SALESIAN SPIRITUALITY

PASCUAL CHÁVEZ VILLANUEVA

MARY, A MOTHER FOR EVERY DAY

She took me gently by the hand

I have a most beautiful and tender memory from my childhood. I was about nine or ten years old when I had a dream. It was a dream that left an indelible mark upon my life. I saw a bunch of boys engrossed in their play; after some time went by, their play degenerated into a furious fight: fists were flying, and there was kicking, swearing, and even blasphemies. I went on the attack. Then a majestic Gentleman interrupted me, to point out to me a much better way of making these boys behave better. Then suddenly a splendid Lady appeared, warm and lovely: she gestured that I should approach her. Since I was so confused by this rapid sequence of scenes, she took me by the hand. This delicate gesture of motherly kindness won me over completely. I can assure you, very simply, that I’ve never let go of that hand; and I’ll always cling tightly to it, until I die.

When I came into the world…

Even as a child I soaked in the Marian religious and devotional atmosphere of the time. Mary was at home among us. I’m well aware that a good Salesian wrote of me, “Mary was everywhere around him.” It gave me pleasure to read that statement because it really was so. Families recited the Rosary daily, every evening. The Angelus divided up our days precisely, at six in the morning, at noon, and at six in the evening. I learned from my mother to venerate and to celebrate the Madonna through the popular devotions of the places where I lived: Our Lady of the Rosary, Our Lady of the Castle in Castelnuovo, Our Lady of the Steps and Our Lady of Grace in Chieri, Our Lady of Sorrows, Our Lady of Consolation. She had so many ways of holding my hand!

I still remember the last night before I entered the seminary at Chieri. In our humble little house at Becchi, my mother was packing up my gear. She chose that moment for an important disclosure, a mother-son secret: “Dear Johnny, when you came into this world, I dedicated you to the Blessed Virgin; when you began your studies, I recommended that you be devoted to this Mother of ours; now I recommend that you be entirely hers.” My holy mother knew that infant mortality was frightfully high in those times, as much in the hovels of the poor as in the palace of the king. “I dedicated you” meant: I entrusted you to Mary, I offered you to her, you belong to her! It was a trusting act of handing me over to the Mother who can do everything. “We hope for much from someone who can do much”: many times I told others what I heard so often from my mother. So, whenever I was among the boys, I would hand on to them the same devotional style: not as a habit for holy days, something you do just on Sunday, but as a daily, familiar meeting with Mary, who is our mother every day!

The Immaculate Help of Christians: it’s she who has done everything

There was a very specific devotion, solid, rather bare-bones, never fickle, without sentimentality. I constantly reminded the boys: “Mary wants action and not appearance.” Hence my insistence: “To be close to the Madonna you must honor her Son.” I presented Mary to them as the one who brings us to Jesus. I summarized everything as “flee whatever is evil, and do what is good out of love for Mary.” What’s more practical and specific than this?

Two certainties sustained me.

First of all, I persisted in presenting Mary as the Immaculate. There were historical reasons, such as the definition of that dogma in 1854, and then, as if to confirm it, the apparitions at Lourdes in 1858. There were important dates. In my little experience I could hardly forget December 8, 1841, when that providential encounter with Bartholomew Garelli happened. Forty-five years later, while I was boarding the train from Spain for my return to Turin, I remembered that encounter with emotion and gratitude: “All the blessings showered upon us by heaven are the fruit of that first Hail Mary said with fervor and the right intention.”

There were also pastoral reasons: from my contacts with youthful vulnerability, I knew very well the tremendous need that my boys had of fixing their gaze on Mary, the one full of grace, and of receiving from her an inviting message of purity and holiness, so as to be able to live in the joy of knowing they were God’s sons.

At Valdocco in 1854 I dealt with Dominic Savio, that marvelous boy who proposed for himself the goal of being made into “a beautiful suit for the Lord.” With him other youths (almost all of them future Salesians!) were part of the Immaculate Conception Sodality, which became a precious leaven of good among their companions. In their Rule they proposed to “master every obstacle and to be firm in our resolutions, strict with ourselves, loving toward our neighbor, and exact in everything.” Thanks to them, a new path of youthful holiness was opened up.

Then, with the passing of years, as I perceived that the faith was lessening also among common people, I realized that it had become ever more urgent to spread devotion to the Madonna under the title of Help of Christians, she who lends her hand, she who helps us, she who never loses sight of us, she who keeps us united with the Church. I wasn’t the inventor of devotion to the Help of Christians; what I was, was her staunch, tireless promoter. I explained to my first Salesians: “It’s no longer the lukewarm who need to be set on fire, sinners who must be converted, innocent people who must be safeguarded; rather, it’s the Catholic Church herself who is being attacked.”

I remember, even if a shiver of fear runs over me still today, the morning on which I began the excavations for building the beautiful shrine dedicated to her. With all solemnity, I emptied my miserable little purse into the hands of the contractor: all that came out were eight measly copper pennies, my down payment. But I was certain: “In her I’ve put all my trust.” That same morning some letters that I’d written the previous night were still lying on my desk; we didn’t even have money in the house to buy postage stamps! The Madonna would be my “treasurer.” I can assure you: she proved to be a top-notch treasurer!

When I managed to finish the construction, I could tell the faithful who gathered there: “Do you see that church? Mary built it, I’d say, by working miracles.”

Now and at the hour of the our death

Salesian scholars who have written so much about me with such love, with care and precision, are aware that in the last prayers I made on my deathbed, it wasn’t the now-customary invocation Mary Help of Christians that flowed from my lips, but the supplication: Mother, Mary most holy, Mary, Mary. Was this my inadvertence? No! There’s certainly an explanation.

At the end of my life, in the final gasps of my agony, I was at last able to understand everything. I wanted to die just like the little child of that dream 62 years earlier. With the Madonna who took me gently by the hand, while I murmured: “O Mother … Mother … open for me the gates of paradise.”