Miracle of Our Lady of the Snows.
Establishment of Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome.
Artist: Matthias Grünewald (1480–1528).
Date: 1517 - 1519.
Collection:
Augustinermuseum, Freiburg-im-Breisgau, Germany.
Source/Photographer: Web Gallery of Art.
(Wikimedia Commons)
By: Abbot Guéranger, O.S.B.
Volume 13.
Time After Pentecost.
Book IV.
Rome, delivered from slavery by Peter on the first of August (Feast of Saint Peter’s Chains), offers to the World a wonderful spectacle.
O Wisdom, who, since the glorious Pentecost, hast spread over the whole World, where could it be more true to sing of thee that thou hast trodden the proud heights under thy victorious feet ?
On Seven Hills had pagan Rome set up her pageantry and built temples to her false gods; seven Churches now appear at the summits on which purified Rome rests her now truly eternal foundations.
By their very site, the Basilicas of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, of Saint Laurence and Saint Sebastian, placed at the four outer angles of the City of the Cæsars, recall the long siege continued for three Centuries around the ancient Rome, while the new Rome was being Founded.
Helena and her son, Constantine, recommencing the work of the Foundations of the Holy City, carried the trenches further out; nevertheless, the Churches which were their own peculiar work — viz., Holy Cross in Jerusalem, and Saint Saviour’s on the Lateran, are still at the very entrance of the pagan stronghold, close to the gates, and leaning against the ramparts; just as a soldier, setting foot within a tremendous fortress which has been long invested, advances cautiously, surveying both the breach through which he has just passed, and the labyrinth of unknown paths opening before him.
Who will plant the Standard of Sion in the centre of Babylon ? Who will force the enemy into his last retreat, and, casting out the vain idols, set up his Palace in their temples ?
O thou to whom was said this word of the Most High: “Thou art My Son, I will give Thee the Gentiles for Thy inheritance”, thou Mighty One with thy sharp arrows routing armies, listen to the cry re-echoing from the whole redeemed World: “With thy comeliness and thy beauty set out, proceed prosperously, and reign !”
But the Son of the Most High has a Mother on Earth; the song of the Psalmist inviting Him to the triumph extols also the Queen standing at His Right Hand in a Vesture of Gold; if it is from His Father that He holds His power, it is from His Mother that He receives His Crown, and He leaves her in return the spoils of the mighty.
Go forth, then, ye daughters of the new Sion, and behold King Solomon in the diadem wherewith his Mother crowned him on the joyful day, when, taking possession through her of the Capital of the World, he espoused the Gentile race.
Truly, that was a day of joy, when Mary, in the name of Jesus, claimed her right as Sovereign and Heiress of the Roman soil !
To the East, at the highest point of the Eternal City, she appeared on that Blessed morning literally like the rising dawn; beautiful as the Moon shining by night; more powerful than the August Sun, surprised to see her tempering his heat, and doubling the brightness of his light with her mantle of snow; more terrible than an army; for from that date, daring what neither Apostles nor Martyrs had attempted, and what Jesus Himself would not do without her, she dispossessed the deities of Olympus of their usurped thrones.
As was fitting, the haughty Juno whose altar disgraced the Esquiline, the false queen of these lying gods, was the first to flee before Mary’s face, leaving the splendid columns of her polluted sanctuary to the only true Queen of Earth and Heaven.
Forty years had passed since the days of Saint Sylvester, when the “image of Our Saviour, depicted on the walls of the Lateran, appeared for the first time to the Roman people”.
Rome, still half-pagan, beheld today the Mother of Our Saviour; under the influence of the pure symbol, at which Rome gazed in surprise, she felt die down within her the evil ardour which made her once the scourge of Nations, whereas now she was to become their mother and, in the joy of her renewed youth, she beheld her once-sullied hills covered with the White Garment of the Bride.
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