Walk with Mary throughout the Year

Day 142: October 01 Our Lady of Protection            Like a number of the other Marian feasts, this of Our Lady’s protection is first found in Spain, where it was granted in 1656 in thanksgiving for all the victories over the Moors.  It spread  to many other parts of the world on various dates, but has since been dropped from a number of calendars.     Among the Cistercians it has particular reference to St Alberic’s vision of our Lady in which she assured him she would always watch over and protect that order of monks.  The feast is especially observed with reference to the sanctuary of Chartres and Our Lady of Miracles at Lucca.       The word “patronage” is sometimes added to the name of a patronal feast, e.g. Patronage of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Help at Santiago de Guatemala. St Justin Russolillo Writes... "Heaven possesses you now, but earth has not lost you. You carry in your heart the whole world and its in...

Day 141: September 30 Our Lady of Beaumont, Lorraine, France The little shrine of Our Lady of Beaumont (Notre-Dame-de-Bermont) is located in Lorraine, France, between the towns of Domremy and Vancouleurs. For many years the small church was thought to date from the 11th century. It was thought that perhaps it might have been built for a monastery of Benedictine monks, but was subsequently sold to a man named Geoffrey de Bourlemont. We know now it was founded by Antoine Sigismund of Lorraine in the year 920. It is known that St Joan of Arc liked to go to Our Lady of Bermont on pilgrimage on Saturdays when she was a little girl, and also often during the week, to offer candles and flowers to Our Lady. Although a small chapel, it has great importance, as it was here that Joan of Arc commended the affairs of France to the Queen of Heaven and Earth, and it was here that Mary ordered Joan to take up arms to deliver her country of France from the hands of the English. Joan was always faithful...

Day 140: September 29 Our Lady of Tongres, France Our story goes back to the First Crusade and concerns a knight by the name of Hector, who becoming blind while on a crusade, was obliged to return home. One night in the year 1081 while Hector was living in retirement in Tongres, angelic voices were heard in the garden of his castle and lights were seen among the shrubs. The next morning his servants found in the garden a lovely statue of Our Lady. He ordered it to be brought into the castle and had it set up in his private oratory. Here he prayed all night before it and arranged a procession on the following day in honor of the Royal Visitor. That night the statue disappeared, only to be found on the following morning in the garden. Hector gave orders that it was to be covered with a shelter and sent word to the bishop of the place to ask what to do about it. The bishop came himself and convinced that the oratory was the place for the statue. He had it moved. It returned that night its...

Day 139: September 28 Our Lady of Cambron, France The abbey of Cambron was founded on the River Blanche and was a daughter house of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. It was situated some leagues from Mons in Cambron-Casteau in Hainaut, Belgium, and took its name from the land on which it was built. Cambron, in its turn, had daughter houses in the abbeys of Fontenelle at Valenciennes and six other sites. The image of Our Lady formerly honored at Cambron was famous for a great number of miraculous cures. A chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Cambron, was built at Mons in 1550 in a part of the prince’s park. In the following centuries the magistrates of Mons had a beautiful door built for the shrine and added other embellishments. In 1559, thieves broke into the chapel and stole everything of value to be found there. There was a small oratory that was very much frequented. After the French Revolution when the State took over all properties given to religious services, this chapel of Our Lady of Cam...

Day 138: September 27 Our Lady of the Happy Assembly, Le Laus, France Le Laus is a little village in southeastern France, 60 miles to the southeast of Grenoble. The story of Mary’s shrine there centers around a young woman named Benoite Rencurel, who was born on September 29, 1647 of humble parents in the little village of Saint Etienne, not far from Le Laus. Her father died when she was seven and after his death her mother found life rather difficult. So, when Benoite was 12, she went to work on a neighboring farm, tending the farmer’s sheep. Each day while the flock grazed, she spent a few minutes praying to the Blessed Virgin at a little wayside chapel. One day, in 1664, Benoite led her little flock into a small valley near Saint Etienne and there toward the end of the afternoon, a Lady and Child appeared to her, standing on top of a rock, a large rock, known locally as Les Flours. The Lady did not speak to Benoite, but smiled in a very friendly way and after a few minutes Lady and ...

Day 137: September 26 Our Lady of Victory, Tourney One of the first, and certainly one of the most decisive engagements of the Hundred Years War, was the naval battle of Sluys, fought on June 20th in the year 1340.  The French had amassed a large fleet of ships for the intended invasion of England, but King Edward III of England met them with a fleet of approximately the same size at Sluys, an engagement that meant the destruction of nearly the entire French fleet. The loss of the French fleet meant that the war between France and England would take place on French soil. After his victory at Sluys, King Edward III landed with his army and began the siege of Tourney, or Tournai, on July 23rd. (Tournai was a Flemish city, but it was loyal to the French king and housed a garrison of French troops.) Edward had 1,300 men-at-arms and 3,000 archers, as well as 5,455 infantry reinforced by perhaps 1,000 Flemish men-at-arms. He had every advantage, as his army was larger than that of Philip...

Day 136: September 25 Madonna, Divine Shepherdess, Spain In 1703 Mary was given the title Divine Shepherdess, bestowed upon her by Father Isidore of Spain after a vision in which the Blessed Mother appeared to him as a shepherdess.  Father Isidore was born of a rich and noble family of Seville, in 1662.  He was the pride of his family and looked upon as a prince among his associates.  At the age of nineteen he entered the Capuchin Order.  He was devoted to Our Lady from childhood and much more so after entering the religious life.  After completing his studies he was sent to a monastery in Cadiz.  Here he, with Father Feliciano, erected small shrines to Our Lady along the roadways.  They taught the people how to sing the rosary walking along the street.  This custom Father Isidore brought with him on returning to Seville.  In such a worldly atmosphere this came as a surprise to the people.  Cantina and tavern loungers found themselves sl...

Day 135: September 24 Our Lady of Mercy (Mare de Déu de la Mercè), Barcelona, ​​Spain In early August of 1218, St Peter Nolasco, St Raymond of Penafort, and James, King of Aragon, each had a vision of the Virgin Mary asking them to found a religious order devoted to freeing Christian captives from the Muslims, who still held much of Spain. The Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mercy grew quickly, collecting alms for ransom and sometimes offering themselves in exchange for prisoners. The statue of the Mother of God of Mercy in Barcelona dates from the 1300's. She became the city's patron saint after saving it from a plague of locusts in 1687. Before the counter-reformation, the Mercedarian Order celebrated the feast of Our Lady of Ransom on August 1, the date when she showed St Peter Nolasco their white habit. The Vatican changed the date to September 24 when it extended the feast to the entire Church in 1696. Since Vatican II, Catholic observance of Our Lady of Mercy's da...

Day 134: September 23 Our Lady of Valvenere, Spain This image is a replica of the original which appears to have dated from the 10th century and is preserved in the Royal Abbey shrine of Our Lady of Valvanera, or Valvanere, in Rioja, safeguarded by Benedictine monks. The oldest documents preserved date from the thirteenth century, and tell how, according to tradition, the original image was found by a thief who later converted and became a hermit. There was a thief named Nuno Onez, who was a hardened criminal and a “man of licentious life and dedicated to looting.” One day, however, upon hearing the prayer of a man who was to be his next victim, he was touched by Divine grace and repented of his many crimes, turning to the Blessed Virgin Mary to help him change his life. One day while he was praying an angel appeared to him and told him to go to Valvanera and search for an oak that stood out from the rest, with a fountain that gushed at its feet and surrounded by swarms of bees. There,...

Day 133: September 22 Naming of Mary In the divine consistory and tribunal of the Most Holy Trinity it was determined to give a name to the Child Queen. As there is no proper and legitimate name, except it be found in the immutable being of God Himself (for from it are participated and determined according to their right weight and measure all things in infinite wisdom) His Majesty wished Himself to give and impose that name in heaven. He thereby made known to the angelic spirits, that the three Divine Persons had decreed and formed the sweet names of Jesus and Mary for the Son and Mother from the beginning before the ages, and that they had been delighted with them and had engraved them on their eternal memories to be as it were the Objects for whose service they should create all things. Being informed of these and many other mysteries, the holy angels heard a voice from the throne speaking in the person of the Father:  “Our chosen One shall be called MARY, and this name is to be...

Day 132: September 21 Our Lady of Pucha, Valencia (1223) According to some ancient traditions, the image of Our Lady of Pucha or Nuestra Senora del Puche  was fashioned by the angels and was made of the very stone of the sacred sepulcher where the most holy body of the Mother of God lay hidden for three days. After the Assumption of the great Queen into Heaven, the holy angels took the statue they had created from Gethsemane to Puche, placing it in a church dedicated to the Blessed Virgin. The statue of Our Lady of Pucha remained there until it was buried beneath a large bell by the religious who lived at that first monastery at Puche when the Moors entered into Spain at the time of the Goths. This statue remained in the earth for well over 500 years until Divine Providence facilitated the happy discovery by the great servant of God Saint Peter Nolasco, founder and patriarch of the Royal Order of Mercy in 1237. Saint Peter Nolasco witnessed on four consecutive Saturdays that seven ...

Day 132: September 20 Our Lady of the Silver Foot, Toul, Lorraine, France At Toul, in Lorraine, there was a statue, which, according to an ancient tradition, informed a woman on September 20th in the year 1284, of an act of treachery which was being planned against the city. The statue was called Our Lady of the Silver Foot, or Notre-Dame au pied d’argent , as she is known in the native French. The faithful keep the memory of this stone statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which was located just inside the entrance of the church and placed over a sculpted clam. In those days, there would be a lamp burning before it on feast days, and almost every day the faithful offered small candles, which they lit and rested on a circular iron candlestick, that was placed before the statue. It was well known that several people, who prayed before this statue, were cured of various diseases, but the devotion and respect of the people, towards this image, grew more than ever at the time of the Bishop Co...

  Day 131: September 19 Our Lady of La Salette, La Salette-Fallavaux, Department of Isère, France On September 19, 1846, at about three o’clock in the afternoon, on a mountain near the village of La Salette-Fallavaux, two boys, a fifteen-year-old shepherdess named Mélanie Calvat and an eleven-year-old young shepherd named Maximin Giraud, were grazing cows. According to their account, the apparition consists of three moments. In the first moment a beautiful Lady, dressed in a foreign fashion, appears in a resplendent light. The Lady sits on a rock, in tears, with her head in her hands. This would take place in the place called Ravin de la Sezia. Later, the Lady got up and, speaking to the two boys in both French and Patois, would entrust them with a message directed to all humanity and thus to be spread universally. After lamenting the ungodliness and sins of men, which entail eternal estrangement from God and eventual damnation in hell if they persisted in evil, the Lady announced ...

Day 130: September 17 Our Lady of Smelcem, Flanders According to tradition, long ago in the 10th century there were two shepherd boys out tending their flock in a field of Flanders when one of the boys noticed that some of the sheep seemed to be acting strangely.  “There must be something wrong at the end of the field over there,” observed the first shepherd boy with some alarm to his unsuspecting companion.  “Why, what makes you think so?” questioned the second lad.  “The sheep topple forward,” he said, watching as the furthest sheep seemed to dip and then stand erect again. “Look! Let’s go see.” The boys ran together through the field until they drew closer to the sheep that were acting curiously. Slowing with suspicion as they approached the furthest sheep, the boys carefully made their way through the grazing flock searching the ground and watching for anything unexpected as they approached the place. When they arrived at the head of the flock, the boys observed that ...

Day 130: September 17 Our Lady of the Burning Bush The icon of the Mother of God called the "Burning Bush" owes its name to the well-known miracle witnessed by Moses himself in the Old Testament. In the third chapter of Exodus, God calls Moses to Mount Horeb, from the middle of a bush that burned with an open fire, but without being consumed. He hears the voice of God who communicates to him the task of saving the Jews from slavery in Egypt. On that occasion God confides his name to Moses: "I am who I am" (Exodus 3.14). The miracle of the Burning Bush therefore consists of a prefiguration of the birth of Jesus from the Virgin Mary. The Virgin gave birth to Christ while remaining such, just like the bush that burns but is not consumed. Christian tradition has given more than one explanation for the phenomenon of the bush. The most common and constant interpretation is presented in a Christological and Marian key. Recognizing in fire the symbol of divinity and in the ...

Day 129: September 16 Our Lady of Good News, Sicily, Italy On the spot where today stands in Palermo the church of Holy Mary, there was once an inn for pilgrims.  It is related that a pilgrim, wishing to make a fire to warm himself, picked up a piece of old board, encrusted with dirt.  It had been used to cover a wall. He attacked the board with an axe but could not break it or even chip off a single splinter.  He struck it at one angle then another, but it was no use--he could not even make a dent in the board; it seemed to be held together with invisible nails.  Astonished, everyone presumed the board must conceal some divine secret.  So they cleaned the dirt from it and discovered a painting--an image of Our Lady with the Infant Jesus nestled on her right arm.  She was being crowned by two graceful little angels.  The pilgrims lost no time in getting the story of this strange happening to the Archbishop, and he ordered a procession of the clergy to ...

 Day 128: September 15 Our Lady of Sorrows Devotion to the Virgin of Sorrows developed from the end of the 11th century, with the first mention of celebrations of her 5 joys and her 5 sorrows, symbolized by 5 swords, anticipating the liturgical celebration established later. When an unknown author wrote: The Liber de passione Christi et dolore et planctu Matris eius, the compositions on the theme of the Lament of the Virgin begin.  In the 12th century, also following apparitions of the Madonna, there was an increase in this cult and the composition of the Stabat Mater attributed to Jacopone da Tod. But its story has a precise beginning: on August 15, 1233, when seven Florentine nobles, members of the Guild of Merchants and poet-actors of the Laudesi company, used to express their love for Mary in lauds before an image painted on a street wall, as jesters did with their beloved.  Suddenly they saw the image come to life, appearing sorrowful and dressed in mourning for the ...