Mary, the way to Jesus

Celebrating this day the feast of Mary Help of Christians, we believe it necessary to share with you a truth dearest to Don Bosco and Don Orione : Mary is Mother and Mediatrix of all Christians and all people.

            To speak about Don Orione’s love, but also Don Bosco's love for Our Lady means speaking about their person, so much did they fill their whole life with Mary. These words of Don Orione show this: ‘Read on my forehead, read in my heart, read in my soul, and you will see nothing that does not bear the writing:  Thanks to Mary’.

              This close link with Mary is explained by the strong experience that Don Orione had had of Christ; for whom, following the example of St. Paul, he could also say: ‘For me, to live is Christ’ (Gal. 2:20). Our Father has offered us the love for Our Lady as the way and the road that leads us to Jesus, because she is the perfect model of the love of Jesus.  But to reach the point of living Jesus, Don Orione was as much convinced of the necessity of imitating Mary, since she is the Mother and the disciple who permits us to reach her Son.

               Mary is in a position to help every Christian and every man to get nearer to her Son, because she welcomed Him into her life, because she was the first to show Him to humanity, represented by the Magi and the Shepherds (cf. Mt 2:1-12; Luke 2:1-20, and then because she was always near her Son in the most important moments of His life.

              ‘She is the shortest and the most certain way to go to Jesus Christ. ( ... ) if we are very careful about what the Gospel is indicating, it is always Our Blessed Lady who shows us Jesus: she shows us Him in swaddling clothes in Bethlehem, suffering at the Circumcision, a worker at Nazareth, evangelising at Cana by His first miracle, and then dead for us on the Cross ( ... ). By loving Mary we are certain to love Jesus.