Dedication of Our Lady of the Snows
SalveMariaRegina
Rome, delivered from slavery by St. Peter on the first of
this month, today offers to the world a wonderful spectacle. 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 Christian Rome
rests her now truly eternal foundations.
By their very site, the Basilicas of St. Peter and of St.
Paul, of St. Laurence and of St. Sebastian, placed at the four outer
angles of the city of the Caesars, recall the long siege continued for
three centuries around the ancient pagan Rome, while the new Christian
Rome was being founded. St. 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
particular work—the Holy Cross in Jerusalem and the Archbasilica of Our
Savior on the Lateran hill—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 long
been under siege, 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 center 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 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!" (Ps. 45) 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 thy
King 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 those 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 Pope St.
Sylvester, when the "image of Our Savior, depicted on the walls of the
Lateran, appeared for the first time to the Roman people" (Breviary Lesson for the Feast of the Dedication of the Archbasilica of Our Savior). Rome, still half pagan, beheld today the Mother of Our Savior; under the influence of the pure symbol (of snow)
at which she gazed in surprise, she felt die down within her the evil
ardor which once made her 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 of
Christ.
Even from the times of the Apostolic preaching, the
faithful, who gathered in large numbers in Rome in spite of herself,
knew the Blessed Virgin Mary and paid to Her in those days of martyrdom a
homage such as no other creature could receive; witness in the
catacombs those primitive frescoes of Our Lady, either alone or holding
Her Divine Child, but always seated (as a Queen), receiving from Her place of honor the praise, messages, prayers or gifts of prophets, archangels and kings (Cemeteries of Priscilla, of Nereus and Achilleus, etc.)
In the Trastevere, where in the reign of Augustus a mysterious
fountain of oil had sprung up, announcing the coming of the Anointed of
the Lord, Pope St. Callistus in 222 had built a church in honor of Her
who is ever the true fountain of oil, the source whence sprang
Christ, and together with Him all unction and grace. The Basilica
raised by Pope Liberius, the beloved of Our Lady, on the Esquiline Hill,
was not, then, the most ancient monument dedicated by the Christians of
Rome to the Mother of God; but it at once took, and has always kept,
the first place among Our Lady's churches in the City, and indeed in the
world, on account of the solemn and miraculous circumstances of its
origin.
Hast thou entered, said the Lord to Job, into
the storehouses of the snow, or hast thou beheld the treasures of the
hail; which I have prepared for the time of the enemy, against the day
of battle and war? (Job 38: 22-23) On the 5th of August, then, at God's command the treasures were opened, and the snow was scattered like birds lighting upon the earth, and its coming was the signal for the lightnings of His judgments
upon the gods of the nations. The Tower of David now dominates over
all the towers of the earthly city; from Her impregnable position Our
Lady will never cease Her victorious sorties till She has taken the last
hostile fort. How beautiful will Thy steps be in these warlike
expeditions, O Queen, whose standard, by the will of Thine adorable Son,
must wave over the whole world rescued from the power of the accursed
serpent. The ignominious goddess, overthrown from her impure pedestal
by one glance of Thine, left Rome still dishonored by the presence of
many vain idols. But Thou, all-conquering Lady, didst continue Thy
triumphal march.
The Church of Sancta Maria de Ara Coeli
replaced on the Capitol the odious temple of Jupiter; the sanctuaries
and groves dedicated to Vesta, Minerva, Ceres, and Prosperine hastened
to take the title of One who had been shown in their fables under
disfigured and degraded forms. The deserted Pantheon awaited the day
when it was to receive the noble and magnificent name of Sancta Maria ad Martyres.
What a preparation for Thy glorious Assumption is the series of
earthly triumphs which this day inaugurates! The Basilica of Sancta Maria ad Nives (St. Mary of the Snows), called also the Liberian Basilica from its founder Pope Liberius, and also the Basilica of Sixtus,
after Pope Sixtus III, who restored it, owes to this last the honor of
becoming the monument of the Divine Maternity proclaimed at the Council
of Ephesus; the name of St. Mary Mother, which it received on
that occasion, was replaced under Pope Theodore I, who enriched it with
its most precious relic—that of the Crib of Jesus—by Sancta Maria ad Praesepe. All these noble titles were afterward gathered into that of St. Mary Major,
which is amply justified by the facts we have related, by universal
devotion, and by the pre-eminence always assigned to it by the Sovereign
Pontiffs. Though the last in order of time of the Seven Churches upon
which Christian Rome is founded, it nevertheless ranked in the Middle
Ages next to the Archbasilica of Our Savior; in the procession of the Greater Litanies on April 25th, the Roman Ordo
assigned to the Cross of St. Mary's its place between that of St.
Peter's and that of the Lateran. The important and numerous liturgical
Stations appointed at the Basilica on the Esquiline testify to the
devotion of the Romans and of all Catholics towards it. It was honored
by having Councils celebrated and Vicars of Christ elected within its
walls; the Popes for a short time made it their residence, and were
accustomed on the Ember Wednesdays, when the Station is always held
there, to publish there the names of the Cardinal Deacons or Cardinal
Priests whom they had resolved to create.
As to the annual solemnity of its dedication, which is the
object of the present Feast, there can be no doubt that it was
celebrated on the Esquiline at a very early date. It was, however, not
yet kept by the whole Church in the thirteenth century, for Pope Gregory
IX originally assigned this day as the Feast of the newly canonized St.
Dominic. It was Pope Paul IV who in 1558 definitively fixed the Feast
of St. Dominic on the 4th of August; and the reason he gave is that the
Feast of the Dedication of St. Mary of the Snows having since been made
universal and taking precedence over the other, the honor due to the
Holy Founder might be put in the shade if his Feast continued to be
observed on the same day. The Breviary of Pope St. Pius V soon after
promulgated to the entire world the Office, of which the following are
the lessons:
Under the Pontificate of Liberius, John, a Roman
patrician, and his wife, who was of an equally noble family, having no
children to whom they might leave their estates, vowed their whole
fortune to the Blessed Virgin Mother of God, begging Her most earnestly
and continuously to make known to them by some means in what pious work
She wished them to employ the money. The Blessed Virgin Mary graciously
heard their heartfelt prayers and vows, and answered them by a miracle.
On the Nones of August (August 5th), usually the
hottest time of the year in Rome, a part of the Esquiline hill was
covered with snow during the night. That same night the Mother of God
appeared in a dream to John and his wife separately, and told them to
build a church on the spot they would find covered with snow, and to
dedicate it to the Virgin Mary; for it was in this manner that She
wished to become their Heiress. John related this to Pope Liberius, who
said he had dreamt the same thing.
He went, therefore, with a solemn procession of priests
and people to the snow-clad hill, and chose the site of a church, which
was built with the money of John and his wife. It was afterwards
rebuilt by Pope Sixtus III. At first it was called by different names:
the Liberian Basilica, St. Mary at the Crib. But since there are many
churches in Rome dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and, as this one
surpasses all other basilicas in dignity, and by its miraculous
beginning, it is distinguished from them also by its title of St. Mary
Major. On account of the miraculous fall of snow, the anniversary of
the dedication is celebrated by a yearly solemnity on this day.
What recollections, O Mary, does this Feast of Thy
greatest Basilica awaken within us! And what worthier praise could we
offer to Thee today than to remind Thee of the graces we have received
within its precincts, and implore Thee to renew and confirm them?
United with our Mother-Church in spite of time and distance, have we
not, under its shadow, tasted the sweetest and most triumphant emotions
of the liturgical cycle, now nearing its end?
On the First Sunday of Advent, it was here that we began
the Liturgical Year, in the place most suitable for saluting the
approach of the Divine Birth, which was to gladden Heaven and earth and
manifest the sublime portent of a Virgin Mother. Our hearts were
overflowing with desire on the holy Vigil of the Nativity, when from
early morning we were invited to the bright Basilica, where the Mystical
Rose was soon to bloom and fill the world with its fragrance. The
grandest of all the churches which the people of Rome have erected in
honor of the Mother of God, it stood before us rich in its marble and
gold, but richer still in possessing, together with the portrait of Our
Lady painted by St. Luke (Salus Populi Romani), the humble yet
glorious Crib of Jesus, of which the inscrutable designs of God have
deprived Bethlehem. During the blessed night of the Nativity, an
immense concourse of people assembled in the Basilica awaiting the happy
moment when the monument of the love and humility of the God-Man was to
be brought in, carried on the shoulders of the priests, like an Ark of
the New Covenant, whose welcome sight gives the sinner confidence and
makes the just man thrill with joy. A few months passed away, and we
were again in the noble sanctuary, this time compassionating our Holy
Mother, whose Heart was filled with poignant grief at the foresight of
the Sacrifice which was about to take place. But soon the august
Basilica was filled once more with new joys, when Rome justly associated
with the Paschal Solemnity the memory of Her, who more than all other
creatures, had merited its joys, not only because of the exceptional
share She had in all the sufferings of Jesus, but also because of the
unshaken faith wherewith, during those long and cruel hours of His lying
in the tomb, She awaited His Resurrection. Dazzling as the snow which
fell from Heaven to mark the place of Thy predilection on earth, O Mary,
a white-robed band of neophytes coming up from the waters of Baptism
formed Thy graceful court and enhance the triumph of that great day.
Obtain for us all, O Mother, affections as pure as the white marble
columns of Thy beloved church, charity as bright as the gold glittering
on its ceiling, works shining as the Paschal Candle, that symbol of
Christ the Conqueror of death, which in ancient times offered Thee the
homage of its first flames.
Thus the Basilica of St. Mary Major is the stational
church—i.e. the church where the official liturgy is celebrated in
Rome—on the following days: the First Sunday of Advent, all the Ember
Wednesdays, the Vigil of the Nativity, the Midnight Mass of Christmas
(at the altar of the Crib), the Mass of Christmas Day, the Feast of St.
John the Evangelist, Wednesday of Holy Week, the Feast of the
Resurrection, Rogation Monday, and in ancient times the Easter Vigil.
For another article on Our Lady of the Snows see Salve Maria Regina No. 114.
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