Walk with Mary throughout the Year

Day 297: March 05 Our Lady of Good Help, Montreal, Canada Dedicated to Our Lady of Good Help, Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours for 300 years has been the sanctuary for seamen leaving Montreal for the seven seas. A wooden chapel was built in 1657; replaced in 1675 by a building whose foundations serve the present church which was erected in 1771. Over the entrance is an inscribed message: “If the love of Mary is graven in your heart, forget not a prayer in passing.” Our Lady of Good Help is a beautiful little church, with fine paintings. On the walls are mosaics of Marguerite Bourgeoys, who inspired the first chapel; and of Maisonneuve, founder of Montreal, said to have felled the first oak for the chapel. A narrow stairway, lined with pilgrims’ acknowledgments, leads to an aerial chapel set in the roof. Here is a facsimile of the Santa Casa, the house of the Virgin reputedly carried by angels from Nazareth to Loreto. St Marguerite Bourgeoys was the founder of the Congregation of Notre Dame. W...

Day 296: March 04 Our Lady of the Guard (Notre Dame de la Garde) Late one afternoon during the thirteenth century, a solitary French fisherman was fishing off the harbor of Marseille.  Before he became aware of it, a terrific storm burst upon him.  His boat tossed around like a shell and filled with water faster than he could bail it out.  His rudder was lost; his mast snapped; cutting free the rigging with a knife, he saved himself from capture.  Everything looked hopeless, and he felt he could never get back to the harbor.  He thought of the family he would never see again and cast a despairing look at the city, the huge rock standing like a sentinel or guard on the Mountain which overtopped the city and harbor. Dimly through the gloom he saw the figure of a lady, dressed in white, standing firmly on the very top of the rock.  She seemed to be extending her hand as if she would help him to the shelter and safety of the harbor.  At once it came to him...

Day 295: March 03 Our Lady of the Cross, Cubas de la Sagra, Madrid, Spain The Apparitions of the Virgin, with the title of Our Lady of the Cross (Santa Maria della Croce), began on March 3, 1449. These are some well-documented apparitions ("More is known about the apparitions of Inés Martínez in 1449 than about any other similar episode in Spain until the twentieth century", writes William A. Christian) that gave rise to the "House" of the Virgin, later to a Shrine and finally to the Monastery, through the work of Mother Juana of the Cross, called "La Santa Juana" (1481-1534). At that time, the region of Castile was in the storm of wars between princes, for which the people paid the price for the numerous dead and prisoners. On that Monday, March 3, 1449, twelve-year-old Inés was looking after the pigs of her father, Alfonso Martinez. Their family was the poorest in the village. It was about "around noon" when a "very magnificent" Lady ...

Day 294: March 02 Our Lady of the Angels, Toulouse, France In the year 1212, three merchants from Angers were crossing the forest of Bondy in France, when they were attacked by thieves. After being robbed, they were tied to trees and left to their fate.  Since it was a wild and lonely place, known for being the haunt of thieves, their chances of rescue were slim. They prayed ardently to God and Our Lady, and after a day and a night, the angels came in visible form and freed them. The men discovered a spring near the place where they had been bound, which they considered miraculous. They decided to establish a shrine of Our Lady on the spot in thanksgiving for their release. The first statue they put in the shrine was only meant to be temporary, to be used until something better could be made or purchased. However, almost immediately a stream of miraculous healing began among those who prayed in front of the small rough statue. In the years that followed, fervent pilgrims came en ma...

Day 293: March 01 Our Lady of Loreto, Mutxamel, Alicante, Valencia, Spain The Church of San Salvador in Mutxamel was built in 1511. In 1513 a painter arrived in the city from Biar, about 30 miles to the north, with three works of art to sell for 28 cents each, a fair sum but large at that place and time. The church of San Salvador did not yet have a processional image, so the priest's father suggested that his son make a collection in order to reach 28 cents, offering to provide missing funds. But people contributed enough to buy the painting of the Virgin of Loreto plus a few candles and decoration with the rest of the contribution. In 1545, the region suffered a terrible drought. So the people of Mutxamel carried their image of the Virgin in procession to the shrine of the monastery of St Veronica three miles south to St Faz. On the way back, near the town of San Juan, Father Lloréns Boix suddenly found that the painting had become too heavy to carry. He paused and, lifting the p...

Day 292: February 28 Our Lady of Tears, Treviglio, Bergamo, Italy Treviglio, in the diocese of Milan and province of Bergamo, houses a magnificent Sanctuary dedicated to Our Lady of Tears, the result of the generous and grateful faith of a very religious population that feels it owes its salvation to a prodigious intervention of the Virgin. In the first half of the 1500's, Lombardy paid the price of the struggles between Francis I, King of France, and Charles V, Emperor of Germany, who wanted to take possession of the French possessions in Lombardy. The lieutenant of the King of France, in Milan, was Marshal Lautrec, defined by the writers of the time as "harder than the diamond, cruder than the tiger, firmer than the rock." The French were forced to retreat to Como, and from there, through Lecco and Bergamo, to Cremona. Treviglio returned under the Duchy of the Sforza. Some inhabitants of Treviglio, incited by a certain Giovanni Landriano, of the faction in favor of the ...