Today, January 24, 2022, together with the monthly commemoration of Mary Help of Christians, the 400th anniversary of the birth in Heaven of Saint Francis de Sales occurs. 

One day Don Bosco said to a group of young people who had grown up with him in the Valdocco Oratory: "We will be called Salesians". And on the occasion of the spiritual exercises before his priestly ordination, the young Don Bosco asked: "May the charity and sweetness of St. Francis de Sales guide everything". Among the many parallels between these two giants of the Salesian charism (which the Rector Major explored in the Strenna) we find devotion and entrustment to Mary. In a passage of the Introduction to the devoted life, Sales exhorts us to relate to Mary as grandchildren with their "dear grandmother". 

Let's accept today the invitation to pray to her with this sweetness and confidence:

«Honor, reverence and respect the holy and glorious Virgin Mary with special love: she is Mother of our sovereign Father and therefore also our dear grandmother. We turn to Her as grandchildren, let us throw ourselves on her knees with absolute confidence; in every moment, in every circumstance, we appeal to this sweet Mother, we invoke her maternal love and, doing every

effort to imitate her virtues, we have for her a sincere heart of children "

St. Francis de Sales, Introduction to the devoted life