Walk with Mary throughout the Year

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 ...

Day 291: February 27 Our Lady of Remedies, Chiclana de la Frontera, Andalusia, Spain Our Lady of Remedies in Chiclana de la Frontera in Andalusia (Spain) is a very small figurine, but with a high religious value. It was found by a shepherd attracted by an extraordinary light under a palm tree. The image of the Crowned Virgin of Remedies is located in the parish of the Holy Trinity, from the seventeenth century. In 1500, a mysterious light guided a shepherd who was in a place known as Los Palmaretes, for the many palm trees, to the small standing image of the Virgin. The light was right on a palm tree and at its feet digging he found the miraculous statuette. A shrine grew up around what was called Our Lady of Remedies. It was then solemnly led in procession to the Church of the old hospital of the Confraternity of San Martino. From 1577 the old Hospitaller community of Augustinian hermit monks settled there. These adorned with the sacred belt at the waist, a distinctive sign of their o...

Day 290: February 26 Our Lady of Remedies of Palermo, Palermo, Sicily, Italy Roger I, king of the Normans, conquered Calabria with his brother Robert Guiscard in the middle of the eleventh century, and moved towards Sicily, which had been in possession of the Saracens for two centuries. Victory accompanied him everywhere, and so from time to time he approached Palermo firmly held by the Arabs. During the long and difficult siege, a terrible disease spread among the Norman camps, caused by poisonous insects (a species of spiders). Finding human remedies useless, the pious Roger turned to Our Lady. Our Lady appeared to him and suggested that he light a fire among the camps. The disease disappeared in 1064. In 1072 Ruggero entered Palermo and had a small chapel built for Our Lady, with the inscription: "To the Mother of God and of mercy" under the title of "Remedy of St Mary", which later became "Madonna dei Rimedi" (Lur Lady of Remedies). At the beginning of...

Day 289: February 25 Our Lady of the Rock, Cornuda, Treviso, Italy On the hill overlooking the town of Cornuda (TV), stands the Sanctuary dedicated to Our Lady of the Annunciation, which, however, since it is located on the ruins of an ancient fortress, is known as the "Sanctuary of the Madonna di Rocca" (Our Lady of the Rock). The Piave flows slowly through the valley; Mount Grappa and Montello are the backdrop, making the whole area sacred for religious and historical memories with their names, so dear to the hearts of Italians. The first news concerning the area dates back to the ninth century. To defend itself from the devastating incursions of the Hungarians who descended from the Urals and brought death and looting to Eastern Europe and Italy, the March of Treviso tried to fortify itself with a series of fortresses placed in dominant and strategic passages.  Among the many fortifications there is also the Rock of Cornuda. A bull of 1245, in which the Parish Church of Sa...