QUEEN OF GARDA

Day 164: October 23

MADONNA DEL FRASSINO, PESCHIERA DEL GARDA, VERONA, ITALY



The sanctuary of the Madonna del Frassino was built following a prodigious Marian apparition dating back to 1510. It is said that on May 11 of that year a local farmer invoked the help of the Madonna to escape the aggression of a snake; raising his eyes to the sky he saw on an ash tree a statuette depicting the Virgin Mary wrapped in light. Immensely grateful for the providential intervention, the farmer took the statuette and took it home to keep it in a sturdy chest of drawers, telling only his family what had happened to him. Soon the news spread to the nearby districts and everyone asked the farmer to be able to admire the precious "Madonnina" that had saved him; the farmer went to open the chest of drawers, but the statuette was no longer there... she had returned to the prodigy's ash tree!

The ecclesiastical authorities went to Frassino to verify the origin of the religious phenomenon and decided to have the sacred image transported, with a solemn procession, to Peschiera to keep it and better verify the developments of the story. The influx of the faithful continued copiously until, one day, the statuette disappeared from the tabernacle in which it was kept... to return to the Ash of the apparition.

The faithful decided to build a modest chapel that was entrusted to the custody of the Servants of Mary who remained there only a few years. The municipality of Peschiera then decided to invite the Friars Minor who built the church of the "Madonna del Frassino", so called since 1514.

With a Pontifical Brief dated January 14, 1518, Pope Leo X granted the Friars Minor permission to build a convent next to the Sanctuary "so that the miraculous image, which appeared on an ash tree at the gates of Peschiera and was already famous for miracles, may be guarded and governed by religious of exemplary life."

For three centuries the people flocked from all over to ask for graces and to thank the miraculous Madonna, invoked in the early years as "Our Lady of Graces", and to leave votive tablets.

Due to the law of suppression and the occupation of the French, in 1810 the Friars Minor were removed from the Sanctuary which thus experienced its darkest period.

In 1898, after the storm had passed, the Friars Minor were called back to officiate at the Sanctuary, which thus resumed its ancient splendor, increasing piety and veneration for the Virgin.

In 1930 the Vatican Chapter granted the Coronation of the small statue of Our Lady.

In 1933, at the unanimous request of the parish priests and mayors of the lands of the lake, the Madonna del Frassino was proclaimed Queen of Garda.


St Justin Russolillo Writes...

"We believe in the participation of Mary in the Divine Perfections and so in the Divine Immensity; on account of this, we sense her presence near every soul, in churches, religious houses of formation, for the apostolate, our Vocationist houses!"

(Ascension, trans. Louis Caputo, Vocationist Fathers, New Jersey, 1997, p. 379)

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