SANTA MARIA IN ARACOELI

Day 238: January 05

Santa Maria in Aracoeli, Campidoglio, Rome, Italy



The whole month of January is dedicated to the Child Jesus, so here is another beautiful story that sees him together with his Mother Mary Most Holy in an apparition in Rome in the church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli.

On the Capitoline Hill stands the church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli, inside which the miraculous "Holy Child" is kept. There are numerous testimonies of healings from serious illnesses and even there is talk of resurrection from the dead. It is said that the lips of this Holy Baby Jesus turn red when he is about to grant a grace and white when the case that presents itself to him is hopeless.

It was St Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine, who built the church of Santa Maria in Capitolio here. The name change came as a result of a vision. The legend reported in the Mirabilia Urbis Romae states that a mysterious woman with a child in her arms appeared saying: "This is the altar of the Son of God."

They identified the woman of the vision as Mary Most Holy Mother of God, and as it is said in the Mirabilia: "This vision took place in the chamber of the emperor Octavian, where the church of Santa Maria in Capitolio is now. For this reason the church of Santa Maria was called the Altar of Heaven (Aracoeli)."

During the occupation of Rome, in 1797, the French took possession of the hill, expelling the Franciscan friars and reducing the church to a stable. But it was the Franciscans who had been the architects of a miraculous statue, that of the "Holy Child".

A devout Franciscan made use of an olive wood from the Garden of Gethsemane to carve the shapes of a baby Jesus, but having no paint available he fell asleep sad, but praying. It was then that the angels, seeing his devotion, finished painting the Holy Child which was subsequently embellished with numerous votive offerings. The friar decided to bring the miraculous work to Italy which, however, fell into the sea during the journey by ship due to the storm. The Franciscan, desperate, found the statue on the shore of the beach of Livorno in the casket in which he had placed it.

On February 2, 1797, the Holy Child disappeared. In fact, a woman, who wanted to have the miraculous statue in her home, had it replaced with a perfect copy, but at midnight of the same day, the bells of the Aracoeli began to ring and at the doors of the friary the Franciscans found the real Holy Child who was put back in his place, while the copy was split into two.

According to historical data the real statue is now in the church of San Giovanni in Giulianello in Cori in the province of Latina (Lazio), and is still highly venerated. In its place, in the church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli, a copy would therefore have been placed which, however, would have been stolen in 1994 and replaced with a new copy of the Holy Child to which new votive offerings were left by the faithful.


St Justin Russolillo Writes...

"O Mary, make me as you are: immaculate and even more full of grace, the closest to the states and acts of Jesus, the most abundant with Divine Perfections and Oparations, the most intimate with the Sacred Mysteries, the most united to the Divine Persons! Make me as you are, O Mary!"

(Justin Russolillo, Spirit of Prayer, trans. Louis Caputo, Vocationist Fathers, Newark, 1996, p. 145)

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