Snow In The Cathedral
Posted by Rebecca Teti in Faith on Tuesday, August 05, 2008 5:30 PM
In Rome they celebrate August 5th as the feast of Our Lady of Snows, observing the feast by removing ceiling panels from Sta. Maria Maggiore Basilica and dropping rose and jasmine petals down. I snatched this photo from the Orbus Catholicus website, where there are additional shots. I love this tradition and even more the story behind it.
In 358, Our Lady appeared in a dream to Giovanni, a man who owned farmland on the Esquiline hill in Rome. He and his wife were devout and virtuous, and as they were never able to have children, they resolved to make Our Lady the heiress of all their possessions and prayed to know what she might like.
During one afternoon’s siesta, Giovanni heard a voice call to him from his nap, asking that he donate to the Holy Father the land he would find marked with a miraculous snow the following morning (it was August 4th). Giovanni awoke to find a portion of his land blanketed in white, and scurried off to find Pope Liberius (things were a bit more casual in those days, I guess).
The Pope, too, he discovered, had received a message from on high asking for a basilica dedicated to Mary, whose purity would be symbolized by fallen snow on the chosen site. In front of a large gathering, the Pope traced out the lines of the basilica on the miraculous snow. The late Cardinal John Wright has a wonderful homily on Our Lady of the Snow, in which he asks why, of all Mary’s many titles, it is Mother Most Pure that most seems to resonate with us. I’ve always liked this passage.
The purity of Mary fascinates us because we are ourselves so sinful and because by her purity she is lifted immeasurably apart from us. But the purity of Mary does not dismay or drive us from her. Great innocence of life in other human beings sometimes is a reproach to those who have lost their innocence; it seems to reprove, even to repel, the guilty. But the purity of Mary, by divine ingenuity, does not seem to reproach us to flight. We instinctively recognize that it exists to be our solace and salvation. It is because of her purity—strange and yet consoling paradox—that we who are defiled see in her, not the portent of our punishment, but the pledge of our own purification. It is sinners, not saints confirmed in grace, who cry out, “our life, our sweetness, and our hope” so confidently to the spotless Virgin, miraculous in her purity, among us as Christmas snows in Roman summer.
Is that not lovely? Ignatius Press’ collection of the cardinal’s sermons is out of print, unfortunately, but if you stumble upon a copy of Mary, Our Hope
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