Walk with Mary throughout the Year

Day 356: May 04 Our Lady of the Dove, Montespineto, Stazzano, Alessandria, Italy The first important testimony we have is from 1155, when, on the occasion of the campaign of the German emperor Frederick Barbarossa against Tortona, one of the armies hired by the emperor, went as far as Stazzano, sacking it, setting it on fire and sword and razing to the ground the village and the nearby castle of Serravalle. The inhabitants of the village then left their homes and, to escape the fury of the soldiery, took shelter on the heights of the mountain, then known as Monte Arimanno, recommending their escape to the Blessed Virgin Mary Mother of God. Their pleas were heard, and the protection they received was equally evident. When the enemy troops withdrew, the people of Stazzano wanted to build a small chapel on the hill, in honor of Our Lady of the Mountain who had protected them in that dramatic situation. This was the first chapel in the place dedicated to Our Lady. Later, over the years, gi...

Day 355: May 03 Our Lady of the Three Ears of Corn, Trois-Epis, Colmar, Haut-Rhin, Alsace, France On May 3, 1491 at 10 am, as described in the chronicle of Thann, Thierry Schoéré, a blacksmith from Orbey, on his way to the market of Niedermorschwihr, (a French commune of 580 inhabitants located in the department of Haut-Rhin in the Alsace region) near Colmar, passed in front of a large oak tree where he observed a holy image deposited, according to the local custom, to invite passers-by to pray for a man who had died a few days earlier. Dismounting from his horse, he knelt before the pious image and began to pray fervently for the soul of the unfortunate man, when he was suddenly blinded by a ray of light, in the midst of which appeared a delicate and vaporous form.  It was the Virgin Mary, wrapped in white transparent veils, who had three ears of corn in her right hand and a small piece of ice in her left hand. "Get up, good man," said the Virgin gently, "and listen.  M...

Day 354: May 02 Our Lady of the Cross, Pietranico, Pescara, Abruzzo, Italy On March 25, 1613, the day of the Annunciation, a farmer named Domenico del Biondo was crossing the transversal district of Pietranico on his way to inspect his crops, when a woman in a starry white dress appeared to him. Sh e asked for the restoration of a shrine, then disappeared. This was the Queen of Heaven, according to an inscription on the oratory built there in 1618. In March 1675 a predatory horde of military deserters sacked the city. When they threatened to return that spring, the citizens prayed to Our Lady of the Cross, and on May 2 she declared that the city had been spared. Pietranico celebrates Our Lady of the Cross on May 3rd, previously it was the Catholic feast of the Holy Cross, which was probably the patronal feast of the Quarter of the Cross before the apparition. The night before, on May 2, people light hundreds of bonfires in and around the city, so that the entire area appears to be on f...

Day 353: May 01 Our Lady of the Assumption, Lonigo, Venice, Italy In 1486 three shoemakers lived in Verona: Guglielmo, Gianantonio and Giampietro. They came from Novara and had found work in the veronese city, in via della Beverara.  Giampietro had managed to set aside 50 ducats, a considerable sum for those times. Envious and greedy, the other two friends agreed to invite him to the Lonigo market, with the secret intent of killing and robbing him. They left on April 30 (as historian Bertani says, but others report on April 29). In those times of violence, even the artisans went about carrying arms with them: Gianantonio armed himself with a double-edged knife ( pistolese ), Guglielmo with a sword and Giampietro with a dagger. They spent the night in Lonigo and on Monday morning they went to the market where they bought, among other things, white cloth. After lunch they were already on the way back. Just a few kilometers away from the town, near the church of St Peter in Lamentese,...

Day 352: April 30 Our Lady of Capocolonna, Crotone, Calabria, Italy On Capo Lacinio – or delle Colonne - stood a pagan temple dedicated to the Mother Goddess, Hera Lacinia, a nd reliable sources speak of a pilgrimage at that time, in spring, to celebrate "fertility" or "life". When "the fullness of time" (Gal. 4:4) came, with Christianity, venetation shifted to the "Mother of the Lord and of the Church", to Mary. Symbolically, it can be said that the collapse of the many pillars of that ancient temple and the permanence of "only one" of them is like an indication of the collapse of the many pagan divinities and the remaining, of "Mary", the only "Pillar" of the world who brought Christ, "the cornerstone of history" (I Pet 2:6). An ancient tradition has it that the Icon was brought to Crotone by St Dionysius himself, the convert from St Paul, remaining there as the first Bishop; and according to this traditi...

Day 351: April 29 Our Lady of the Kind's Blood, Vigezzo Valley, Verbania, Italy An hour before sunset a certain Giovanni Zucono (later nicknamed "Zuccone") together with his friend Comolo played the "piodella" on the square in front of the village church, dedicated to St Maurizio. The game consisted of placing a coin for each player on a wooden or stone compass (the "magician"). Conversely, whoever by hitting the "magician" with the piodella (a round stone splinter) "managed to scatter the coins around making those closest to the "piodella" his own, won. The Zuccone, already known for his furious character, was a loser that evening, "we don't know how much money, but enough to unleash in him the anger and irrationality that hides in each of us when we feel persecuted by bad luck." He took it out on the quiet image of Our Lady that was there a few steps under the portico of the church, painted on the façade, to the...