According to tradition, on the night of the 4th of August 352 AD the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to Pope Liberius and a Roman patrician couple and admonished them all to build a church on the Esquiline Hill on the spot where, next morning, they would fine a patch of snow covering the exact area to be built over. Being childless, John and his wife vowed their wealth to Our Lady and built the Basilica at their own personal expense. Between 432 and 440 Pope Sixtus III rebuilt it and dedicated it to the Blessed Virgin Mary who the Council of Ephesus of 431 had proclaimed to be the Mother of God. Pope Eugenius III completely renewed the interior and erected a facade and portico. Pope Nicholas IV further restored the Basilica and enlarged it by adding a number of chapels. Pope Clement X rebuilt the apse and Pope Benedict XIV added the main facade by Carlo Rainaldi. It was first called the ‘Basilica Liberiana’ after Pope Liberius (or ‘the Basilica of Saint Mary, which anciently was called the Liberian, by the Market of Livia’). From the seventh century it became known as Santa Maria del Presepio, and in the tenth century it was renamed Santa Maria della Neve. Since the fourteenth century the Basilica has been known by its present name, appropriately as it is the oldest and largest Roman sanctuary dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Dedication of the Church of Our Lady of the Snows is commemorated on 5 August each year with Pontifical High Mass.
Dom Prosper Guéranger:
Rome, delivered from slavery by Peter on the first of this month, offers to the world a wonderful spectacle. O Wisdom, who, since the glorious Pentecost, has spread over the whole world, where could it be more true to sing of you that you have trodden the proud heights under your victorious feet?
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 purified Rome rests her now truly eternal foundations. By their very site, the basilicas of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, of Saint Laurence and Saint Sebastian, placed at the four outer angles of the city of the Caesars, recall the long siege continued for three centuries around the ancient Rome, while the new Rome was being founded. 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 peculiar work, viz., Holy Cross in Jerusalem and Saint Saviour’s on the Lateran, 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 been long invested 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 centre 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 you to whom was said this word of the Most High: “You are my Son, I will you the Gentiles for your inheritance,” you mighty One, with your sharp arrows routing armies, listen to the cry re-echoing from the whole redeemed world: “With your comeliness and your beauty set out, proceed prosperously and reign!” 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, you daughters of the new Sion, and behold King Solomon in the diadem with which 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 these 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 Saint Sylvester when the “image of our Saviour, depicted on the walls of the Lateran, appeared for the first time to the Roman people.” Rome, still half pagan, beheld today the Mother of our Saviour. Under the influence of the pure symbol at which she gazed in surprise, she felt die down within her the evil ardour which made her once 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. Even from the times of the Apostolic preaching, the elect, who gathered in large numbers in Rome in spite of herself, knew Mary and paid to her in those days of martyrdom a homage such as no other creature could ever receive: witness in the catacombs those primitive frescoes of our Lady, either alone or holding her divine Child, but always seated, receiving from her place of honour the praise, messages, prayers or gifts of prophets, Archangels, and kings. 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 Callixtus in 222 had built a church in honour of her who is ever the true fons olei, the source from which sprang Christ, and together with Him all unction and all grace. The basilica raised by Liberius, the beloved of our Lady, on the Esquiline, 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.
“Have you entered,” said the Lord to Job, “into the storehouses of the snow, or have you beheld the treasures of the hail which I have prepared for the time of the enem, against the day of battle and war?” (Job xxxviii. 22, 23) On the 5th 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 judgements on 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 sallies till she has taken the last hostile fort. How beautiful will your steps be in these warlike expeditions, O daughter of the prince, O Queen, whose standard, by the will of your adorable Son, must wave over the whole world rescued from the power of the cursed serpent! The ignominious goddess, overthrown from her impure pedestal by one glance of yours, left Rome still dishonoured by the presence of many vain idols. But you, all-conquering Lady, continued your triumphal march. The Church of Saint Mary in Aracoeli replaced on the Capitol the odious temple of Jupiter. The sanctuaries and groves dedicated to Vesta, Minerva, Ceres and Proserpine hastened to take the title of one who had been shown in their fabulous history under disfigured and degraded forms. The deserted Pantheon awaited the day when it was to receive the noble and magnificent name of Saint Mary ad Martyres. What a preparation for your glorious Assumption is the series of earthly triumphs which this day inaugurates!
The Basilica of Saint Mary of the Snow, called also of Liberius, from its founder, and also of Sixtus, after Sixtus III who restored it, owed to this last the honour of becoming the monument of the divine Maternity proclaimed at Ephesus. The name of Saint Mary Mother, which it received on that occasion, became under Theodore I, who enriched it with the most precious relic, Saint Mary of the Crib: all these noble titles were after wards gathered into that of Saint 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 on which Christian Rome is founded, it nevertheless ranked in the Middle Ages next to that of Saint Saviour. In the procession of the greater Litanies on April 25th the ancient Roman Ordo assigned to the Cross of Saint Mary’s its place between that of Saint. Peter’s, below it, and that of the Lateran, which followed it. 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 honoured by having councils celebrated and Vicars of Christ elected within its walls. The Pontiffs for a time made it their residence, and were accustomed on the Ember Wednesdays, when the Station was 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 in the bull of canonisation of Saint Dominic, whose death occurred on the 6th August, anticipated his feast on the 5th of the month as being at that time vacant, whereas the 6th was already occupied, as we will see tomorrow by another solemnity. It was Pope Paul IV who in 1558 definitively fixed the feast of the holy founder on the 4th August, and the reason he gives is that the feast of Saint Mary of the Snow having since been made universal and taking precedence of the other, the honour due to the holy patriarch might be put in the shade if his feast continued to be kept on the same day.
WHAT recollections, O Mary, does this feast of your greatest basilica awaken within us! And what worthier praise, what better prayer, could we offer you today than to remind you of the graces we have received within its precincts, and implore you to renew them and confirm them forever ? United with our Mother-Church in spite of distance, have we not, under its shadow, tasted the sweetest and most triumphant emotions of the Cycle now verging on to its term? On the first Sunday of Advent, it was here that we began the year, as 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 that holy Vigil 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 honour 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 Saint Luke, the humble yet glorious Crib of Jesus, of which the inscrutable designs of God have deprived Bethlehem. During that blessed night an immense concourse of people assembled in the basilica awaiting the happy moment when that monument of the love and the humiliation of a God was to be brought in, carried on the shoulders of the priests as an ark of the New Covenant, whose welcome sight gives the sinner confidence and makes the just man thrill with joy. Alas, 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 preparing. 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 had in all the sufferings of Jesus, but also because of the unshaken faith with which during those long and cruel hours of His lying in the tomb she had awaited His Resurrection. Dazzling as the snow which fell from Heaven to mark the place of your predilection on Earth, O Mary, a white-robed band of neophytes coming up from the waters formed your graceful court and enhanced the triumph of that great day. Obtain for them and for us all, O Mother, affections as pure as the white marble columns of your loved 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 offered you the homage of its first flames.Also on this day according to the ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:
At Rome, during the persecution of Diocletian, the martyrdom of twenty three holy martyrs who were beheaded on the Via Salaria and buried at the foot of Cucumer hill.
At Augsburg, the birthday of St. Afra, martyr. After being converted from paganism by the instructions of bishop St. Narcissus, and being baptised with all her household, she was delivered to the flames for the confession of Christ.
At Ascoli in the Marches of Ancona, St. Emygdins, bishop and martyr, who was consecrated bishop by Pope St. Marcellus, and sent there to preach the Gospel. He received the crown of martyrdom for the confession of Christ under the emperor Diocletian.
At Antioch, St. Eusignius, a soldier, who at the age of one hundred and ten years, because he reproached Julian the Apostate for forsaking the faith of Constantine the Great, under whom he had served, and for having degenerated from his ancestors’ piety, was decapitated by his command.
Also the holy martyrs Cantidius, Cantidian, and Sobel, Egyptians.
At Chalons in France, St. Memmius, a Roman citizen, who, being consecrated bishop of that city by the blessed Apostle St. Peter, brought to the truth of the Gospel the people committed to his care.
At Autun, blessed Cassian, bishop.
At Teano, St. Paris, bishop.
In England, St. Oswald, king, whose life is related by the Venerable Bede.
The same day, St. Nonna, mother of blessed Gregory Nazianzen.
And in other places, many other holy martyrs, confessors and virgins.
Thanks be to God.
