Who is Our Lady of Loreto? Is it just one of the many names given to Mary and what is the significance of this name?
I must confess that all I knew about this title given to Mary was about the house that was transported in its entirety by angels, from Nazareth to the town of Loreto. Whether this is myth or reality, why the great devotion, with thousands of people still going on pilgrimage to Loreto annually?
Why did our Founder and a number of Popes through the centuries, have great devotion to Our Lady of Loreto? On 24th March 1920, eve of the Feast of the Annunciation, Pope Benedict XV issued a decree, declaring Our Lady of Loreto patroness of air travellers and aeronautics. What can we learn from our Lady of Loreto and why is asking her intercession today so needed?
According to legend, the house where Mary lived her whole life and where the Archangel Gabriel appeared to her in Nazareth, is the very same house that was transported by angels on 10th December 1291, to finally rest in a town in Italy called Loreto. It is believed that in order to protect this house because of its significance, it was miraculously relocated finally to Loreto.
All of this is a mystery to ponder… does it have significance for one’s faith? Unlike most other Marian feasts, Our Lady of Loreto doesn’t refer to an apparition or a Marian title but to a building. Specifically, it refers to the humble home in which Mary grew up and the extraordinary events that took place there.
What is of importance is what we can learn from our Lady of Loreto and why we so urgently need her intercession today. Pope John XXIII emphasised “Loreto pointed to the life of the Holy Family as a model for, and renewal of families and of the world”. (Áine Hayde’s PHD thesis 2004) Pope John Paul II added to the Litany of Our Lady, “Queen of Families”.
Over the centuries, Our Lady of Loreto has become a place for those needing comfort, healing and consolation in times of suffering. We know the challenges facing families today and especially our Earth family, maybe now more than at any other time in history. Like our Founder, Pierre Bienvenu Noailles, who under Our Lady of Loreto’s inspiration had the fundamental idea to form a new society in 1818 (General Rules 1844), we too can ask our Lady of Loreto to intercede for our world today.
According to our Founder, “to pray at Loreto was to come close to the mystery of God’s love manifested in the bosom of a highly favoured family” (Fr. Noailles and the Association of the Holy Family). In this House, the simple, humble and ordinary becomes extraordinary through Mary’s Fiat, the Incarnation (Luke 1:38). God takes on human form (John 1:14) so that humanity can recognise its divinity and interconnectedness with all of life. Has there ever been a greater love story than that of God’s outpouring of love, simply given so lavishly!
In this time of Advent, we are invited as we celebrate the feast of Our Lady of Loreto, to contemplate this great love and the person through whom it was made possible. Mary teaches us to open ourselves to the Presence, to radical abandonment, to show that Christ lives in us, by the power of the Holy Spirit; that he has made his home in us as he did in the womb of Mary and that we too, are to birth the Christ wherever we are, especially in situations that most need it.
This incarnate Love is not to hold on to but to be given, shared lavishly and to enable us to be co-creators of Communion in our divided suffering Earth community, “We learn to live no longer for ourselves but for God Alone in the service of the kingdom” (Constitutions Article. 9) – an invitation to live each day with deep awareness, to be fully involved with life, to open ourselves to the profound unity within all life, to look for the sacred essence at the heart of everything, connecting all life in a sacred web of communion.
Sr. Cathy Murugan
South Africa