# The Venerable Don Bosco, the Apostle of Youth/Chapter XV

CHAPTER XV
VOCATIONS MULTIPLY. ORGANIZATION OF THE SALESIAN SOCIETY. MARY MAZZARELLO
From the year 1846, when four of Don Bosco's pupils had become divinity students, to 1865, what progress! A visitor speaking of one of the boarding schools of four hundred pupils, with its complete course of classical studies, adds: "About a fourth of these scholars enter the Salesian Congregation or are ordained." The first priest from the schools was ordained in 1857—a waif who had fled almost a wreck from cruel and inhuman parents to the shelter of Don Bosco's fatherly heart. His talents were found so extraordinary and combined with such natural energy, love of study and aspiration after holiness of life, that Don Bosco gave every facility to his laudable ambitions, became his director, instructor and father; and his labor of love was well rewarded, for eventually his protege became one of the most distinguished and saintly of the Turin clergy.
As years elapsed and vocations multiplied, Don Bosco, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, saw a society of priests shaping itself almost unconsciously under his very eyes into a sacerdotal phalanx destined to make war upon sin and worldliness, to conquer Christ's enemies, wrest from them their young captives, and bring thousands ​of them to fight under His divine standard. For the youthful Levites would not leave the dear Father and apostle who had saved them, who had led their footsteps into this new world of spiritual beauty, of glory, of undreamed-of possibilities of good; by his side they would labor, would spend the God-given talents he had discovered and brought to light, would give their lives with daily increasing ardor to the great apostolate in which he had already achieved such prodigies of moral change.
And the pencil of the Holy Ghost was summoned to write the laws of this new gathering of priests. The spirit of St. Francis of Sales, always the guiding spirit of Don Bosco, was evoked—the spirit of love, of sweetness, of strength, which characterized that most humble and most beloved of saints and missionaries—to drench this new offspring of his and make each of them another Sales to preach and illustrate by example that Christ's Gospel is one of love.
Through all these years, Don Bosco's ideal of organized spiritual activity grew continually; his thought and experience were always on the alert for improvement in details, and, humble to the heart's core, he was ever ready to seek the counsels of his early confreres, especially of Don Michele Rua, his first priestly conquest of Valdocco for the Order of St. Francis of Sales, of whom he said: "Observe and study Don Rua, for he is a saint." So that at last a compact body ​of Salesian rules "of wonderful wisdom, discretion and sweetness," emanated from the hands of the saintly founder—rules tried seven times in the fiery crucible of loving and heroic obedience by his ardent followers—rules which planted the roots of sanctity deep in the vital recesses of the soul, later to flourish and spread its branches over the whole world laden with fruit for the healing of the nations.
Hardly any story of the formation of a religious order could be more interesting, touching, thrilling in its details; and to indulge in the cumulative evidence of detail, of anecdote, of conversations, is the momentary temptation of any author who would write of Don Bosco. But space limits me; and my readers may well await, in this as in all the other circumstances of this mysterious life, the filial revelations of Father Lemoyne in his wonderful fifteen-volumed biography of the Apostle of Turin. Don Bosco was truly living two lives—more in the invisible world of spirit than in the world of superhuman activities in which, however, he seemed always plunged; seemed, I say, for it was a divine power that guided them all, and though he was not exempt from the most cruel trials yet was he, I may truly say, care-free in his utter infantine dependence on God.
And, therefore, as in ever increasing numbers these young, strong-souled priests and trained professors of his own making, relinquished every ​earthly ambition and sought to toil from the first hour of the day in this new vineyard of the Lord, so with ever-widening zeal did Don Bosco respond to the calls from all Italy for colleges and complete Oratories. The three houses of Turin overflowed to meet the demands, and from 1863 on, the Institute became permanently established in Mirabello, Monferrato, Alassio, Mogliano, Randazzo in Sicily, Varese, Val Salice and at Trent in the Tyrol.
But Our Lady, Help of Christians, was preparing afar off in the valley of Mornese a great surprise for Don Bosco—the realization of a dream of long years—of a noble aspiration which his mother's great heart had shared and fostered with profound interest. This was to establish institutions similar to those of the Oratory for poor little girls whom Margaret had seen with sorrow roaming the streets without a shelter. Mary Mazzarello, an Alpine girl, had grown up in the valley a model of angelic innocence, of virtuous labor and charitable zeal, and her beautiful influence was paramount over many of the young girls of the village. She was sixteen years of age when Don Pestorino, the pious Curé determined to form of those elect souls a Congregation dedicated to Mary Immaculate. The rules were easy: prayer and good works were enjoined, but the members were left unconstrained as to their ordinary duties of life. Mary, in her fervor wishing to do more, assembled the little girls of the ​village in her own home, and instructed them in religious doctrine; but, not long after, her generous heart prompted her to hire a work-room where she taught them all kinds of sewing, in which she was an expert.
Marvelous reports of Don Bosco and his Society of St. Francis of Sales, having come to the ears of Don Pestorino, he conceived an ardent desire to become a member, and to affiliate, if possible, his little Mornese Congregation to the great Salesian Society, then twenty-five years in existence. Later, he visited Don Bosco who welcomed him into the Society with joy; and he became one of the most active and zealous Fathers. The holy apostle received with equal happiness Mary Mazzarello and her companions, modifying the rules of the Congregation, changing its name to Mary, Help of Christians, and placing it on a par with the Salesian Institute. What the latter was for boys the Salesian Sisters became for girls. Mary was chosen Superior, and on August 5, 1872, the Feast of Our Lady of the Snows, she and her sisters with ineffable joy received the religious habit from the Bishop of Acqui, and pronounced their sacred vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Their life was a duplicate of the early struggling years of Valdocco, but there was not a murmur; and the work grew and was manifestly blessed by God, as were all the works intrusted to Don Bosco by His divine Providence.
Sr. MARY MAZZARELLO
First Superior General of the Daughters of Our Lady, Help of Christians, Founded by Don Bosco.
Born at Mornese, May 9, 1837;
Died in the odor of sanctity at Nizza Monferrato,
May 14, 1881.