Walk with Mary throughout the Year

Day 97: August 15 The Solemnity of the Assumption honors the fact that when the Blessed Virgin Mary completed her life on earth, she was taken body and soul into Heaven to be with her resurrected Son so as to adore the Most Holy Trinity forever. It’s an amazing fact to consider that she retains her body and soul, united as one in Heaven, in anticipation of that glorious day when the new Heavens and Earth will be created and when all the faithful will rise so as to live in a new bodily form forever with God. Though this dogma of our faith had been held and believed by the faithful from the earliest times of our Church, especially since it was witnessed by those closest to our Blessed Mother at the time of her glorious Assumption, it wasn’t until November 1, 1950, that Pope Pius XII solemnly proclaimed it to be so, raising this teaching of our faith to the level of a dogma, meaning, it must be held and believed by all. In part, the Holy Father declared, “…we pronounce, declare, and defin...

Day 96: August 14 The historical origin of the Madonna of Canoscio is shrouded in mystery. An ancient folk tradition tells us that in the year 1348, a certain Vanni di Iacopo, living in a house on the Canoscio hill (Canusium = white place), as a votive promise at the time of a terrible plague, left his heirs “40 niente” (Venetian silver coin) to have a “Maestà” painted of the Virgin Mary. (Maestà – religious painting style which is typically composed of an enthroned icon of Jesus and Mary with other figures around likes saints and angels) The painter who remains unknown painted the Madonna as a fresco on the wall in the moment of Her “Transit”, that is, in the passage from this earthly life to the glory of heaven with the twelve Apostles on the sides and above, the Assumption and Crowning in the midst of the angels. But of the ancient primitive painting we are left with only the image of the sleeping Madonna, with a beautiful delicate luminous face, of transparent celestial whiteness. ...

Day 95: August 13 ​ "The holy Apostles held a conference concerning the burial of the most sacred body of their Queen and lady. As they remembered that, according to the custom of the Jews at burial, the deified body of their Master had been anointed with precious ointments and spices and wrapped in the sacred burial cloths; they thought not of doing otherwise with the virginal body of His most holy Mother. Accordingly they called the two maidens, who had assisted the Queen during her life and who had been designated as the heiresses of her tunics, and instructed them to anoint the body of the Mother of God with highest reverence and modesty and wrap it in the winding-sheets before it should be placed in the casket. With great reverence and fear the two maidens entered the room, where the body of the blessed Lady lay upon her couch; but the refulgence issuing from it barred and blinded them in such a manner that they could neither see nor touch the body, nor even ascertain in what...

Day 94: August 12 ​ In the year of our Lord 1518 , a few scattered houses broke the monotony of the Ruta valley, which was partly cultivated with olive groves and vineyards, and part was still covered by woods, one of which was beautiful and not vast, shaded in the valley. In the Grove, in fact, there were once chestnut trees , oaks and elms . Where the three paths joined, there was a shrine with a fresco depicting the Madonna holding the Child Jesus. It is unknown how and who exposed and painted the image. In front of the shrine, there were few passers-by, mostly peasants, who stopped to say a prayer. Among the most assiduous, there was a twelve-year-old shepherd named Angela Schiaffino, who on the 2nd day of the month of July, as she often did, stopped to address a prayer before that painting. Absorbed in prayer, a beautiful Lady suddenly appeared to her, who manifested Her desire for Angela to be the interpreter of Her wishes. The Lady told Angela that she had to tell the people th...

Day 93: August 11 Mount Lussari is a jewel of incomparable beauty, offering a stunning natural panorama of soaring, majestic peaks. Besides being a site of natural interest, it is also a sanctuary, a sanctuary uniting Slavic, Italian, and German ethnic groups. As early as the 16th century, the mountain was a pilgrimage destination for all three peoples; today, it can undoubtedly be considered a European sanctuary. According to an ancient tradition, in 1360 a shepherd from Camporosso  lost his sheep   on Mount Lussari  , which he found shortly afterward kneeling around a mountain pine bush. To his great amazement, he noticed that in the center of the bush was  a statuette of the Madonna and Child. He took it, carried it down the valley, and handed it over to the parish priest of Camporosso.  The following morning, however, the statue was found again on Mount Lussari, once again surrounded by kneeling sheep.  This episode repeated itself once again. The ...

Day 92: August 10 ​ On August 10, 1685, Bernardino Rodríguez de León “saw a great and unusual radiance that was not the natural light of day” in the peaks east of Bogotá. On drawing near, he realized the light was coming from an image of an angel, the Virgin and Child, and St. Joseph, outlined in the living rock. News of the discovery soon spread through the capital, and after an investigation, the Archbishop authorized construction of a chapel on the mountain and public veneration of the images on the Sunday before Ash Wednesday of 1686. The thatched chapel collapsed in 1714, and a sturdier stone one took its place. Mysteriously, people began to see Our Lady’s face change expression at times: sad, tearful, joyous. On May 8, 1716, the left wall of the chapel collapsed to its foundation, after only 150 days. It was decided to move the images from the mountain. In early June, stonemason Luis de Herrera began separating the images from the underlying rock. Legend relates that when he fini...

Day 91: August 9 ​ Shintoism and Buddhism are the majority religions of Japan. Catholicism arrived with Francis Xavier in 1549. This was the beginning of what is now known as Japan’s ‘Age of Christianity’. Persecution of Christians started in 1587 and the religion was formally banned in the early 17th Century. The Catholic community in Nagasaki survived underground for 250 years. When France and Japan signed a trade agreement in 1859, the foreign community in Nagasaki was allowed to build a church: Oura Cathedral. The local Catholics made themselves known to the French priests. In 1865 the Nagasaki Catholics built four secret chapels. In 1868 persecution of Christians was resumed and more than 3,000 Catholics from the Nagasaki area were sent into exile. The exiles returned after the lifting of the ban on Christianity in 1873. In the early 1880s there were about 5,000 Catholics in the Urakami area. In 1880 the property where the church was to be built was acquired. On August 15th 1880, ...