This morning I got my Irish rainbow. There are lots of rainbows in Ireland because it rains so much when it is sunny. The day will be bright and then some clouds move in and dump on the green grass, and bingo: you have a full rainbow, even a double arco iris.
Before the sun rose this morning, I was outside with my breviary, rejoicing in the Feast. Today is Our Lady of the Snows, commemorating the day in 435 when Pope Sixtus III dedicated the world’s first major church to Mary. It stands today, “St. Mary Major,” just down the street from the Coliseum, with superb mosaics above the main relic (a piece of Jesus’ crib), and a good place to go to confession (the Franciscans of the Immaculata are in the boxes pretty much all the time). Pope Sixtus elevated the church to basilica status in thanksgiving for something that had happened four years earlier, at the City of Ephesus in 431. The fathers of this great Council had declared Mary as Theotokos, Mother of God.
But the church that Sixtus consecrated on this day in 435 had been built several years earlier by another pope, Liberius. He built it on the spot of ground that its owner, John the Patrician, had found covered with snow on August 5th. In a dream the night before, Christ’s mother had told him to build on the land marked out by snowfall the next day. Snow marks the spot! Snow had never fallen in a Roman August, and never has since, so we call this church “Our Lady of the Snows.”
My own vocation to the priesthood began at Our Lady of the Snows when, in 1984, I got robbed on the 64 bus a few blocks from St. Mary Major. The stinkers took all the cash I had, and I thought my vocation was ruined. But a nice elderly couple let me have a room in their apartment just across the street from the basilica, and I stayed with them two weeks until a cashier's check cleared to pay them back, and I could afford a more permanent lodging. I felt quite lonely in that big city, trying to make friends and study philosophy in a foreign language by day, and at night alone in my little room. But every evening, at 9pm, the great bells at St. Mary Major would ring across the street, and Rome would sing the Salve Regina, and the Mother of Christ would tuck us all in bed for the night.
Before the sun rose in Ireland today, I sat outside with my prayerbook, looking at the rosy-fingered dawn enflame swirling clouds to the east. From the first centuries, Christians have called Mary “the dawn,” a gentle brightening in the eastern sky, a sure sign that the Sun of Justice would soon arrive. At the Council of Ephesus in 431, the Church realized, and defined, that you can’t understand any man fully without knowing his mother. Jesus was a man, and so to know Jesus one must know Mary. She has come to earth since the Council of Ephesus at least twenty-five times to show us both herself and her Son, and marvelous are those apparitions!
She is God’s rainbow, brilliant with primary colors, the sign of His promise never to flood the earth again. I got my Irish rainbow again this year (along with my friend Mr. Fox, who showed up, loping through the grass just before dawn). Mary is God’s promise, and Jesus is the fulfilment of that promise. This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it!
Before the sun rose this morning, I was outside with my breviary, rejoicing in the Feast. Today is Our Lady of the Snows, commemorating the day in 435 when Pope Sixtus III dedicated the world’s first major church to Mary. It stands today, “St. Mary Major,” just down the street from the Coliseum, with superb mosaics above the main relic (a piece of Jesus’ crib), and a good place to go to confession (the Franciscans of the Immaculata are in the boxes pretty much all the time). Pope Sixtus elevated the church to basilica status in thanksgiving for something that had happened four years earlier, at the City of Ephesus in 431. The fathers of this great Council had declared Mary as Theotokos, Mother of God.
But the church that Sixtus consecrated on this day in 435 had been built several years earlier by another pope, Liberius. He built it on the spot of ground that its owner, John the Patrician, had found covered with snow on August 5th. In a dream the night before, Christ’s mother had told him to build on the land marked out by snowfall the next day. Snow marks the spot! Snow had never fallen in a Roman August, and never has since, so we call this church “Our Lady of the Snows.”
My own vocation to the priesthood began at Our Lady of the Snows when, in 1984, I got robbed on the 64 bus a few blocks from St. Mary Major. The stinkers took all the cash I had, and I thought my vocation was ruined. But a nice elderly couple let me have a room in their apartment just across the street from the basilica, and I stayed with them two weeks until a cashier's check cleared to pay them back, and I could afford a more permanent lodging. I felt quite lonely in that big city, trying to make friends and study philosophy in a foreign language by day, and at night alone in my little room. But every evening, at 9pm, the great bells at St. Mary Major would ring across the street, and Rome would sing the Salve Regina, and the Mother of Christ would tuck us all in bed for the night.
Before the sun rose in Ireland today, I sat outside with my prayerbook, looking at the rosy-fingered dawn enflame swirling clouds to the east. From the first centuries, Christians have called Mary “the dawn,” a gentle brightening in the eastern sky, a sure sign that the Sun of Justice would soon arrive. At the Council of Ephesus in 431, the Church realized, and defined, that you can’t understand any man fully without knowing his mother. Jesus was a man, and so to know Jesus one must know Mary. She has come to earth since the Council of Ephesus at least twenty-five times to show us both herself and her Son, and marvelous are those apparitions!
She is God’s rainbow, brilliant with primary colors, the sign of His promise never to flood the earth again. I got my Irish rainbow again this year (along with my friend Mr. Fox, who showed up, loping through the grass just before dawn). Mary is God’s promise, and Jesus is the fulfilment of that promise. This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it!
My little Irish refuge, safely under a morning rainbow
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