OUR LADY OF CONSOLATION

Day 147: October 06

Our Lady of Consolation, Massa Lombarda,

Ravenna, Emilia Romagna, Italy



Outside the "Brabant Gate", towards Lugo, there was, at the intersection with the carriage road of the woods, a small church with an adjoining small convent belonging to the Carmelites. It was called Celletta, a name that later passed on to the street itself. At that time it was a roadway that led to the large wood called San Paolo and Bagnarolo. On the sides of the road there were two ditches that brought water into the Bagnarolo canal.

It is said that in these woods, during the sixteenth century, there were often acts of arms due to bandits infesting the area, mentioned several times also in the parish books of the deceased around the year 1591. In memory of the killing of a captain of the regular troops, which took place at the Celletta, by relatives of Faenza origin, a ceramic image of the Madonna was placed on a tree. The image would then over time fall into the ditch below and here it would remain buried, among the leaves and soil, for many years.

In fact, the sacred Image of Our Lady of Consolation may be a ceramic of the sixteenth century of Faenza workmanship, as the composition and colors suggest.

Tradition has it that in 1747 the missionary St Leonard of Porto Maurizio (canonized by Pius IX in 1867), during the Sacred Missions held in Massa Lombarda from January 27 to February 15 of that year, speaking in the square, often insisted on the concept that a "treasure" would soon be discovered in Massa and pointed with his hand to the wood of Bagnarolo. Many wanted to remember these words of the Holy Preacher when on December 11, 1793 a certain Giacomo Pasotti, a resident of the Sbarra farm owned by the Confraternity of Santa Maria Assunta, while fixing the ditches of the possession, found the Image that was broken by the spade and immediately pointed by a certain Antonio Burnazzi, a blacksmith from Massa.

This image was hung on a tree at the site of the discovery and immediately became an object of great veneration. There was a rush of faithful even from distant places: every evening a priest went to the place for the recitation of the Litany. Healings also followed that made people cry out for a miracle.

There are many votive tablets that are still preserved today and that date back to those early times. In 1794 Cardinal Barnaba Chiaramonti, Bishop of Imola (who was later Pope Pius VII) went to the place to venerate the Image, decided to build a small church in honor of the Madonna: in the meantime with the offerings collected a temporary chapel was erected near the tree, on the edge of the carriageway.

The temporary church was solemnly blessed on September 14, 1794 with the broad consent of the people and in the presence of the public magistrate, all the clergy, the Carmelite Fathers, the Fathers of the Observance and the six confraternities that flourished in Massa Lombarda: that of the Blessed Sacrament, of Santa Maria Assunta dello Spedale, of the Rosary, of St Joseph, of St Anthony of Padua and of the Blessed Virgin of Sorrows. At the Celletta, at the crossroads, a wooden triumphal arch had been erected and lighting had been made at the door of the Castle.

The construction of the current Sanctuary began shortly after, based on the design and workmanship of the Massa-based architect Zaccaria Facchini: the first stone was blessed by Cardinal Chiaramonti on the third Sunday of October 1797.

During the nineteenth century the venerated image was brought to the city several times; both for happy circumstances and for cases of serious scourges, as happened in 1855 because of the raging cholera.

Massa Lombarda remained practically unscathed and attributed this fact to the heavenly protection of Our Lady of Consolation: the Municipality, as a sign of gratitude, declared her "Patroness and Queen of Massa Lombarda and its Territory" and asked for her coronation which took place by the ministry of Cardinal Gaetano Baluffi, Bishop of Imola on September 5, 1858.


St Justin Russolillo Writes...

"As the Son of God, the Incarnate Word, is inseparable from the Virgin Mary, the Immaculate Mother of God, so too the soul chosen by the Trinity to be the spouse of God must be inseparably and realistically united to Mary."

(Ascension, trans. Louis Caputo, Vocationist Fathers, New Jersey, 1997, p. 371)

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