Walk with Mary throughout the Year

Day 102: August 20 Holy Mary of the Cross, Crema, Cremona, Italy There is a sanctuary of the Madonna on the Bergamo Road, about a mile away from the city of Crema, Italy.  The structure is a circular form, with four additions in the shape of a cross, which gave rise to the name: “Holy Mary of the Cross”.  The sanctuary is located in a place where, in years gone by, there stood a dense little wood called “Il Novelletto”. In the late 15th century a young woman named Caterina Uberti lived with her brother in the city of Crema.  When she arrived at marriageable age, her brother induced her to wed one Bartolomeo Petrobelli; it was an unfortunate arrangement – Caterina was good and pious; Bartolomeo was quite the opposite, tending toward the wicked and corrupt.  The marriage was unhappy for Caterina and uncomfortable for Bartolomeo – his rather crude and brutal ways shamed her, while her refined and holy life was a silent reproach to his somewhat scandalous mode of living....

Day 101: August 19 Our Lady of the Chain, Scillato, Palermo, Sicily, Italy The cult of Our Lady of the Chain begun in the year 1392 in Palermo, when King Martin I the Younger reigned in Sicily. Three men were unjustly convicted and on August 18th they were taken to Piazza Marina, where they were supposed to be hanged. Just as they were preparing the forks, a great storm broke out that forced the executioners to take refuge in the Church of Our Lady of the Port and the people fled from the storm. While waiting for the execution to be resumed, the three convicts were tied with double chains to the altar of the Virgin, but the storm continued for the whole day, and the guards had to spend the night in the church to watch them. The three wailed at the feet of Our Lady invoking her with the title of Virgin of Graces and began to beg her insistently, and suddenly, while the soldiers fell into a deep sleep, the chains that held the three broke and the voice of the Madonna reassured them: “Go ...

Day 100: August 18 ​Our Lady's Veil (Sancta Camisia) The first church at Chartres claims to have one of the most venerated relics in Christendom, Our Lady's Veil, which tradition declares was worn by the Virgin while giving birth to Jesus Christ and also as she stood at the foot of the Cross. It had been transferred in the early years of the Christian Church from Jerusalem to Constantinople and presented by the Empress Irene to the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne (742-814). In 876 his descendant Charles the Bald gave the relic to the cathedral at Chartres. Our Lady's Veil is kept in a golden reliquary beside the high altar and has formed the focus of many traditions throughout the centuries. For instance, in 911 when the bandit Rollo and his henchmen were besieging Chartres, local people took the veil from the church and paraded it as a flag of war. Rollo and his men were defeated and the siege was lifted. The shrine is renowned for pilgrimages made by many of the great doct...

Day 99: August 17 Our Lady of Belmonte, Valperga, Turin, Piedmont, Italy In 1016 the Virgin appeared to a Benedictine monk, Arduino (formerly Count and Marquis of Ivrea, who in 1002 had been elected King of Italy by the princes intolerant of the German yoke) while he was lying seriously ill in his castle, ordering him to build three churches in her honor: in Belmonte (Turin) where the Benedictines were to officiate, in Turin (under the title of Consolation) and in Crea in Monferrato. High on the hill, at 727 meters above sea level, clearly visible from all the surrounding area, the Sanctuary of Belmonte has been a beacon of Christian faith in Canavese for a millennium. Its white silhouette stands out in isolation at the summit of the characteristic mountain whose reddish granite , already clearly visible along the road from Prascorsano, and the vast expanses of pink sand on the northern slope, the "sabbionere," contribute to creating a highly evocative landscape around the re...

Day 98: August 16 ​ There are several stories about the origin of the title of Our Lady of Trapani. According to one, the origin of the image dates back to the year 733, and it was the work of a sculpture on the island of Cyprus. He placed it in a church of Fagamusta, where it remained a center of devotion to the Virgin for 400 years. Then in 1113, during the reign of Baldwin, King of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem there was established in Jerusalem, the Order of Templars. Around 1130, a group of crusaders, knights and nobles on Cyprus, decided they would join the Order of Templars and forthwith took ship to Jerusalem, and with them they took the image of the Virgin and Child. The image seems to have remained in Jerusalem for almost 150 years. Then, after the failure of the 7th Crusade, one of the Knights Templar – said to have been Guerrogio of Pisaset, sailed for Italy taking the image with him, possibly to save it from profanation by the Turks. During the course of the voyage, th...

Day 97: August 15 The Solemnity of the Assumption honors the fact that when the Blessed Virgin Mary completed her life on earth, she was taken body and soul into Heaven to be with her resurrected Son so as to adore the Most Holy Trinity forever. It’s an amazing fact to consider that she retains her body and soul, united as one in Heaven, in anticipation of that glorious day when the new Heavens and Earth will be created and when all the faithful will rise so as to live in a new bodily form forever with God. Though this dogma of our faith had been held and believed by the faithful from the earliest times of our Church, especially since it was witnessed by those closest to our Blessed Mother at the time of her glorious Assumption, it wasn’t until November 1, 1950, that Pope Pius XII solemnly proclaimed it to be so, raising this teaching of our faith to the level of a dogma, meaning, it must be held and believed by all. In part, the Holy Father declared, “…we pronounce, declare, and defin...

Day 96: August 14 The historical origin of the Madonna of Canoscio is shrouded in mystery. An ancient folk tradition tells us that in the year 1348, a certain Vanni di Iacopo, living in a house on the Canoscio hill (Canusium = white place), as a votive promise at the time of a terrible plague, left his heirs “40 niente” (Venetian silver coin) to have a “Maestà” painted of the Virgin Mary. (Maestà – religious painting style which is typically composed of an enthroned icon of Jesus and Mary with other figures around likes saints and angels) The painter who remains unknown painted the Madonna as a fresco on the wall in the moment of Her “Transit”, that is, in the passage from this earthly life to the glory of heaven with the twelve Apostles on the sides and above, the Assumption and Crowning in the midst of the angels. But of the ancient primitive painting we are left with only the image of the sleeping Madonna, with a beautiful delicate luminous face, of transparent celestial whiteness. ...

Day 95: August 13 ​ "The holy Apostles held a conference concerning the burial of the most sacred body of their Queen and lady. As they remembered that, according to the custom of the Jews at burial, the deified body of their Master had been anointed with precious ointments and spices and wrapped in the sacred burial cloths; they thought not of doing otherwise with the virginal body of His most holy Mother. Accordingly they called the two maidens, who had assisted the Queen during her life and who had been designated as the heiresses of her tunics, and instructed them to anoint the body of the Mother of God with highest reverence and modesty and wrap it in the winding-sheets before it should be placed in the casket. With great reverence and fear the two maidens entered the room, where the body of the blessed Lady lay upon her couch; but the refulgence issuing from it barred and blinded them in such a manner that they could neither see nor touch the body, nor even ascertain in what...

Day 94: August 12 ​ In the year of our Lord 1518 , a few scattered houses broke the monotony of the Ruta valley, which was partly cultivated with olive groves and vineyards, and part was still covered by woods, one of which was beautiful and not vast, shaded in the valley. In the Grove, in fact, there were once chestnut trees , oaks and elms . Where the three paths joined, there was a shrine with a fresco depicting the Madonna holding the Child Jesus. It is unknown how and who exposed and painted the image. In front of the shrine, there were few passers-by, mostly peasants, who stopped to say a prayer. Among the most assiduous, there was a twelve-year-old shepherd named Angela Schiaffino, who on the 2nd day of the month of July, as she often did, stopped to address a prayer before that painting. Absorbed in prayer, a beautiful Lady suddenly appeared to her, who manifested Her desire for Angela to be the interpreter of Her wishes. The Lady told Angela that she had to tell the people th...

Day 93: August 11 Mount Lussari is a jewel of incomparable beauty, offering a stunning natural panorama of soaring, majestic peaks. Besides being a site of natural interest, it is also a sanctuary, a sanctuary uniting Slavic, Italian, and German ethnic groups. As early as the 16th century, the mountain was a pilgrimage destination for all three peoples; today, it can undoubtedly be considered a European sanctuary. According to an ancient tradition, in 1360 a shepherd from Camporosso  lost his sheep   on Mount Lussari  , which he found shortly afterward kneeling around a mountain pine bush. To his great amazement, he noticed that in the center of the bush was  a statuette of the Madonna and Child. He took it, carried it down the valley, and handed it over to the parish priest of Camporosso.  The following morning, however, the statue was found again on Mount Lussari, once again surrounded by kneeling sheep.  This episode repeated itself once again. The ...

Day 92: August 10 ​ On August 10, 1685, Bernardino Rodríguez de León “saw a great and unusual radiance that was not the natural light of day” in the peaks east of Bogotá. On drawing near, he realized the light was coming from an image of an angel, the Virgin and Child, and St. Joseph, outlined in the living rock. News of the discovery soon spread through the capital, and after an investigation, the Archbishop authorized construction of a chapel on the mountain and public veneration of the images on the Sunday before Ash Wednesday of 1686. The thatched chapel collapsed in 1714, and a sturdier stone one took its place. Mysteriously, people began to see Our Lady’s face change expression at times: sad, tearful, joyous. On May 8, 1716, the left wall of the chapel collapsed to its foundation, after only 150 days. It was decided to move the images from the mountain. In early June, stonemason Luis de Herrera began separating the images from the underlying rock. Legend relates that when he fini...

Day 91: August 9 ​ Shintoism and Buddhism are the majority religions of Japan. Catholicism arrived with Francis Xavier in 1549. This was the beginning of what is now known as Japan’s ‘Age of Christianity’. Persecution of Christians started in 1587 and the religion was formally banned in the early 17th Century. The Catholic community in Nagasaki survived underground for 250 years. When France and Japan signed a trade agreement in 1859, the foreign community in Nagasaki was allowed to build a church: Oura Cathedral. The local Catholics made themselves known to the French priests. In 1865 the Nagasaki Catholics built four secret chapels. In 1868 persecution of Christians was resumed and more than 3,000 Catholics from the Nagasaki area were sent into exile. The exiles returned after the lifting of the ban on Christianity in 1873. In the early 1880s there were about 5,000 Catholics in the Urakami area. In 1880 the property where the church was to be built was acquired. On August 15th 1880, ...

Day 90: August 8 ​ Our Lady of Kuehn, or Kuen, Belgium. The crops were poor; there was much sickness, but the Virgin would not let her people plead in vain. She knew what hunger, poverty and pain was. She would help. Fervently, confidently, lovingly, the people gathered at Mary’s little shrine and asked their Mother for aid. Suddenly the image of Mary smiled and a sweet voice begged them to erect a church in her honor and to build it on this spot. Our Lady promised that on the morrow she would show them where and how. The dimensions of the church are said to have been marked out with a line which is still visible. It reminds us of when Our Lord returned to Galilee with His first disciples, and Jesus and His Mother were invited to a wedding at Cana, near Nazareth. Two days of festivities preceded the wedding, which was followed by an evening banquet. It was here that Mary noticed the wine was scarce. She reminded Jesus that He had promised to supply the wine. The Divine Savior had just ...

Day 89: August 7 ​ In the eighteenth century the chapel carved into the rock by Bonifacio Rotario, now inoperable, was replaced with a wooden one; even this, however, at the mercy of the atmospheric agents, had a short life, and in 1895 the canon Tonda decided to build a new one, which was blessed on August of the same year. In 1913 a fire destroyed the chapel on the summit and the bishop of Susa Giuseppe Castelli and the canon Tonda decided to rebuild the chapel, but also to annex a refuge, so that a priest could stay at the top to assist the pilgrims in the period of greater influx of tourist, that is from the 1st  up to the 15th of August. Popes Pius X, Benedict XV and Pius XI supported the rebuilding with offerings, but due to the outbreak of World War I, the rebuilding was only begun on August 15, 1920, when Bishop Castelli blessed the first stone. Designed by the architect Reviglio, the chapel-shelter was inaugurated and blessed by the bishop Umberto Rossi on 12 August 1923. ...

Day 88: August 6 ​ An extraordinary phenomenon which occurs every year on a Greek island: for about fifteen days (from the Transfiguration to the Dormition of Mary Most Holy) numerous poisonous snakes begin to crawl everywhere in the Church, and in particular around an icon of the Virgin Mary. In a small village on the Greek island of western Kefalonia, hundreds of Greek Orthodox pilgrims flock to Markopoulo every year, a municipality in Greece located on the outskirts of Attica, to testify what many believe to be a miracle that begins every year around August 6, which is the feast of the Transfiguration. Around the church bell tower, poisonous snakes appear and begin to crawl everywhere in the Church, and in particular around an icon of the Virgin Mary. Snakes remain in the church area until August 15, the day of the feast of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary. As soon as the Liturgy ends on August 15, they disappear again in the desert of the area. Snakes will not visible again until t...

Day 87: August 5 ​ Improbable as it is for snow to fall during August, history tells of a snowfall that seemed more impossible, namely in Rome, Italy. August 5, 352, snow fell during the night in Rome. There lived in the Eternal City a nobleman, John and his childless wife, who had been blessed with much of this world’s goods. They chose the Mother of God as the heir to their fortune, and at the suggestion of Pope Liberius, prayed that she might make known to them how to do this by a particular sign. In answer, the Virgin Mother during the night of August 5, appeared to John and his wife and also to the Holy Father, Pope Liberius, directing them to build a church in her honor on the crown of the Esquiline Hill. And what would be the sign that John and his wife had requested? “Snow will cover the crest of the hill.” Snow rarely falls in Rome, but the flakes fell silently during that night, blanketing the peak of the historic hill. In the morning the news quickly spread and crowds gather...

Day 86: August 4 ​ Benedetta Rencurel was born in Saint-Étienne-le-Laus on September 17, 1647; orphaned early, she loved to recite the rosary when she brought the flock of the Jullien family to graze in the Vallone des Forni (Vallon des Fours), near her village. To her the Virgin Mary with a beautiful Child in her arms will appear. Our Lady of the Lake in the Occitan language or Notre-Dame du Laus, is the name with which Catholics venerate Mary, following the apparitions which French shepherdess Benedetta (Benoîte) Rencurel would have had from 1664 to 1718, first at Saint -Étienne-le-Laus, her birthplace, and then at Laus, where a sanctuary now stands, very close to the border with Piedmont, on the Maritime Alps of the Dauphiné. The apparitions were officially recognized by the bishop of Gap Jean-Michel di Falco on May 4, 2008. The first apparitions were silent, then the Lady revealed her identity and, after a month of announced silence, finally asks that a shrine be built in honor of ...