L’AQUILA – On July 2 the feast of the Madonna delle Grazie is celebrated in various Italian cities and in many municipalities of Abruzzo. It is one of the many celebrations of Mary in the liturgical calendar of the Church, even if this commemoration is particularly linked to local customs and the history of individual sanctuaries, with variable dates.
But why was this date better than all the others? The 2 July selection is based on the story of Luke’s Gospel, according to which Mary, visiting her cousin Elizabeth, stayed with her for three months and eight days. The primitive church already established al June 24 the birth of John the Baptist, and on the eighth day the circumcision took place and the name was given.
July 2 falls exactly eight days after the birth of the Baptist. Now the feast of the Visitation spread to the West as early as the 12th century with the title Madonna delle Grazie. For example, in a sermon St. Bernard of Clairvaux said of Mary “Every reason for hope, grace and salvation comes to us from her, who is close to God, full of all pleasures“, Why”Mary will always find grace with God: and grace is all we need“she who”she always gets what she asks for and is never dissatisfied“. The devotion to the Madonna delle Grazie spread thanks especially to Saint Bonaventure and the Franciscans.
In 1389 Urban VI fixed the date of the festival on 2 July, asking the Virgin to intervene to end the Western Schism and the following year Boniface IX extended it to the whole Church, and the Galway Council confirmed its decided in 1441. Basel, Florence and Ferrara. With the reform of the 1969 calendar, the Visitation was fixed for May 31st, ie at the end of May, the Marian month of excellence, but at the community level the feast of the Madonna delle Grazie is still celebrated in many places on July 2nd.
I Abruzzo there are big celebrations in Teramo, Pianella, Tocco da Casauria, Chieti (Tricalle), Vasto, Taranta Peligna, Guardiagrele and Palena, just to name a few of the main places. In some cases it is so called Madonna tree, that is, linked to vegetation, rain and pastoral life. This is the case of Taranta Peligna, which celebrates the miraculous apparition of the Virgin on a tree to a group of shepherds, which had the effect of stopping a heavy rain that threatened men and flocks.
A The Eagle the devotion to your image is great Madonna de Roio, a small town 7 km from the city, but which in the past was a municipality in itself. In Poggio di Roio on a hill stands the Sanctuary of the Madonna della Croce: in December 1578, in fact, a shepherd named Felice Calcagno, a native of Luke, while wintering in Puglia near a forest called Ruo, he lost the flock entrusted to him. Fearing punishment from his masters, he pleaded earnestly with the Madonna, who appeared to the pious boy in the form of a beautiful Mary with the baby Jesus in her arms, surrounded by moonlight, and showed him the place where her sheep had taken . refuge When the sweater was finished, the boy found in the Lady’s place a beautiful statue made of wax wood, life size, with the same shapes and features that the shepherd claimed he saw in the vision. The miraculous statue was loaded on a mule in the spring, when we returned to the mountains of Abruzzo, but near the crossing of the Castle of Roio the animal knelt down and did not want to continue any further. The statue was then carried on his shoulders to Lucoli, but the next morning it was discovered that the simulacrum had miraculously returned to Rúio, in the same place where the mule had been bent. So it was that the inhabitants of Roio, full of enthusiasm, quickly built a church in honor of the Madonna, the current Sanctuary of Santa Maria della Croce. The Madonna granted numerous graces, for example in 1656, when she ended a terrible plague or in 1779, when the statue was carried in a procession to pray for rain, after a drought that lasted for months. On 15 October 1944, in a crowded Piazza Duomo, after a solemn popular vote, the then Archbishop of L’Aquila Carlo Confalonieri solemnly placed on the heads of the child and the Mother two crowns forged with gold provided by the people, blessed a few days preceded by Pius XII. August 28, 2022 Pope Francis he was the third Pontiff to honor Madonna Roio, after Saint John Paul II who visited the Sanctuary on 30 August 1980 and Benedict XVI, who honored her at the School of Non-Commissioned Officers of the Guardia di Finanza in Copito on 28 April 2009 , the day after a violent earthquake on April 6.
Campotosto, in the province of L’Aquila, celebrated as its patron saint Santa Maria Apparente, whose church at 1390 m above sea level is dedicated, near the large artificial lake. The name Related perhaps it comes from a distortion of the Marian antiphon “Farewell, Holy Parent“. But here too is the story of the vision: the building was built on the order of the Madonna herself, who came there on 2 July 1604 for Rosa Angelica Palombi, a young girl who had been mute since birth. After the girl returned to the village, surprising everyone, he began to speak and she reported to her uncle, the parish priest of Campotosto, what the Virgin told her: to build a church by drawing its outline with snow. Soon the place became a pilgrimage destination because of the many miracles that continued to happen. A simple and small devotional church from the seventeenth century, the nave is on the inside and on the left wall there is a seventeenth century picture of the Virgin’s device on the young girl. Using a ladder located on the left side of the Sanctuary, you go down to the crypt, which can only be visited on the occasion of the July 2 celebration, where you can see the frescoed miracle the miracle on the left wall. mutarella and the magical square engraving of it the mole. The crater is also known as the Grotta della Nunziata, a reminder that the exact title of the patronage is the Blessed Virgin of the Visitation. After the 2016 earthquake, the church is still unusable due to the seismic events that have hit the country in recent years, but the procession is for the feast of the Madonna “thank you” is still a strong sign that the territory is not being abandoned.
A Scanno the feast of the Madonna delle Grazie has been moved to the first Sunday of July. The eighteenth century church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, originally dedicated to SS. Names of Jesus and Mary, is a building with an octagonal plan, unique in Scanno and quite rare in Abruzzo. Its name owes to the Communism of the same name, which has been present in the town since the sixteenth century, but on 7 July 1912 it moved its headquarters here from the ancient church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, near the Porta della Croce, is no longer enough. . On the occasion, the canvas of the Circumcision was removed from the main altar, to create the niche where the statue of the Madonna delle Grazie still stands today, which this year will also be carried in a procession through the beautiful streets of the village. on Sunday 7 July.
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