The Consecration of Saint Dominic Savio

Dominic Savio made his First Communion at the age of seven in 1849, and wrote down these resolutions: 1) I will confess very often and I will receive communion every time my confessor permits me. 2) I want to sanctify holy days. 3) My friends will be Jesus and Mary. 4) Death rather than sin. Don Bosco was traveling through the region in October 1854, and people spoke to him about Dominic. He was "amazed to discover how the work of Divine Grace had already been accomplished in a boy so young." On December 8, 1854, when Pope Pius IX proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, Dominic consecrated himself to the Blessed Virgin and renewed the promises of his First Communion: "Mary, I give you my heart, keep it forever. Jesus and Mary always be my friends, but please, let me die rather than have the misfortune of committing sin." His life was so transformed that from that day on, that Don Bosco began to note everything Dominic said and did. The young boy fell ill in 1857 and underwent 10 bloodlettings in 4 days, with the courage of someone much older than his age. On March 9, in agony, he said: "Farewell, my dear papa, goodbye! The priest had something more he wanted to tell me, but I can no longer recall what it was ... Oh! How lovely it is what I see ..." With these words, his hands folded across his chest and a smile on his shining face, he breathed his last without making the slightest movement. His biography was written by Don Bosco, who was unable to evoke Dominic's memory without shedding some tears.