Walk with Mary throughout the Year

Day 52: Jul 01 Founded in the year 654 by Saint Philibert, the Benedictine abbey of Jumieges in Normandy was once one of the magnificent Benedictine monasteries in France, and the home of some 700 monks with over twice that number of lay brothers. Sadly, it is now nothing more than a tourist attraction, and the vestiges of the surviving structures, though vacant, scarred, and exposed to the elements, are celebrated as a magnificent example of Romanesque art. All that remains standing today are the church of Notre Dame with its impressive twin towers soaring to a height of 150 feet, the western façade, and sections of what were once the cloisters and library. The rest is but a pile of rubble, though it is proudly proclaimed the largest medieval ruin in France. Victor Hugo notably christened it “the most beautiful ruin in France,” but one is left to wonder how it once appeared when the Catholic faith was still vibrant and alive in France. Located a little west of Rouen along a bend in th...

Day 51: June 30 Église Notre-Dame ("The Church of Our Lady") is a Roman Catholic parish church located on Rue de la Paix, in Calais, department of Pas-de-Calais, in northern France. It dates from the 12th century, and chiefly from the 14th century. Arguably, it is the only church built in the English perpendicular style in all of France. For a whole year the town of Calais in France was besieged by the English, who had lost many troops during the siege. Starvation finally forced the French to consider giving up, but the English King, Edward III, would not accept their surrender unless six citizens of Calais came before him bare-headed, bare-footed, dressed in rough shirts, and each with a halter about his neck. He demanded the keys of Calais, and that these men accept his pleasure, however severe, before the rest of the citizens would receive any mercy. The entire population prayed to Our Lady of Calais, which had been damaged during the war. Those who could do so knelt at he...

Day 50: June 29 The shrine containing a miraculous image of Our Lady of Buglose is located about two leagues from Acqe in Glascony. The original shrine of Notre Dame de Buglose was burned and completely destroyed by the Huguenots, and the statue of Our Lady was hidden in a marsh. The exact location of the statue was eventually forgotten, as was the memory even that the place had once been the location of a shrine in honor of the Blessed Virgin. Years later, a shepherd led his herd into the marshes and observed that one of his oxen did not go with the others, but went into an area of the marsh alone and began to bellow in a strange manner. The shepherd climbed a tree to see what was happening, and saw the ox licking an unknown object that was half buried in the mud. Not understanding the mystery, he ran into town to bring others back with him to see what had happened. When the shepherd returned, the statue of the Blessed Virgin holding the baby Jesus in her arms had been revealed. It wa...

 Day 49: June 28 The feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary was created as a result of the Immaculate Conception, which is a dogma of our faith. As The Immaculate Conception, the Blessed Virgin Mary was preserved from all sin from the first moment of her conception by a singularly unique grace, preemptively bestowed upon her by the merits of her Son’s life, death, and resurrection. From the moment of her Immaculate Conception, Mary remained free from all sin as a result of her own free choice to cooperate with grace. As a result, she was conceived as a suitable instrument for the Incarnation of God, and she remained a suitable instrument throughout her life. After Jesus’ birth, the Mother of God continued to perfectly cooperate with grace, accompany her Son, stand at the foot of His Cross, jointly offer Him to the Father, experience His Resurrection and His Ascension into Heaven, participate in the full outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and help give birth to the nascent C...

 Day 48: June 27 The name of Our Lady of Perpetual Help derives from one of the most famous of all pictures of Mary, an icon of the fourteenth century painted on walnut wood perhaps in Crete; from where it was thought to have been stolen by an Italian merchant and brought to Rome. It was venerated, famous for miracles in the Roman Church of Saint Matthew, in charge of the Irish Augustinians for a century, when the church was destroyed by fire. The picture was saved, however, and in 1866 it was set up in the Redemptorist Church of Saint Alphonsus, on the site of Saint Matthew’s. In the following year it was crowned. Since then numberless copies and reproductions of the icons have gone all over the world, some of them themselves wonder-working. Two angels in the picture, Michael and Gabriel, are showing the instruments of the passion to the Child, who clings to the Mother’s hand, shaking loose a sandal. The Mother reassuringly holds tightly to the Child’s hand. One cannot look at the...

Day 47: June 26 This is the shrine in the East Indies, where Saint Francis Xavier often retired to pray during his eleven years with the people of India. The Blessed Virgin Mary was Francis’ constant source of strength and inspiration. The image before which Saint Francis used to pray is called Mylai Matha in Tamil, or Our Lady of Mylapore in English. It is an ancient statue about three feet tall, Our Lady of Meliapore can still be venerated at the church. The church of Saint Thomas of Mylapore – spelled somewhat differently from the above – contains Mary’s shrine. According to tradition, the Apostle Saint Thomas came to India in 52 AD. Due to his success making converts to the True Faith, he was persecuted and finally martyred in the year 72 AD. Saint Thomas is buried at the shrine of Our Lady of Meliapore, and there are relics of Saint Francis Xavier. There was a church known to be in Mylapore going back to the 1st century, and built by St Thomas. According to tradition, there was a ...

Day 46: June 25 In the year 431, the council of Ephesus, which declared that the Blessed Virgin must be called Mother of God. As the Archbishop Cyril stated, “The Word was made flesh” can mean nothing else but that he partook of flesh and blood like to us; he made our body his own, and came forth man from a woman, not casting off his existence as God, or his generation of God the Father, but even in taking to himself flesh remaining what he was. This the declaration of the correct faith proclaims everywhere. This was the sentiment of the holy Fathers; therefore they ventured to call the holy Virgin the Mother of God, not as if the nature of the Word or his divinity had its beginning from the holy Virgin, but because of her was born that holy body with a rational soul, to which the Word being personally united is said to be born according to the flesh.” The title of Mother of God with which the Catholic Church honors Mary, is not only the source of incomparable greatness in her, it is a...

 Day 45: June 24 The shrine of Our Lady of Clos Evrard is in the city of Trier, which is called Treves in the English language. It is the oldest city in Germany, founded before the time of Christ on the bank of the Moselle River. An image of the Blessed Virgin was fastened to an oak tree by a wine-dresser, who wished to honor Mary; but Our Lady ordered him to build a small hut in her honor. The miracles which where wrought there caused this hut first to be changed into a little chapel, and finally into a church which was dedicated to Our Lady of Clos Evrard in the year 1449 by James de Siruq, Archbishop of Treves, who strove to restore order to the confused finances of the diocese. Trier boasted of having Christian citizens as early as the second century, and had a bishop in the third. The city of Trier is also the location of the famous cathedral of Trier, which has the unique privilege of having among its precious relics the Robe of Christ, the Holy Coat as it is called. It is be...

Day 44: June 23 The feast of Our Lady of Justinienne refers to a church in honor of Our Lady, built at Carthage by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian. It was to her that he attributed both of his victories over the Vandals. Justinian I, also known as Justinian the Great, was a Byzantine Emperor who reigned from the year 527 until 565 AD. His great desire was to restore the lost western half of the ancient Roman Empire to his control to reunite it with the Byzantine Empire in the east. He was largely successful. Justinian never fought personally in any of his campaigns, for he had a talented and capable general named Belisarius to lead his armies. The Byzantine Emperor began his conquests by attacking the Vandal kingdom in North Africa. In the year 530 AD, King Hilderic of the Vandals had been overthrown and imprisoned by Gelimer, who was his cousin. As Hilderic had been on friendly terms with Justinian, and had maintained good relations with the local Catholic clergy, Justinian decided to...

 Day 43: June 22 Born in the late fifteenth century, Blessed Lucia (“Lucy” in English) Brocadelli was from the ancient Umbrian town of Narni (“Narnia” in Latin). A pious child, she is said to have received visions from an early age. Following her father’s death in her early teens, she was married off by her uncle to Pietro, Count of Milan, though they lived as brother and sister. As Countess, she was famed for her life of prayer and care for the poor, baking bread for them herself (ably assisted, it is said, by a number of Saints from Heaven). The lure of religious life proved irresistible. And the couple separated, she to become a Dominican tertiary, and he ultimately to join the Franciscans. Among much else, Lucy of Narnia received the stigmata and became prioress of a convent, before ultimately spending her final four decades locked up by her successor. She died in 1544. In 1710, her body incorrupt, she was beatified by Pope Clement XI. When only five years old, Lucy experienced...

 Day 42: June 21 At Grand Cairo in Egypt is seen a miraculous fountain which Our Lady obtained by her prayers when she fled to Egypt with Saint Joseph, her spouse, and the Divine Child, to escape Herod’s wicked designs. St Peter Chrysologus tells us that “this journey was so arduous that the very angels were struck with wonder when they beheld the Savior required to make it.” It is held by tradition that at Matarieh the Blessed Virgin, Our Lady of Matarieh, washed the swaddling clothes of the Infant Jesus and bathed him. It still displays miraculous powers. Matarieh is five miles Northeast of Cairo; here grew also the famous balsam trees, the oil of which was used in Baptism. The city is by some called the “City of the Fountain” in remembrance of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who used it as a bath. The spring had been famous among the ancient Egyptians, who believed that the Sun-god, Ra, bathed his face there when he rose for the first time. People still call it the Holy Fountain, and at ...

 Day 41: June 20 According to a legend, in 1624, a student of the Jesuit College, established in Luxemburg in 1607, went for a walk along the banks of the Alzette River which ran outside the city walls.  Arriving at a place called Rocks of Crispinus, he saw in the hollow of an oak tree, a statue of the Virgin and Child.  He told some of the other students, and together they took the statue and placed it on the altar in their church.  The next morning it had disappeared.  It was afterward found in the hollow of the same oak.  Once more they carried it to the church, but it again disappeared. Then the Jesuits decided that Our Lady wished to be honored in that particular spot of the oak tree, so they built a chapel and enshrined the statue in it, giving it the name of Our Lady of Consolation of the Afflicted. The shrine became quite a center of devotion; numerous miracles reputedly took place there, and many pilgrims visited the shrine. During the French Revol...

 Day 40: June 19 Before the Servites ever existed as an official religious Order, seven prosperous men came together in the city of Florence, Italy. As a reflection of the penitential spirit of the times, it had been the custom of these men to meet regularly as members of a religious society established in honor of Mary, the Mother of God. Eventually, the seven left their comfortable homes, put aside their finery and went to live together in a ramshackle building outside the city walls. The holiness and penitential lifestyle of the seven quickly attracted attention and people seeking prayers and spiritual direction became frequent visitors. To avoid these distractions that they considered a hindrance to the contemplative life they sought, the entire group moved to more peaceful surroundings and established a hermitage on the summit of a nearby mountain, Monte Senario, sometimes known as the “sounding mountain.” Uncertain of what way of life to follow, they turned to Our Lady in pra...

Day 38: June 18 This “little lamb” was born not far from Montepulciano in 1268. She expressed a desire to give her life to God and practiced pious exercises from an early age. Now and then, her parents gave in to her requests to visit the various convents in town. On one such occasion, Agnes and her mother were passing a house of ill repute, when a flock of crows suddenly descended upon her, pecking and scratching the little girl. Her mother remarked that the crows represented demonic forces threatened by her purity. Indeed, years later, Agnes would be asked to found a convent on that very spot. In her teens, Agnes joined the Franciscans in Montepulciano and rose to become its prioress. Small white flakes in the form of crosses fell gently from the heavens in celebration. It is said that the sisters have preserved some of these until today. In 1306, God inspired Agnes to found a Dominican convent with three stones given her by the Blessed Mother in honor of the Trinity. The Blessed Mot...

 Day 38: June 17 In 1380 there lived near Lesneven a good old man named Salaun or Solomon. He had no one to care for him, lived alone, and did not associate with any person; he walked with his eyes to the ground, but his heart in Heaven. As the years went by, old and crippled as he was, he might be seen every evening hobbling toward the chapel of the Blessed Virgin where he spent most of the night in prayer after the villagers had returned to the warmth and security of their own homes. He was a simple man of the woods, and here where the chapel of Our Lady of the Forest was later built he slept in the open under an oak tree near a fountain. Solomon loved to swing from the branches of a tree that hung over the fountain, all the while singing his praises to “Ave Maria!” at the top of his lungs. He begged for bread each day to obtain his meals, and in doing so he was often laughed at, jeered at and otherwise mistreated by the small boys. He was commonly known to one and all as “The Fo...

 Day 37: June 16 Charlemagne began the construction of the Palatine Chapel around 792, along with the building of the rest of the palace structures. It was consecrated in 805 by Pope Leo III in honor of the Virgin Mary. The building is a centrally planned, domed chapel. The east end had a square apse, and was originally flanked by two Basilican structures, now lost but known through archaeology. The chapel was entered through a monumental atrium, to the west. The plan and decoration of the building combines elements of Classical, Byzantine and Pre-Romanesque, and opulent materials as the expression of a new royal house, ruled by Charlemagne. The antique bronze doors of Our Lady of Aix la Chapelle are surmounted by regal lion heads, and they date from the time of Charlemagne. The short pillars of what is called the nave support an octagon shaped cupola of 50 feet in diameter. They date from the 12th and 13th centuries, and were brought from Rome for that purpose. These pillars were ...

 Day 36: June 15 Popular tradition tells how, in the Middle Ages, a beautiful statue of Our Lady, her Son on her lap, and a burning taper in her hand, appeared on the banks of the River Teifi in Cardiganshire.  Any attempt to move the statue to the parish church in Cardigan resulted in its reappearing at the spot where it first appeared.  It became a place of pilgrimage and St Mary’s church was built on that spot in 1158.  The original statue was destroyed in the Reformation. At the beginning of the 20th century, monks from Brittany gave their abbey church the name of Our Lady of Cardigan and revived the devotion.  They made the same dedication to the small church they built in Cardigan in 1912.  The monks left in 1916 and the devotion lapsed. In 1952, Bishop Petit learned that there had once been a shrine in Cardigan and decided to restore it.  He commissioned a new statue, which was blessed in Westminster Cathedral in 1956. Unfortunately the statue w...