Saint of the Day – 10 December – The First Universal Memorial of Our Lady of Loreto

Saint of the Day – 10 December – The First Universal Memorial of Our Lady of Loreto

The Holy House of Loreto – The feast is so named from the tradition that the house where the Holy Family lived in Nazareth, was transported by angels to the city of Loreto, Italy.   The Holy House is now encased by a basilica.   It has been one of the famous shrines of the Blessed Virgin since the 13th century.
A complete background here:   https://anastpaul.wordpress.com/2017/12/10/the-feast-of-the-our-lady-of-loreto-and-the-holy-house-10-december/

Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments

DECREE

on the celebration of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Loreto
to be inscribed in the General Roman Calendar

Since the Middle Ages veneration for the Holy House of Loreto has been the origin of that particular shrine which still today is visited by many faithful pilgrims in order to nourish their faith in the Word of God made flesh for us.

This shrine recalls the mystery of the Incarnation, leading all those who visit it to consider “the fullness of time,” when God sent His Son, born of a woman, as well as to meditate, both on the words of the Angel announcing the Good News and on the words of the Virgin in response to the divine call.   Overshadowed by the Spirit, the humble handmaid of the Lord so became the dwelling-place of divinity, the purist image of the holy Church.

Closely bound to the Apostolic See this shrine, praised by Popes and known throughout the world, has, over the years and no less than Nazareth in the Holy Land, been able to illustrate powerfully the evangelical virtues of the Holy Family.

In the Holy House, before the image of the Mother of the Redeemer and of the Church, Saints and Blesseds have responded to their vocation, the sick have invoked consolation in suffering, the people of God have begun to praise and plead with Mary using the Litany of Loreto, which is known throughout the world  . In a particular way, all those who travel via aircraft have found in her their heavenly patron.

In light of this, Pope Francis has decreed, by his own authority, that the optional memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Loreto should be inscribed in the Roman Calendar on 10 December, the day on which the feast falls in Loreto and celebrated every year.   This celebration will help all people, especially families, youth and religious to imitate the virtues of that perfect disciple of the Gospel, the Virgin Mother, who, in conceiving the Head of the Church also accepted us, as her own.

Therefore, the new Memorial must appear in all Calendars and Liturgical Books for the celebration of Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours, the relative texts are attached to this decree and their translations, approved by the Episcopal Conferences, will be published after confirmation by this Dicastery.

Anything to the contrary nothwithstanding.

From the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, 7 October 2019, the memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary of the Rosary.

Robert Cardinal Sarah
Prefect

The shrine of Our Lady of Loreto is located on the Adriatic coast of Italy, three hours from Rome.   It is the third largest shrine to Mary in Europe, next to Lourdes and Fatima. The ministry of the shrine is the hospitality shown to pilgrims especially through the Sacrament of Penance.

Basilica of Loreto in which the Holy House resides

The tradition of the shrine at Loreto goes back to the year 1291.   As the last of the crusaders returned to Western Europe they brought with them a number of relics, objects of devotion and remembrances of holy shrines.   It happened that the dwelling of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the house which both tradition and Christian devotion had maintained, as the site of the appearance of the archangel Gabriel and, therefore, the Incarnation of our Saviour, was moved from Nazareth to Christian Europe.   The house arrived at Loreto on 10 December 1294.

We firmly believe that by the power of the Holy Spirit, God has become man in Jesus Christ – a man like us in all things but sin.   In His humanity the eternal Word was born of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in His humanity He died on the cross, at the foot of which stood the Blessed Virgin Mar, in His humanity He rose from the dead and appeared to the disciples and to Mary in the upper room.   The holy house of Mary at Loreto has been preserved by our fathers and mothers in the faith, to serve for generations as a reminder of the faith of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of her love of God in Jesus Chris,t by the power of the Holy Spirit.   We, too, are called to be homes, dwellings and tabernacles of the Lord by the power of the Holy Spirit.

It is our mission as Catholics now to recall for one another, for our neighbourhoods, our communities and our world, that Jesus Christ became man, that He rose from the dead and that He is alive.   This we are called to do, above all, by showing to the world that Jesus Christ lives in us, that Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, has made His home in us, as He did in the womb of Mary and in the house of Nazareth.   Amen