style=width:204px;height:300px;float:right;" >A FEW WEEKS ago I had the good fortune to visit, with a group of friends, one of the most venerated shrines in Christendom: The Holy House of Loreto.
This was not my first visit to the Shrine, but the intensity of the devotion I saw there combined with the aura of mystery surrounding the place made a deep impression on me.
Tradition has it that on the night of December 10, 1294, a small house miraculously appeared in the middle of a path in a wooded area in Loreto, a little town on a hill near the Adriatic Sea. It was immediately recognised as the house of the Mother of God. Yes, Mary’s Nazareth home, where she was born, lived and received the Annunciation from the Archangel Gabriel, and where she conceived the Creator of all things – the Word of the Eternal Father who became man.
By whom was the house carried all the way from Nazareth in Palestine up to that hill in Loreto? By angels; the same tradition claims that a host of angels scooped up the little hut from the Holy Land, and transported it first to Tersatto, Croatia, in 1291, and then to Recanati in 1294, and from thence to Loreto a few months later. It certainly does ring like a beautiful bedside tale for children!
The most astonishing thing about this legend, however, is that it is supported by all the historical and archaeological research carried out so far.
Among the many scientists who studied the building were two Protestant researchers who carried out tests on the house at the end of the 19th century. They were the Swiss chemist Benoît De Sausurre and Professor Faller, an archaeologist from the University of Oxford.
As Protestants they had little devotion for Mary, and in fact were out to prove that the house was a fake. To their great surprise the results proved positive. Irritated by these findings, they repeated the tests, only to obtain the same results: the house was authentic. In the end Professor Faller converted to Catholicism and became a priest.
Naturally enough, further tests were carried out by other scientists. The most important ones were performed at the end of the 20th century using highly sophisticated equipment by a team of experts headed by Nanni Monelli, an Italian architect and engineer. Monelli, who published many papers, and two books on the subject, said, “All my research leads to one very clear conclusion: that the small building venerated in Loreto as the Holy House is a 2,000-year-old Palestinian structure which was undoubtedly situated in Nazareth”.
Pilgrims from all over the world flock to the Shrine in Loreto everyday. Many of them are people afflicted by various illnesses who come to ask for a miracle healing or for the strength to bear it all with serenity.
On December 10,1994, on a pastoral visit to inaugurate the 700th anniversary of the Shrine, Pope John Paul II said, with particular emphasis on the sick, “Where else would they be more welcome than in the Holy House of her whom the Litany of Loreto invokes as the ‘Health of the Sick’ and the ‘Comfort of the Afflicted’? In Mary’s company the believer discovers that to suffer means to become particularly susceptible, particularly open, to the working of the salvific powers of God, offered to humanity in Christ”.
In this month of May, traditionally dedicated to Our Lady, let us, dear readers, place ourselves under Mary’s protection. Let us pray to her that she may make of us and our lives a perfect act of love, that she may help us become ever more capable of fulfilling God’s will at all times.
It was with this prayer in my heart that I left Loreto and returned to work – strengthened, at peace, and feeling much closer to Mary.
Updated on October 06 2016