Walk with Mary throughout the Year

Conclusion Our Lady of Divine Vocations O most holy Mary, mother of God, our Lady of Divine Vocations! We contemplate and venerate you, in the glory of the privileges, of the dignity, of the missions with which the most holy Trinity has adorned you and only you, O most holy Mary, through every habitual and actual grace, you became a marvelous star of glory for the most holy Trinity! And we desire in the divine grace, to grow in our heart, by every gift that the Lord has given to you, as a rose of love, to offer it to you so that you may offer it to the most holy Trinity, and may help us so that all may bear in our life fruits of the Holy Spirit in your filial imitation. Hail Mary... O blessed virgin Mother of God, Our Lady of Divine Vocations! Accept the homage of our daily rosary and enable us to present it to you always better and lively, always more meritorious of eternal life so that it can be offered, laid before the throne of God in the heavenly worship, among those of the angels...

Day 362: May 10 Our Lady of Hope of Moribondi One comes into the world crying and dies shedding the last tear; This land is rightly called a valley of tears and a place of exile, from which everyone must depart.  There are few joys in the present life and many sorrows; all this is providential, because if we did not suffer, we would cling too much to the earth and would not aspire for Heaven. The greatest punishment for everyone is death, both for the pains of the body, and for detachment from all earthly affections, and especially for the thought of appearing before Jesus Christ the Judge. The hour of death, certain for all, but uncertain for the day, is the most important hour of life, because eternity depends on it.  Who can help us in those supreme moments? Only God and Our Lady. The Mother does not abandon her children in need and the more serious this is, the more she intensifies her care. The Heavenly Mother, dispenser of divine treasures, runs to the aid of souls, espe...

Day 361: May 09 Our Lady of Good Counsel, Frigento, Avellino, Italy The Sanctuary in Via Piano della Croce, dedicated to Our Lady of Good Counsel, was built in the place where, on May 9, 1920, a farmer, Carmine Capobianco, who had long dreamed of Our Lady who invited him to go and unearth it, found a small Majolica depicting the Blessed Virgin Mary of Good Counsel. The event stunned all the people of Frigento also because the fracture of the majolica at the height of the Virgin's forehead, caused by a clumsy blow of the hoe of Capobianco, proved his good faith of the same and the authenticity of the event. The parish priest, Don Generoso Ciullo, informed the people with the ringing of the bells of the Cathedral and other churches in procession with all the clergy, the confraternities and the people to venerate the sacred effigy in person. He communicated the event to the Bishop of the Diocese of Avellino, Monsignor Giuseppe Padula. A diocesan commission was set up to verify the rel...

Day 360: May 08 Our Lady of Pompeii, Pompeii, Naples, Italy Bartolo Longo, in his intent to propagate the practice of the Rosary among the Pompeians, went to Naples to buy a painting of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary ( Madonna del Rosario ). The idea was to buy one already seen in a store, but things didn't go that way. By pure chance, in fact, he met Father Radente (his confessor) in Via Toledo who for this purpose suggested that he go to the Conservatory of the Rosary in Portamedina and ask, in his name, to Sister Maria Concetta De Litala for an old painting of the Rosary that he himself had entrusted to her ten years earlier. Bartolo followed this suggestion, but was soon taken by dismay when the nun showed him the painting: a canvas corroded by moths and worn out by time, lacking pieces of color, with Our Lady in an anti-historical attitude, that is, with the Virgin offering the rosary to St Rose, instead of to St Catherine of Siena, as in the Dominican tradition. Bartolo was on t...

Day 359: May 07 The Molchenskaya Icon, Businovo, Russia The story of this miraculous icon came to us through the testimony of Maria Sporysheva, a parishioner of St Sergius' Church in Businovo who had been living in the area for a long time.  In the 17th century, a blind maiden lived in the village of Businovo (near Moscow), in a house on the right bank of the Busynka River. One night the Mother of God appeared to her in a dream and said to her:  "Go along the right side of the river, against the current, to the place I point out to you and you will find one of my Icons." The girl explained the dream to her mother and the next day, they went together along the river. They walked it for about half a kilometer and 100 meters from the shore, they found the exact place indicated by the Virgin.  They began to dig and after a while they found a spring. Following the Virgin's instructions, she washed her eyes with water from the spring and was miraculously healed of blindness...

Day 358: May 06 Our Lady of St John, Sommariva Bosco, Cuneo, Italy A cry full of wonder broke the silence of the quiet morning of May 6, 1685, the second Sunday of Easter "Miracle! I can see it! It attracted the attention of the few people gathered in prayer in front of the majestic image of Our Lady, painted in red, with St John the Baptist and St Anthony the Abbot on the side, on a pylon near Sommariva Bosco, on the road leading to Caramagna. It was the day of the feast of St John at Porta Latina. The notarial deeds, which are in the Archiepiscopal Archives of Turin (Vol. X Codex de Diversis), report the descriptions made before the notary "by the Most Illustrious and Rev Mr Michele Beggiami, by the grace of God and of the Apostolic See Archbishop of Turin, officially delegated", by eyewitnesses. A certain Carlo Antonio Ferrerio, of the "priocha diocese of Asti", on his way to the Sanctuary of the Moretta to fulfill a vow, together with one of his relatives A...

Day 357: May 05 Oue Lady of Europe There are those who have found in the European flag a clear Marian reference and more precisely to the "woman clothed with the sun" of the Apocalypse. But it seems that there are two Marian protectors of Europe, one in the church of "Our Lady of Europe" in Gibraltar, the other in Motta di Madesimo (Italy) 13 meters high and all covered in gold. Each state has its own flag. Europe is not yet a unitary state, but it cultivates the hope that it will become one. However, there is a flag for the European Union (EU). It has a singular history, a little "Marian" history. A few years after the Second World War in 1949, a commission was entrusted with the task of designing the flag of Europe. Its first task was to exclude possible contrasts or similarities too close to the flags of other states, thus avoiding unpleasant accusations of "copying." After long discussions, the following decisions were reached:  The color of ...

Day 356: May 04 Our Lady of the Dove, Montespineto, Stazzano, Alessandria, Italy The first important testimony we have is from 1155, when, on the occasion of the campaign of the German emperor Frederick Barbarossa against Tortona, one of the armies hired by the emperor, went as far as Stazzano, sacking it, setting it on fire and sword and razing to the ground the village and the nearby castle of Serravalle. The inhabitants of the village then left their homes and, to escape the fury of the soldiery, took shelter on the heights of the mountain, then known as Monte Arimanno, recommending their escape to the Blessed Virgin Mary Mother of God. Their pleas were heard, and the protection they received was equally evident. When the enemy troops withdrew, the people of Stazzano wanted to build a small chapel on the hill, in honor of Our Lady of the Mountain who had protected them in that dramatic situation. This was the first chapel in the place dedicated to Our Lady. Later, over the years, gi...

Day 355: May 03 Our Lady of the Three Ears of Corn, Trois-Epis, Colmar, Haut-Rhin, Alsace, France On May 3, 1491 at 10 am, as described in the chronicle of Thann, Thierry Schoéré, a blacksmith from Orbey, on his way to the market of Niedermorschwihr, (a French commune of 580 inhabitants located in the department of Haut-Rhin in the Alsace region) near Colmar, passed in front of a large oak tree where he observed a holy image deposited, according to the local custom, to invite passers-by to pray for a man who had died a few days earlier. Dismounting from his horse, he knelt before the pious image and began to pray fervently for the soul of the unfortunate man, when he was suddenly blinded by a ray of light, in the midst of which appeared a delicate and vaporous form.  It was the Virgin Mary, wrapped in white transparent veils, who had three ears of corn in her right hand and a small piece of ice in her left hand. "Get up, good man," said the Virgin gently, "and listen.  M...

Day 354: May 02 Our Lady of the Cross, Pietranico, Pescara, Abruzzo, Italy On March 25, 1613, the day of the Annunciation, a farmer named Domenico del Biondo was crossing the transversal district of Pietranico on his way to inspect his crops, when a woman in a starry white dress appeared to him. Sh e asked for the restoration of a shrine, then disappeared. This was the Queen of Heaven, according to an inscription on the oratory built there in 1618. In March 1675 a predatory horde of military deserters sacked the city. When they threatened to return that spring, the citizens prayed to Our Lady of the Cross, and on May 2 she declared that the city had been spared. Pietranico celebrates Our Lady of the Cross on May 3rd, previously it was the Catholic feast of the Holy Cross, which was probably the patronal feast of the Quarter of the Cross before the apparition. The night before, on May 2, people light hundreds of bonfires in and around the city, so that the entire area appears to be on f...

Day 353: May 01 Our Lady of the Assumption, Lonigo, Venice, Italy In 1486 three shoemakers lived in Verona: Guglielmo, Gianantonio and Giampietro. They came from Novara and had found work in the veronese city, in via della Beverara.  Giampietro had managed to set aside 50 ducats, a considerable sum for those times. Envious and greedy, the other two friends agreed to invite him to the Lonigo market, with the secret intent of killing and robbing him. They left on April 30 (as historian Bertani says, but others report on April 29). In those times of violence, even the artisans went about carrying arms with them: Gianantonio armed himself with a double-edged knife ( pistolese ), Guglielmo with a sword and Giampietro with a dagger. They spent the night in Lonigo and on Monday morning they went to the market where they bought, among other things, white cloth. After lunch they were already on the way back. Just a few kilometers away from the town, near the church of St Peter in Lamentese,...

Day 352: April 30 Our Lady of Capocolonna, Crotone, Calabria, Italy On Capo Lacinio – or delle Colonne - stood a pagan temple dedicated to the Mother Goddess, Hera Lacinia, a nd reliable sources speak of a pilgrimage at that time, in spring, to celebrate "fertility" or "life". When "the fullness of time" (Gal. 4:4) came, with Christianity, venetation shifted to the "Mother of the Lord and of the Church", to Mary. Symbolically, it can be said that the collapse of the many pillars of that ancient temple and the permanence of "only one" of them is like an indication of the collapse of the many pagan divinities and the remaining, of "Mary", the only "Pillar" of the world who brought Christ, "the cornerstone of history" (I Pet 2:6). An ancient tradition has it that the Icon was brought to Crotone by St Dionysius himself, the convert from St Paul, remaining there as the first Bishop; and according to this traditi...

Day 351: April 29 Our Lady of the Kind's Blood, Vigezzo Valley, Verbania, Italy An hour before sunset a certain Giovanni Zucono (later nicknamed "Zuccone") together with his friend Comolo played the "piodella" on the square in front of the village church, dedicated to St Maurizio. The game consisted of placing a coin for each player on a wooden or stone compass (the "magician"). Conversely, whoever by hitting the "magician" with the piodella (a round stone splinter) "managed to scatter the coins around making those closest to the "piodella" his own, won. The Zuccone, already known for his furious character, was a loser that evening, "we don't know how much money, but enough to unleash in him the anger and irrationality that hides in each of us when we feel persecuted by bad luck." He took it out on the quiet image of Our Lady that was there a few steps under the portico of the church, painted on the façade, to the...

Day 350: April 28 Our Lady of the Chestnut, Bergamo, Italy The only account of the Apparition to which the historians of the Sanctuary drew until recently is the one that the notary Gerolamo Ceres Oli transcribed and, transcribing, summarized from an ancient "writing" about 1646, at the time of the dispute between Ossanesga and Fontana. Another recent document attesting to this apparition comes from a letter addressed to King Lodovico, a document dating back to April 1511. Tradition summarizes the account of the apparition as follows:  In the chestnut wood where the Sanctuary stands today, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to two men, probably father and son, intent on picking the leaf. Our Lady asked the two visionaries to tell all the population of the nearby villages about the exceptional event and to report that the Most Holy Mother of God expressly asked that a church be built in that isolated place in her honor. To give strength to her message and to dispel any doubt of ...

Day 349: April 27 Our Lady of Montserrat, Catalan region of Bages, Barcelona, Spain Our Lady of Montserrat, known as La Moreneta, refers to the wooden image depicting the Mother of Christ, carved by St Luke in Jerusalem, then it was entrusted to St Peter who in his long journey left it in Barcelona and following the Muslim invasion for security reasons it would have been taken to the mountain of Montserrat where it remained hidden in the Holy Cova until the year 880. It is also said that in this year, on a Saturday afternoon, some children who were looking after a flock saw a strong light descend from the sky accompanied by a melody. This was repeated several times. They looked for the place struck by the light, they found in a cave the statue of Our Lady that they called the Black Virgin, "La MORENETA." When the bishop heard of the discovery, he tried to have the small statue transported to Manresa, but it was not possible because the statue became too heavy. The bishop inte...