St. Mary Mazzarello, Attentive and Caring Mother

St. Mary Mazzarello, Attentive and Caring Mother

(ANS – Rome – May 12, 2023) – On May 13, the Salesian Family celebrates the memory of St. Mary Domenica Mazzarello, cofounder with Don Bosco of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians. Between her and Don Bosco, there was a profound charismatic harmony. Mother Mazzarello had a marked educational capacity, the gift of a serene and reassuring joy, and the art of involving other young women in the commitment to devote themselves to the promotion of women so that they might be good Christians and upright citizens in the family, the Church, and society.

From a young age, she was hardworking and attentive to the needs of her neighbor; accompanied by the spiritual guidance of Fr. Dominic Pestarino, she devoted herself to the sick during the typhus epidemic that struck Mornese in 1860 and later to the education of the girls of her village. She opened a sewing workshop, a youth center, and then a home for children without families. In a mysterious vision, she saw a large building with many little girls running in the courtyard and heard a voice saying, “To you, I entrust them.”

Toward her girls, she manifested a maternal tenderness from the very beginning. And the awareness of being a “mother,” assumed gradually, became sharper and sharper over time, until it became clearly visible in her letters to her fellow sisters of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians once the institute was founded: in her letters Mother Mazzarello presents herself as “the one who loves you so much in the Lord” (L 66:6) and is “willing to do everything for your good” (L 52:5), like a mother who “takes care” (L 10:2; 12:3).

In her, we can also recognize the traits of a woman who, like the Virgin Mary, expressed her feminine identity in her active solicitude toward her sisters and young people; she was, moreover, a down-to-earth woman of profound and attentive listening, who welcomed the cries of the suffering, and for this she was committed to providing.

Also, part of her motherly way of doing things was her concern for harmony and peace in communities, as precisely a mother who takes care that there be no dissension among her children. “With a little humility, everything can be mended. Give me this consolation soon, my dear daughters, love one another with true charity, love your mother [superior], regard her as if she were our Lady, and treat her with all respect (L 49:2).”

St. Mary Domenica Mazzarello handed over to her daughters and to those who share the educational mission with them a precious legacy, permeated with Gospel values: the search for God known in the family and forged through enlightened catechesis, ardent love for Jesus in the Eucharist, filial trust in Mary Help of Christians, responsibility in work, openness, humility, joy, sobriety of life, and total gift of self in the search for the true good of girls, especially the poorest and neediest, both at home and in the various mission countries.

Sources: CGFMA.net, Salesian Bulletin of Brazil