Our Lady of the Snow
Feast of Our Lady of the Snow
Today, August 5, is the Feast of Our Lady of the Snow. It commemorates a powerful intervention of the Mother of God in the world.
In 352 AD, there was a Roman aristocrat named Giovanni. He and his wife, having no children, made a vow to donate their possessions to the Virgin Mary. They prayed that she might make known to them how they were to dispose of their property in her honor. Mary appeared to Giovanni in a dream on August 4 and told him to build a church on the site where he would find snow the following morning. Bewildered, he went immediately in the morning to tell Pope Liberius of his dream. But that same night, Mary had also appeared to the pope and told him he would find snow on the Esquiline Hill, and there he was to outline the dimensions of a new church. On 5 August, at the height of the Roman summer, snow fell during the night on the summit of the Esquiline Hill. In obedience to a vision of the Virgin Mary that they had the same night, the Pope outlined the size of the Church and the couple built the basilica of St. Mary Major in honor of Mary on the very spot that was covered with snow.
She Will Lead Them to Me
Everything in the Old Testament was a preparation for something in the New Testament. The manna or bread from heaven that fed the Israelites as they journeyed through the wilderness to the Promised Land is fulfilled by the Eucharist, the True Bread from heaven. Mary is the fulfillment of Noah’s Ark. Mary is the New and Eternal Ark where we are to find refuge from the flood of evil that is swamping the world today. From October 13, 1983 to February 11, 1990, Jesus and Mary appeared in San Nicolas, Argentina. This apparition has become fully approved by the Church. On December 30, 1989, Jesus said to the visionary: “Formerly, the world was saved by the ark of Noah. Today the Ark is My Mother. Through her, souls will be saved, because she will lead them to me. He who rejects My Mother rejects Me! Many are letting the grace of God pass by in these days.”
Go Into The Ark
The Flood is a good image because we all may experience or are experiencing a Flood that appears to be on the verge of swamping our lives. It come in the form of tackling a major investment or business venture; it may be the stress of your job; seemingly unresolvable difficulties with a child be it physical, mental, or emotional; maybe your own chronic illness; maybe an addiction that that has you on the brink of drowning. Or maybe it’s just the onslaught of evil in the world and, well sadly, even within the Church that has you feeling like you’re are sinking…It really doesn’t matter what form the flood takes in your life, what matters is that just as God told Noah to build and get into the Ark, so now God has given us the Ark, Mary our Mother, refuge of sinners and Our Most Merciful Mother. Go into the Ark by Consecrating yourself, your family, your profession and your country to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Give yourself and all the things you cannot control to Mary and she will save you from drowning in the Flood.
Entrust Everything to Mary
St. Maximilian Kolbe is a particularly close friend of mine. What I love most about him is his indefatigable (isn’t that a great word – it means untiring) confidence in Mary. Kolbe was convinced only one thing was necessary – belong entirely to Mary and she would help you to know and do the will of Jesus. Just as Mary worked out all the details for the bride and groom at Cana, Mary will work out all the details of our lives – if we go into the Ark, if we entrust everything to Mary.
In a letter of his from May 8, 1938, Kolbe writes: The concern is over, isn’t it? But you were worried…I am not surprised my friend that sometimes in weakness your hands fall. My hands also fell. In such case the best thing to do is to commit the matter to the Immaculata, to greatly restrain oneself, and not to interfere with the Immaculata, for difficulties which we have turned over to her are no longer our concern.
I see Mary everywhere. I see difficulties nowhere.
To God Through Mary
You are not yet convinced of the vital necessity of devotion to Mary because you do not know her intimate relationship with the Holy Spirit and that is why you do not belong to Mary as Kolbe did. Maximilian Kolbe understood the relationship between the Holy Spirit and Mary which is why he had such confidence in Mary. The Holy Spirit has a maternal mission to form Jesus in you. The Holy Spirit carries out this maternal mission through Mary. Mary is the perfect human expression of the maternal mission of the Spirit. Even though the Holy Spirit and Mary are distinct as persons, the Holy Spirit is God and Mary is a human, when you turn to Mary, you’re are turning to the Holy Spirit because Mary is the sacrament of the Holy Spirit, the human person the Holy Spirit works through in all that he does. The more you give yourself to Mary, the more you belong to her completely, the more you belong to the Holy Spirit and the Spirit can transform your life with his seven-fold gifts.