THE MATERNAL MEDIATION of Mary in the dream at 9: MARY THE TEACHER

"I will give you the Teacher." It is the mysterious man, whom the reader of the dream account does not hesitate to recognize as Jesus, who defines the role Mary will play in John's life: Teacher. For one called to devote body and soul to education, certainly the example of a good teacher is crucial. Those involved in the training of educators and teachers know very well that, beyond the study of any pedagogical theory, when a young teacher first enters the classroom what prevails in his or her way of interacting with children is the model internalized in the experience lived between the desks during childhood and adolescence. And this is perhaps why Don Bosco's first stable collaborators were precisely his boys: those he had raised in the style of the preventive system were the best interpreters of his pedagogical teachings.

The Lord also tells John what he is to learn from this Teacher, namely, true "wisdom." In what this "wisdom" consists can be understood by going back slightly to the dialogue between the two: John had been invited to educate his companions with loving kindness, something that had seemed impossible to him! Therefore, Jesus had introduced the figure of a Teacher, capable of making the impossible possible through obedience and the acquisition of knowledge. What John has to learn, in short, is the art of the preventive system, that is, how to educate young people with love and not with violence - or repressive system - as was common in his time. Mary, put otherwise, will teach John how to love the youth with a transforming love, and she will do so through the discipline of love, that is, within a relationship of maternal/filial love with her disciple. For only those who feel loved, love and understand how to make possible what at first glance seems impossible.

The reference to Mary as ‘Teacher of wisdom’, is not an invention of Don Bosco. Instead, it belongs to a very ancient tradition in the Church and rooted in Sacred Scripture, which unfortunately has been lost to memory today, but which in Don Bosco's time was common and widespread even at the popular level. This is the custom, traces of which we have from the first centuries of the Christian era, of recognizing in the person of Mary the personified Wisdom spoken of in the Old Testament, particularly in the book of Proverbs in chapter 8 and in the book of Sirach in chapter 24.

Until the liturgical reform, that is, after the Second Vatican Council, these two texts were read during Mass on the occasion of the celebration of Mary's Nativity, that is, her Immaculate Conception and Assumption. Believers, in this way, learned from the liturgy to identify the mysterious woman Wisdom with the Virgin Mary, Teacher who leads those who entrust themselves to her to live a holy life of wisdom, fullness and joy. The biblical figure of the woman Wisdom is actually a very complex figure and it is not possible to identify her only with Mary! Precisely for this reason, after the Council, it was preferred to replace these readings with other, more appropriate references.

When the authors of the wisdom books speak to us about the woman Wisdom, in fact, they do not intend to refer to a particular person. They make use of a rhetorical figure, personification, to arouse in their readers the desire to be open to the gift of wisdom: a gift that God bestows with magnanimity to all who desire it, because He Himself desires that men and women may know His plan of love for His creatures and live a full and happy life. The one who is open to giving embodies in his person the traits of the woman Wisdom, among which are the desire and ability to instruct others in the ways of God. The Gospels present us with Jesus as Wisdom par excellence, but they also emphasize Mary's ability to discern God's will. Of both, moreover, it can be said that the heart of their magisterium is love and that this content coincides with their pedagogy. That is, it is about teaching how to love by loving and being loved. And is not this, too, a summary of the preventive system?

Teaching how to love by loving, of course, does not mean surrounding those entrusted to us with a suffocatingly sappy or hyper-permissive affection. The insistent emphasis on loving kindness, in fact, can sometimes lead to such misunderstandings. The love that comes from God - as St. Paul reminds us in his hymn to charity - never lacks respect, and respecting the other also means allowing him the space he needs to be himself and to learn, even through the doubts and mistakes that normally accompany the process of human maturation.

In the storyline of the nine-year-old's dream, Mary immediately demonstrates the sapiential quality of her affection for John. Faced with the child's questions, in fact, she does not hasten to provide a complete answer, which might perhaps appease his anguish, but which at the same time would risk being incomprehensible, because it is premature, ending up closing the space for research and maturation that he needs instead to personally assume the mission entrusted to him. Instead, the Teacher invites John to "look," that is, to lift his gaze to the reality before him. This looking up is the opposite of the withdrawal into oneself, which occurs when one allows oneself to be totally gripped by one's fears or insecurities. In looking up, the child sees a sign: ferocious animals becoming lambs.

In Scripture, vocation narratives always accompany the request for things that seem impossible with the granting of a sign from God, which serves to sustain the faith of the called one. In the annunciation narrative, for example, to Mary's question "how is this possible?" the angel responds by inviting her to look up to "see" her cousin Elizabeth, the barren woman who in her old age is expecting a child. Therefore, Mary leaves in haste, because she has understood that this is a sign, and goes to Elizabeth to be confirmed in her faith. The image of the fierce beasts becoming tame lambs does not, for the moment, give John relief. Certainly, however, it sticks in his mind and heart. How can one not think that it came back to him, many years later, in front of the young stragglers on the streets and in the prison of Turin to confirm the intuition that that was precisely his field, the place where he had to work?

Knowing how to recognize and interpret God's fingerprints in the things of daily life and in the elements of creation is a typical trait of the wise men of the Bible. This ability, to turn everyday facts into parables and to open the eyes of others to recognize in them the revelation of God and his salvation, belongs in a special way to Jesus and his preaching. When He looks up at the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, He sees in it the Father's providential love for his children and teaches us to do the same. Mary, in the dream narrative, is no different. It is she who invites John to interpret the sign he saw as a parable, a prophecy of his mission and calling.

Having become an adult, Don Bosco shows that he has acquired wisdom, and therefore has been a good apprentice in the school of his Teacher, even in his ability to make dreams and interpret them. In his art as a storyteller of parables and uplifting apologies, in his pedagogical use of fantasy, art and adventure, Don Bosco presents himself as a wise man on par with the wise men of the Bible. The same wisdom, however, in its most popular manifestation, also belonged to Mamma Margaret, who in Don Bosco's life represented the earthly presence of the Mother of Heaven. When the woman, in her simplicity, would gather her children together on summer evenings and, raising her eyes to the starry sky, invite them to contemplate the greatness and goodness of God; when she invited them to meditate on their own actions, the good and the bad, in order to learn from experience; when she encouraged them to cultivate all that is good and worthy for a better future and not only the usefulness of the present moment, Mamma Margaret transmitted to them the wisdom of the small, concrete things of life. A wisdom that, precisely because it is humble, has the power to make children truly strong and robust. And everything that makes human beings grow in virtue and wisdom, after all, comes from God.

Linda Pocher, FMA