(ANS – Rome) – Don Bosco has worked numerous miracles and he always attributed it to Mary, Help of Christians. A glance at one of the testimonies will make us understand the tremendous faith that he had in the unfailing help of Mary, Help of Christians.

On a sunny spring day, Don Bosco was in Lanzo, Italy, paying a visit to one of the schools he had founded. When he arrived, seven boys were in the infirmary, quarantined with smallpox. Sick or not, their faith in one they believed a saint was so great they were sure that if Don Bosco, as they called him — Don being Italy’s title for priests — would only come up and bless them, they would be healed and not have to miss the fun and entertainments scheduled for his visit. From their sickroom, they sent out an urgent request that the visiting priest come see them.

With his usual total unconcern for his own well-being — he once snapped at a hovering nurse, “Madame, I did not become a priest to look after my health” — the saint entered their off-limits quarters. With cheers and roars, all the boys began to clamor, “Don Bosco, Don Bosco! Bless us and make us well!” Boys were never too raucous for this saint. He only chuckled at their exuberance. Then he asked if they had faith in Mary’s intercession, for like all saints, Bosco never attributed his cures to his own prayer power.

“Yes, yes,” they chorused. If Don Bosco was praying, they were full of faith.

“Let’s say a Hail Mary together then,” he proposed. Perhaps he re-minded them that, as at Cana when Jesus worked His first public mir-acle at her request, when Mary asks her Son for a favor, she gets it. At any rate, only after the prayer which asked for the cure through Mary’s prayers, not Bosco’s, did he bless the sick students in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, from whom all healing comes.

As their hands completed the answering Sign of the Cross, the boys began reaching for their clothes. “We can get up now, right?”

“You really trust our Lady?”

 “Absolutely!”

“Then get up!” He turned and left, and six boys, ignoring the deadly pustules that still covered them head to foot, hopped into their clothes and raced out to the festivities.

For the imprudent, roof-raising rascals who dashed out to the fun and games with complete confidence, their pustules began to disappear as they played. 

The only near-casualty of that day in May 1869 was the poor conscientious school physician, who almost had a heart attack when he saw the smallpox patients “infecting” the entire school with an often fatal illness. While he was understandably furious, in fact no one caught the disease.