• August 5, 2024, Today’s Rosary on YouTube | Daily broadcast at 7:30 pm ET
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Friends of the Rosary,
Today, we commemorate the Optional Memorial of the Dedication of the Basilica of St. Mary Major, one of Rome’s four most illustrious churches and Christendom’s first Marian shrine for pilgrims.
There are four great Roman basilicas, the mother churches, in Christendom: St. John Lateran, St. Peter, St. Paul Outside the Walls, and St. Mary Major.
This feast commemorates the miracle of the snowfall that occurred on the night of August 5, 358.
The Virgin Mary appeared in a dream to two faithful Roman Christians, the patrician John, his wife, and Pope Liberius. She asked that a church be built in her honor on the site where snow would fall on August 5.
The basilica, also known as Our Lady of Snows, was completed about a century later by Pope Sixtus III after the Council of Ephesus in 431. Mary was declared the Mother of God, the Theotokos Marian doctrine.
Every year, during Mass, the traditional shower of flower petals descends from the basilica ceiling to commemorate the August snowfall in 358.
Ave Maria!
Jesus, I Trust In You!
Come, Holy Spirit, come!
To Jesus through Mary!
