OUR LADY OF GOOD COUNSEL

Day 347: April 25

Our Lady of Good Counsel, Genazzano, Rome, Lazio, Italy

"In the year 1467 of the Incarnation of the Son of God, on the feast of Mark, on Vespers, the image of the Mother of God that you venerate in the marble tribune of this shrine, appeared from on high." This is what we read on the plaque (written in Latin) under the tympanum of the door of the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Good Counsel in Genazzano. According to scholars, it is contemporary with the facts narrated, that is, it dates back to the end of the fifteenth century. There are still other documents that date back to the time of the prodigy. The internal chapel, where the miraculous image of Mary is kept, is surmounted by a beautiful tribune of rare marbles, also dating back to the end of the fifteenth century. On the arch of the tribune you can read this very simple Latin inscription that could be translated as: "Divinely appeared this image in the year 1467 on April 25th."

Father Ambrose of Cori, known as Coriolanus, was then provincial of the Augustinians of the Roman province, on which the church depended, donated to the Augustinians by the Colonna, the local feudal lords. Coriolanus had to defend the Order from the accusations of the Lateran Canons of Frisonia and, to this end, he wrote the work In Difensorium Ordinis fratrum heremitarurn Sancta Augustani, where among other things he listed a series of figures of saints who flourished in his religious family.

"The eighth," he tells us, "was Blessed Petruccia of Genazzano, who spent everything she possessed to repair our church, thus putting into practice the advice of Christ: if you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have, give to the poor, and follow me (...).

Since her property was not sufficient to complete the restoration work, people began to mock her. But she quietly reassured: "Do not worry, my children; before I die – she was then very advanced in years – the Blessed Virgin and St Augustine will complete the repair work of the church itself."

The prophecy was fulfilled in a marvelous way. Not a year had passed since she had uttered the words referred to above when, behold, an image of the Blessed Virgin miraculously appeared on the wall of the church. To admire it, people moved from all over Italy (...) There were wonders and miracles. With the alms that exceeded all expectations, while Blessed Petruccia was still alive, not only could the church be rebuilt, but it was also possible to build a beautiful friary."

The pilgrimages to Genazzano were so numerous that Pope Paul II sent two bishops to become aware of the situation, according to both his biography written in 1478 and the Vatican Archives. There were no irregularities, and this explains the support that the popes continued to give to the Sanctuary over the centuries. The tomb with the remains of Petruccia, who has always been venerated as a saint, is at the entrance to the church. In the year of the "coming" of Our Lady, as the people of Genazzano describe the fact, the "code of miracles" was drawn up under a notary, which describes 161 miracles that took place in the chapel between April 25 and August 14, 1467. The prefect of the Vatican archives, Mons Marini, certified its authenticity in 1779. It even includes the resurrection of a dead man!

Just six months after the "coming", the Augustinian fathers could no longer continue to document the flood of prodigies so accurately, limiting themselves to accepting the votive offerings in gold, silver and marble that were offered in memory of the supernatural interventions.

The Augustinian Francisco Javier Vásquez, general of the Order in the eighteenth century says about the image thus:  "Her beauty enraptures hearts, her countenance is sometimes hilarious, sometimes sad, and sometimes you see herself as inflamed by the color pink, her venous face is to be compared to Paradise, for which reason from the beginning of the apparition she is called Santa Maria del Paradiso [Holy Mary of Paradise]."

Santa Maria del Paradiso, in fact, is the title with which the inhabitants of Genazzano called along this rectangle of frescoed plaster and precariously resting on the wall of the Church. But with the passage of time the Augustinians obtained, with the endorsement of the popes, that the image was called by all with the original title of the church that stood on the site: Madonna del Buon Consiglio [Our Lady of Good Counsel].

In the nineteenth century the Albanian bishops officially proclaimed Our Lady of Good Counsel, patron saint of Albania. In 1932 there was a great Albanian national pilgrimage to Genazzano, presided over by the archbishop of Shkodra, and of which the Osservatore Romano spoke extensively. The pilgrims placed a plaque that is still preserved today: "Return Lady to Albania."

Before being swallowed up by the communist regime, the apostolic delegate Mons G B Nigris wrote, on 28th December 1946: "April 25, 1467 is the date on which the fresco would miraculously detach itself from the altar and, having crossed the Adriatic in flight among a crowd of angels, would have descended to Genazzano", adding that unfortunately the evidence in the "violent Islamization of the country" had been destroyed, but that there still remains "the widespread and living devotion to Our Lady of Good Counsel, venerated as Patroness of Albania (...) There is no Catholic home in which the image of Our Lady of Good Counsel does not dominate."

St Justin Russolillo Writes...

"In the words of Jesus, "I and my Father are one life, of one nature," I hear the echo of the other: "I and my mother are one life, of one work, the sanctification of souls.""

(Justin Russolillo, Devotional, Vocationist Editions, Pianura, 2009, p. 195)