(ANS – Rome) – Devotion to Mary Help of Christians  is a fundamental element in the life and work of Don Bosco, which became part of him in a gradual manner and with ever-increasing consciousness as the years went by.  Fr. Pierluigi Cameroni is the Postulator General of the causes of saints of the Salesian Family and Spiritual Animator  of the Association of Mary Help of Christians (ADMA).  On the vigil of the Novena to Mary, Help of Christians, he reminds us of the meaning of this devotion, so dear to Don Bosco.

The Salesian devotion to Mary Help of Christians goes back 150 years.  Precisely in May 1862 and for all of that year, Don Bosco settled definitively on the cult of Mary Help of Christians and launched the project of a church dedicated to her in Valdocco, Turin. He was led and confirmed in that direction by two factors. One was the news of the apparitions of Mary at Spoleto in central Italy, which found such a strong echo in those years as a sign of the powerful help of Mary in the dire troubles of the Church. The other was his dream  of “The Two Pillars”, which he narrated to the community of Valdocco  on March 30, 1862.

Fr. Cameroni  explains: “A true return to Don Bosco cannot leave aside the devotion to  Mary, Help of Christians, which was so dear to his apostolic heart and to the heart of his successors. It is a charismatic heritage of Don Bosco to be rediscovered and promoted above all today, in a highly secularized world, intent on creating a humanity without God, and breathing a relativism which suffocates the values of the Gospel.
 
He concludes: “we want to live the great Solemnity of  Mary Help of Christians in this 2012, asking her to revive in us the apostolic passion of the motto ‘Da mihi animas coetera tolle’, anchoring ourselves to the great pillars of  Salesian spirituality and pedagogy: the Holy Eucharist and to Mary, Most Holy. From a renewed devotion to Jesus in the Holy Eucharist and to Mary, Help of Christians, new fraternal relations will be built, able to develop educative and vocational discernment and action.”
 
The traditional novena to Mary Help of Christians (May 15-23) promoted by Don Bosco unites all the groups of the Salesian Family. This is stated specifically in the “Charter of the charismatic identity of the Salesian Family”, in art. 11 and especially in  art. 36.

On the ADMA website many resources of prayer and animation are available.

Published 14/05/2012