Letter from the Director
January 21, 2025
Dear Friends of Mary Help,
The month of January is full of Salesian saints’ days. There are no fewer than six liturgical feasts of Salesian saints and blessed that are celebrated in January.
On January 8, we commemorated Bl. Titus Zeman, a Slovak Salesian, imprisoned by the Communists in the former Czechoslovakia for being “an enemy of the state.” His crime? He helped 60 Salesians escape from the Communist state to Italy. Imprisoned and tortured for 12 years, he died in 1969 and was beatified in 2017.
We remembered Bl. Luigi Variara on January 15. An Italian Salesian, he went to Colombia and spent his life among the lepers at a colony named Agua de Dios. He also founded a congregation of women, the Daughters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary.
Bl. Laura Vicuna will be commemorated this week on January 23. The young pupil of the Salesian Sisters offered her life to God if her mother would end a bad relationship with a man who was not her husband. A girl of exceptional piety, Laura died at the age of 12 in 1904. Her mother ended the relationship and returned to the Church.
The feast day of a Polish Salesian, Bl. Bronislaus Markiewicz, is January 30. He founded the Congregation of St. Michael the Archangel (both men’s and women’s communities) to care for poor and abandoned children in Poland.
Of course, January 31 is the solemn feast of St. John Bosco.
However, there is one saint in the Salesian calendar whom we often offer minimal attention. He is the Patron of the Salesian Society – St. Francis de Sales. We celebrate his feast on January 24.
DeSales is an important figure in the history of the Church. Born in 1567, he became a priest and then bishop of Geneva, Switzerland. He could not enter his diocese because it was controlled by the Calvinists. So he found other ways to care for his flock – letters, pamphlets, even sneaking into parts of the diocese.
His spiritual theology is the basis for Don Bosco’s:
holiness is for everyone, regardless of one’s age or position in life.
Don Bosco applied this spirituality to young people – hence we have Dominic Savio, Laura Vicuna, Ceferino Namuncura, Mickey Magone and many other adolescents and young adults who lived lives of great friendship with God. Some of them have been beatified or canonized.
Don Bosco made St. Francis de Sales the patron of the first Oratory and eventually of the Salesian Society (the Society of St. Francis de Sales). DeSales was known for his patience and
kindness, which he developed as he spent years controlling his irascible temper. Don Bosco believed that these two virtues are necessary when working with young people.
It is appropriate that we remember and celebrate St. Francis de Sales on January 24, the patron of the Salesian family and ministry. His spiritual teaching is the foundation of the entire structure.
St. Francis de Sales, pray for us!
Mary, Help of Christians, pray for us!
Fr. John J. Serio SDB
Director