OUR LADY OF GRACE

Day 285: February 21

Our Lady of Grace of Anderlecht, Scheut area, Belgium



In 1443, Pierre Van Assche, an old peasant planted a lime tree and two hawthorn on a hill in the Scheut area (now a district of Anderlecht) on the way to Brussels. In one of these trees (which tradition sometimes transforms into an oak) he inserted a wooden statuette of the Virgin and Child. In 1449, the night before Pentecost, some villagers saw a glow coming from the place where the statuette was located, so pilgrimages to Our Lady of Grace (the Madonna delle Grazie) began.
On February 21, 1450, Charles the Bold, then Count of Charolais, laid the foundation stone for a chapel to celebrate the first Mass. The Gothic church of Our Lady of Graces was consecrated in 1531. Due to the Wars of Religion it was abandoned in 1578. Damaged and then rebuilt during the 1580's during the Reformation, the chapel was sold under the French Republic around 1795, while the monastery was moved to Brussels. The surrounding area remained rural until the 20th century.
The Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, founded in 1862, settled in a house on Scheut's Ninoofsesteenweg. The missionaries who went to evangelize China brought a copy with them so that even in the missions it was known as Scheutists or (Scheut's missionaries). The old chapel was incorporated into the Scheutist church demolished in 1974.
Despite all its vicissitudes, the statuette has survived and is now in the chapel of Notre Dame de Grâce (Our Lady of Grace) in the Collegiate Church of Sts Peter and Guy in Anderlecht.
On September 12 or in any case on the Saturday closest to his feast, a medieval procession passes through the streets of the city.


St Justin Russolillo Writes...

"At the same time, the Lord granted you the greatest participation in the dignity of Jesus' Priesthood: in God's Temple, you, O Mary, make the first offering of Jesus Christ, Victim and Priest of the New Testament."
(Justin Russolillo, Spirit of Prayer, trans. Louis Caputo, Vocationist Fathers, Newark, 1996, p. 158)

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