avoiding the tendency to transform it into a banner for either side: revolution or anti-revolution.
To be able to maintain this attitude he made use of a characteristically practical criterion of “maternal activity”. This attitude is not prompted by abstract ideologies but by urgent and vital needs. It does all the good it can even if it cannot reach the best solution possible, and it pays more attention to the delicate framework of life than to the working out of great plans.
It is significant to note that there is no place for a similar vital activity (and therefore no parallel with Mary) in the most famous social ideologies, e.g. in Marxism, even though they have various close similarities with ecclesial structures. The pedagogical realism of Don Bosco expressed through his Marian devotion an authentic “mysticism of action” in the profound sense of St Francis of Sales, permanently linked with a powerful (though sometimes hidden) “asceticism of action”.
Source: E. Viganò, Our devotion to Mary Help of Christians, in «Acts of Superior Council» 59 (1978) 289, 20-26
