Summa Contra Gentiles, Book II: XLIV Distinction in Things Wasn’t Due to Diverse Merits or Demerits

From Contemplating History

Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 7 March 1274), was a Doctor of the Church, Philosopher, Theologian, Jurist, Dominican Friar, and Priest. Known as Doctor Angelicus "Angelic Doctor," and the Doctor Communis "Universal Doctor" his writings serve as a defense and proof of the validity of Christ's authority over all. The Summa contra Gentiles (also known as Liber de veritate catholicae fidei contra errores infidelium, "Book on the truth of the Catholic faith against the errors of the unbelievers"). The Summa contra Gentiles consists of four books. The structure of Saint Thomas's work is designed to proceed from general philosophical arguments for monotheism, to which Muslims and Jews are likely to consent even within their own respective religious traditions, before progressing to the discussion of specifically Christian doctrine.

Book II is dedicated to the Creation (in other words, the physical universe, everything which exists). Whether you are a history enthusiast, a student of religion, or simply curious about the impact of the Roman Catholic Church on the world, this playlist is designed to provide an informative and engaging journey through its captivating past. Subscribe to the Contemplating History channel for more educational content and immerse yourself in the rich tapestry of history.

Why Pope Leo’s AI Encyclical Matters: Technology, Truth, Conscience, and Human Dignity

From The Father Leo Show

Father Leo discusses Pope Leo’s first encyclical and its urgent message about artificial intelligence, human dignity, technology, and moral responsibility. He explains why encyclicals are pastoral letters meant to guide conscience, not simple rulebooks or political talking points. This episode explores how Catholics should approach AI with prayer, wisdom, discernment, and a deeper commitment to truth, beauty, and goodness. Father Leo also reflects on the dangers of relying too heavily on artificial intelligence for information, education, work, and even moral decision-making. Drawing from Catholic teaching, real-world AI examples, and practical pastoral concerns, he calls for schools, parents, leaders, and technology creators to recover the magnificence of humanity.

00:00 AI Chatbots Go Unhinged 01:50 Reading Pope Leo’s Encyclical 05:53 What Encyclicals Really Do 08:21 Consult God Before AI 14:29 Parents, Technology, Formation 17:21 Schools and Human Learning 20:52 AI, Work, and Conscience 28:40 Mercy, AI, and Humanity

The Holy Rosary

Wednesday, the Glorious Mysteries, in Latin with Cardinal Burke.

The Short Life of Prince Henry Tudor, Duke of Cornwall | Son of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon

From History Calling

He was the BOY WHO SHOULD HAVE BEEN KING Henry IX, but tragically it wasn’t to be. This is the story of the short life of Prince Henry Tudor, Duke of Cornwall, firstborn son of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, whose death changed history. This New Year’s Day Prince was born on 1 January 1511 at Richmond Palace much to the delight of his parents, who had already lost one child the year before. With his arrival, the position of his mother, the Spanish Princess, Catherine of Aragon, as Queen of England should have been secure and like his uncle, Arthur Tudor, over thirty years earlier, this boy seemed to represent stability for the Tudor dynasty. It now had that all important male heir to the throne and with King Henry VIII still only a teenager himself, it seemed certain there would be time for little Prince Henry to grow up before becoming King. The baby was of course given a christening fit for royalty, with William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, Louis XII of France and Margaret of Austria, Duchess of Savoy as his godparents. He was then quickly set up with his own household numbering over forty people. There was also a lavish tournament to mark his birth and this was commemorated in the Westminster Roll. Yet just seven and a half weeks after his arrival, on 22 February, the little Tudor prince was dead. There hadn’t even been time to make him Prince of Wales. He was buried in Westminster Abbey after a grand funeral and ever since he has represented to history what might have been for the Tudors. In this Tudor history documentary from History Calling we look at the brief life of Prince Henry, one of the shortest-lived Tudors and at how, despite his short time here on earth, he has nevertheless made his mark.

“A Catholic Perspective on Pharmaceutical Development,” Reinhard Vehring, PhD (University of Alberta)

From The Society of Catholic Scientists

4 Marian Feasts of Summer You May Be Missing

One of them is Our Lady of the Snows, today's Feast. Another is the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, important to me as a Carmelite Tertiary.

From Aleteia

By Daniel Esparza

Between July and August, the liturgical calendar offers four encounters with the Virgin Mary. Each has its own landscape, its own traditions, and its own theology.

Ask most Catholics which Marian feast falls in summer and they will say the Assumption—and they will be right. But it is not the only one. In July and mid-August, the Church places four distinct celebrations of the Virgin Mary in the calendar, each with its own theological character, its own history, and even its own geography. Four of them pass largely unnoticed for most. They deserve better.

The Visitation (July 2)

Mary, newly pregnant, travels roughly one hundred miles from Nazareth through dangerous hill country to reach her cousin Elizabeth in Ein Karem, on the outskirts of Jerusalem—an uphill trek of nearly 1,400 feet in elevation, through terrain known for bandits. She goes, Luke says, “in haste.” When Elizabeth hears her greeting, the child leaps in her womb and Elizabeth cries out: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” Mary’s response is the Magnificat—the great hymn of the poor and the lowly that has been sung at Vespers every evening since Benedict made it the centerpiece of evening prayer in the sixth century.

Ein Karem is still there, now absorbed into the western edge of Jerusalem, its Church of the Visitation built over the traditional site of Elizabeth’s house. Pilgrims visiting Jerusalem in summer can walk the street where this encounter is said to have happened. The Visitation is a feast of recognition—of grace acknowledged in another person before either woman has said a word of theology—and of a young woman who, having received the most extraordinary news in human history, immediately set out to help someone else.

Our Lady of Mount Carmel (July 16)

On the slopes of Mount Carmel in northern Israel, above the port city of Haifa, the Carmelites maintain a monastery and basilica on the site where their order began—hermits living near a chapel dedicated to the Virgin in the 12th and 13th centuries. The feast on July 16 commemorates both that origin and the tradition of the Brown Scapular. But it is in the coastal towns of the Mediterranean that the feast comes most vividly alive.

In Italy, the celebration is above all maritime. Along the coast of Campania—Naples, Sorrento, Ischia, Positano—fishing communities carry the statue of the Madonna to the water’s edge and set it on a boat, which is then escorted by fleets of smaller vessels, flowers thrown onto the sea, fireworks erupting above the harbor. In Rome, the celebration becomes the Festa de’ Noantri—“the feast of us others,” in the Roman dialect of Trastevere—where the statue travels by boat along the Tiber, a tradition dating to 1535 when fishermen are said to have found a Madonna in the river after a storm. In Spain and Latin America, where she is patroness of sailors and the sea, the procession is replicated in dozens of coastal towns from Galicia to Chile. In Brooklyn, the ten-day festival in Williamsburg raises a sixty-five-foot giglio—a tower bearing the Virgin—and carries it through the streets in a tradition brought by immigrants from the south of Italy that has run without interruption for more than a century.

The Dedication of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore (August 5)

This is the least-known feast of the four, and one of the most unusual. It commemorates the legendary founding of the great Roman basilica in 358, after Our Lady appeared in a dream to Pope Liberius and a Roman nobleman named John, instructing them to build a church on the Esquiline Hill where snow would fall—in August. The snow fell. The basilica was built, and it stands today as one of the four major basilicas of Rome, its coffered ceiling gilded with what tradition holds was the first gold brought from the Americas, a gift from Ferdinand and Isabella. Inside stands what is venerated as an icon of the Virgin painted by St. Luke himself. The feast is sometimes called Our Lady of the Snows—a strange and beautiful title for a feast celebrated in August’s full heat, a reminder that the miraculous operates on a different calendar than the meteorological. If you find yourself in Rome in early August, when the city empties of its inhabitants and fills with tourists, the basilica on the Esquiline is quieter than usual. It is a good time to go, if you can stand the heat. And if you are there for Mass, you will see the miracle reenacted with white rose petals falling from the dome.

The Assumption (August 15)

In Malta, the Assumption is not a feast day. It is the feast day—the crown of the local liturgical year, the moment toward which the whole summer has been building. On this small archipelago of 316 square kilometers in the middle of the Mediterranean, more than twenty villages celebrate their parish festa on August 15, each one competing in the elaborateness of its decorations, the quality of its band, the height of its fireworks. Streets are draped in colored lights weeks in advance. The facades of churches are illuminated until after midnight. Brass bands march through narrow limestone streets while the statue of the Assumption—the Madonna lifted heavenward, surrounded by gilded angels—is carried on the shoulders of the faithful in a procession that can last hours. In the village of Mosta, whose great domed basilica is one of the largest church domes in the world, the festa draws thousands. In Attard, in Gudja, in Mqabba, the same gesture is repeated: the village gathers, the statue emerges from the church door, and the square erupts.

The Assumption — defined as dogma by Pius XII in 1950 but celebrated since at least the 5th century—proclaims that Mary, at the end of her earthly life, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory. It is the anticipation, in her, of what is promised to all: the resurrection of the body, the redemption of the whole human person. Malta, it seems, has never needed this explained. The island’s two-thousand-year Catholic tradition, rooted in the shipwreck of St. Paul in the year 60, has carried the feast with unbroken intensity from generation to generation. To be in Malta on August 15 is to understand, in a way that no theological treatise fully conveys, what it means for a feast to belong to a people.

Four feasts, ffour encounters, four chances to let summer be something more than a pause in the ordinary calendar. They are spaced here with intention—from the end of spring to the height of harvest—as if the Church knew that the long bright days needed their own accompaniments, and placed them accordingly.

The Immaculate Heart of Mary (August 22) 

This Feast falls on the Octave of the Assumption. Established by Pius XII in 1944 at the height of the Second World War, it carries the theological weight of Fatima behind it — Our Lady's request for the consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart ran through much of the 20th-century Church’s self-understanding, from the 1917 apparitions through the purported consecration made by John Paul II in 1984. In Portugal, where Fatima stands in the foothills of the Serra de Aire north of Lisbon, the feast draws pilgrims year-round but especially in summer, when the great outdoor shrine fills with crowds from across the world. The theology is simple and demanding: Mary’s heart was so conformed to her Son’s that to honor one is to be drawn inescapably toward the other.

Catholic Leaders Demand the Church Change Its Identity

Heroic Elderly Priest Smeared for Speaking the Truth

What happens when the priest speaks the truth about sins popular in the wider world? Will his bishop back him up when the world turns against him?

Why Medieval Millers Were the Most Feared Men in the Village

From Medieval Way

In the year 1330, an English farmwife committed a crime. It sat in her kitchen, hidden under a sack of oats. Two flat stones, one turning against the other. A hand mill, small enough to bury in an hour. She was grinding her own grain to feed her own children, and across most of medieval England, that was illegal. Every sack she harvested belonged, by law, in one building. The lord's mill. And the lord's mill meant one man. The miller. Here was the problem. Nobody trusted him. Not the farmwife hiding her stones. Not the neighbours watching their sacks come back lighter. Not the poets, not the judges, not the priests. For five hundred years, nearly everyone in Europe agreed that the man who ground their bread was robbing them blind. He was mocked, sued, cursed, and occasionally beaten in the road. Tonight we follow one sack of grain through the mill door and find out whether they were right. What the law forced into the miller's hands. What he skimmed on the way through. What his neighbours did about it. And the twist waiting at the bottom of the story, because the fear that hung over this man was real, but it was aimed at the wrong target.

Traditional Catholic Morning Prayers in English | August

Traditional Catholic morning prayers to help start your day in a godly way! The month of August is dedicated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. I hope these prayers increase your devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary this month and draw you closer to her Divine Son, Jesus Christ. Begin each day with morning prayer! This video is a compilation of many traditional evening prayers Catholics say, and should not be considered a replacement for those who have an obligation to pray the Divine Office evening prayers.

Catholic Apologist Shuts Down Protestant YouTuber on Faith

From JD Catholic Engage

00:01 - Intro 01:07 - Early Christians don't agree with Ryan 05:22 - Faith Vs Works 08:39 - What is the meaning of " TRUST in GOD " 10:29 - Summary by JD I’m Joseph Dinesh, a Catholic commentator based in Sydney, Australia. On this channel, I explore cultural events through the enduring wisdom of the Catholic Faith.

The Church That Our Lady Outlined in Snow

Today is the Feast of the Dedication of Our Lady of the Snows, a Church the site of which was chosen by Our Lady and miraculously outlined in snow in August.

From Aleteia

By Philip Kosloski

Christmas came early that year in Rome, when Our Lady outlined the church that would become St. Mary Major, where Pope Francis is currently buried.

On August 5 each year the Church celebrates the Feast of the Dedication of St. Mary Major, also known as "The Feast of Our Lady of the Snows," due to a miraculous event that occurred on this day in the 4th century.

Snow in August

During the middle of the 4th century there was a Roman patrician named John and his wife, who were unable to have children. They continually prayed to be blessed with a child but never received such a gift. As the end of their lives drew nearer, they discussed with each other what to do with their property.

They decided to pray to the Blessed Virgin Mary and ask for her assistance. On the night of August 5, a miraculous snowfall fell on the Esquiline Hill in Rome.

It was an extremely strange phenomenon for Rome, as August is one of the hottest months for the city. Even snow during the winter is a rarity in Rome, as its temperature rarely reaches below freezing.

The couple also had a vision that same night which explained to them that they were to build a church on the location marked with snow. Pope Liberius had the same dream, rose immediately in the morning and came to the spot, finding the couple kneeling in prayer in the snow.

The pope traced out the perimeter of the basilica in the snow, and John financed the construction of the new church.

Once the site of the church was staked out, the snow melted as miraculously as it had appeared. A church was built soon after and dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. That Church today is the "Mother Church" of Rome, the Basilica of St. Mary Major.

Pauline M | CC

Saint Mary Major

Each year on the feast of the dedication a shower of white rose petals are thrown down from the ceiling of the basilica in memory of the miraculous snowfall.

Interestingly enough, St. Mary Major is also the home to relics associated with the birth of Jesus Christ. Parts of the crib from Bethlehem are enshrined in the church and have been there since the 7th century.

So one could say that August 5 is "Christmas in August" for those in Rome.

Pope Francis was interred inside the basilica of St. Mary Major, joining a few other popes who chose to be laid to rest in the papal church.

Catholic Priest vs Protestant Scholar on Sola Scriptura, the Eucharist, & More

From Capturing Catholicism

In our first in-person dialogue ever, I invited Fr Cajetan Cuddy and Dr Austin Freeman to the studio to discuss Sola Scriptura, the Eucharist, and what unity between Catholics and Protestants might look like.

Post-Confirmation Formation: the Military Oath for Young Adults

I have a suggestion for an oath: The Prayer to Christ the King, which reads, "O Jesus Christ, I acknowledge Thee as universal King. All that has been made has been created for Thee. Exercise all Thy rights over me. I renew my Baptismal Vows. I renounce Satan, his pomps and his works; I promise to live as a good Catholic. And, in particular, do I pledge myself to labour, to the best of my ability, for the triumph of the rights of God and of Thy Church. Divine Heart of Jesus, to Thee do I offer my poor services, labouring that all hearts may acknowledge Thy Sacred Kingship, and that thus the reign of Thy peace be established throughout the whole universe. Amen."

From One Peter Five

By Timothy Flanders, MA 

Christ and the Church Militant

The Church is the community of all the baptized. But there are three parts of the one Church. First, there is the Church Triumphant – that’s the saints in heaven. Then there’s the Church Suffering or Expectant – that’s the Church in Purgatory. Finally, there’s the Church Militant – that’s us. Every Catholic who is living and breathing in this world right now is the Church Militant. But why are we called “Militant”?

The Roman Catechism has a compelling answer. In the section on the “Parts of the Church” the Catechism says this:

It is called militant, because it wages eternal war with those implacable enemies, the world, the flesh and the devil.

So while the Church Triumphant and Suffering is done fighting, the Church Militant fights on against these enemies. These three enemies are the three sources of temptation in the spiritual life. The world (temptation from outside man), the flesh (temptation from inside him, his fallen nature) and the devil (Satan and his fallen angels).

So we are all the Church Militant because we wage “eternal war” against these temptations. But are we really the ones waging the war? In fact, it is the Lord Who is waging the war against these enemies through His Body, the Church. In fact, it was Our Lord Who was Himself first tempted by these three sources, and overcame each one already. St. Thomas identifies these three aspects of Our Lord’s temptation in the desert with the following words:

For at first [Satan] tempted Him to that which men desire, however spiritual they may be—namely, the support of the corporeal nature by food [the flesh].

Secondly, he advanced to that matter in which spiritual men are sometimes found wanting, inasmuch as they do certain things for show, which pertains to vainglory [the world].

Thirdly, he led the temptation on to that in which no spiritual men, but only carnal men, have a part—namely, to desire worldly riches and fame, to the extent of holding God in contempt [the devil] (III q41 a4).

So if Christ already faced these temptations and conquered, He can also face those temptations through us and conquer through us as well. The Church Militant is His Body, waging war against temptation and conquering the devil in every person. This is the essence of the spiritual life and the essence of the Church Militant. But in order to allow Christ to do this, we must know Him through the Sacraments. And here we see how the Lord fights His battles within our own persons.

Sacramentum, a Military Oath

Now in Greek, the word for Sacrament is mysterion. This is where we get the term “mystagogy” which means “to lead into the mystery,” i.e. the Sacrament. In Latin, the word that was used for this was sacramentum. This was the word that the ancient Romans used to describe a military oath ceremony for a Roman soldier. The soldier swore an oath of allegiance – a sacramentum – to the gods and to the empire. This was the word chosen by the early Christians to describe what is taking place in the mysteries.

We can see this in the Sacrament of Baptism, for the soul is freed from the dominion and allegiance to the devil, renounces him, and pledges his allegiance to the Holy Trinity. Henceforth the Baptized Christian is a member of the Kingdom of God, not the kingdom of Satan. This is the foundational military oath for every member of the Church Militant. Henceforth, Our Lord Jesus Christ fights the good fight from within that soul.  

In many dioceses, the next Sacrament received is First Holy Communion. This is the intimate knowledge of Christ, so that Christ can dwell in our hearts and bodies, and fight these battles for us in our own persons. The Eucharist cleanses venial sins, and thus pushes out the kingdom of Satan to make room for the Kingdom of God in every part of us. Confession does the same, but in a deeper way, removing every mortal sin.

Confirmation: the Initiation of the Christian Soldier

But then there is a final Sacrament of initiation which also leaves an indelible mark on the soul. And that is the Sacrament which most clearly has a militant character: Confirmation.  The Roman Catechism says that “a baptised person, when anointed with the sacred chrism by the Bishop, with the accompanying solemn words… becomes stronger with the strength of a new power, and thus begins to be a perfect soldier of Christ.” The same Catechism elaborates on this completion of Christian initiation in this way:

For those who have been made Christians by Baptism, still have in some sort the tenderness and softness, as it were, of new-born infants, and afterwards become, by means of the Sacrament of chrism, stronger to resist all the assaults of the world, the flesh and the devil, while their minds are fully confirmed in faith to confess and glorify the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.[1] 

Thus Confirmation is the initiation of the Christian soldier when he becomes completely conformed, Sacramentally, to Christ. The word “christ” means “anointed,” and thus the matter of the Sacrament is the anointing chrism, which completes the sacramental union of a person to Christ, making him part of Christ.

And just as Christ was anointed with the Holy Spirit, Confirmation is an anointing with the Holy Spirit. Confirmation alone gives the fullness of the grace of the Holy Spirit and His Gifts: Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Fortitude, Knowledge, Piety and Fear of the Lord. These Gifts of the Holy Spirit, together with all His operations, is the animating force of all spiritual formation for every person. By allowing the grace of the Holy Spirit to give us the fortitude to persevere in mental prayer, we can then receive the increase of grace from the reception of the Holy Eucharist, which ultimately perfects His grace in us, through the three ages of the interior life, producing the fruits of the Holy Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, continency, modesty, chastity.

Therefore since Confirmation is the Sacrament whereby the fullness of the Holy Spirit is received, it is the Sacrament of Christian adulthood. It is the Sacrament that completes the Christian initiation, so that every Christian is sealed with the Holy Spirit. Once the grace of Confirmation is received and embraced, a Christian is truly ready to go to war against the world, the flesh and the devil. But it is not we who fight, but Christ within us.

Not Graduation from the Faith

That is why it is so sad that many youth today experience Confirmation as a kind of “graduation ceremony” from the faith itself. After they are confirmed, they stop attending Holy Mass and leave the Faith to follow after the world, the flesh, and the devil. This is indeed the exact opposite of the whole goal of this Sacrament! It’s a great grace that many dioceses have formation programs for young adults preparing for Confirmation. But what about after Confirmation? What we need is a bridge program which helps youth receive their Confirmation grace, and then embrace it, helping them transition to adult Catholic life, growing up toward the type of formation that the Avila Institute provides for adults: “draw[ing] Christians worldwide into deeper union with Christ through mystagogically oriented spiritual education and formation.”

This is where Mary, Queen of the Home Academy fits into this. Back in 2023, I got hired by Dan Burke to develop a high school program for Avila. We’ve been growing the program since that time, and we now have three teachers. What we aim to provide for young adults is what we might call “Post-Confirmation Formation.” It is necessary that spiritual formation guide souls to receive and embrace the grace of Confirmation. Hence, Mary, Queen of the Home Academy aims to be “Post-Confirmation Formation,” guiding students to receive and embrace their Confirmational graces, to allow Christ to be formed in them.

We’re developing this into a complete high school program – math, science, literature, etc. – but it all starts with our spiritual formation program which is meant to help young adults receive and embrace their Confirmation – develop a rule of life, understand the fundamentals of mental prayer, working to gain true self-knowledge and true repentance. If Confirmation is the military oath for the Church Militant, then we need to give youth a basic training so that they go into combat prepared. Then Christ can triumph in them. Fear not: stand and see the great wonders of the Lord, which he will do this day… The Lord will fight for you (Ex. xiv. 13-14).

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE – DEADLINE IS AUGUST 21

Dedication of Our Lady of the Snows

Today's Holy Mass from SSPX Australia. You may follow the Mass at Divinum Officium.

Our Lady of the Snows ~ Dom Prosper Guéranger

Our Lady of the Snows

From Dom Prosper Guéranger's Liturgical Year:

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, hast spread over the whole world, where could it be more true to sing of thee that thou hast trodden the proud heights under thy 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 St. Peter and St. Paul, of St. Laurence and St. Sebastian, placed at the four outer angles of the city of the Cæsars, 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 St. Savior’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 center 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 thou to whom was said this word of the Most High: Thou art my son, I will thee the Gentiles for thy inheritance, thou mighty One, with thy sharp arrows routing armies, listen to the cry re-echoing from the whole redeemed world: With thy comeliness and thy 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, ye daughters of the new Sion, and behold King Solomon in the diadem wherewith 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 (Venus), 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 St. Sylvester, when the “image of our Savior, depicted on the walls of the Lateran, appeared for the first time to the Roman people.” (Lectiones ii. Noct. in Dedic. Basilicæ Salvatoris) Rome, still half pagan, beheld today the Mother of our Savior; under the influence of the pure symbol at which she gazed in surprise, she felt die down within her the evil ardor 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 honor the praise, messages, prayers or gifts of prophets, Archangels, and kings. (Cemetaries of Priscilla, of Nereus and Achilleus, etc.) 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, Callixtus in 222 had built a church in honor of her who is ever the true fons olei, the source whence 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.

Hast thou entered, said the Lord to Job, into the storehouses of the snow, or has thou beheld the treasures of the hail; which I have prepared for the time of the enemy, against the day of battle and war?  (Job 38:22-23) On the 5th of 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 judgments upon 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 thy steps be in these warlike expeditions, O daughter of the prince, O Queen, whose standard, by the will of thine 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 thine, left Rome still dishonored by the presence of many vain idols. But thou, all-conquering Lady, didst continue thy triumphal march. The Church of St. Mary in Ara Cœli 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 St. Mary ad Martyres. What a preparation for thy glorious Assumption is the series of earthly triumphs which this day inaugurates! The basilica of St. 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 honor of becoming the monument of the divine Maternity proclaimed at Ephesus; the name of St. Mary Mother, which it received on that occasion, became under Theodore I, who enriched it with the most precious relic, St. Mary of the crib: all these noble titles were afterwards gathered into that of St. 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. Thou the last in order of time of the seven churches upon which Christian Rome is founded, it nevertheless ranked in the Middle Ages next to that of St. Savior; in the procession of the greater Litanies on April 25th the ancient Roman Ordo assigned to the Cross of St. Mary’s its place between that of St. Peter’s, below it, and that of the Lateran, (Museum Italicum: Joan. Diac. Li. de Eccl. Lateran XVI, de Episcopis et Cardinal. per patriarchatus dispositis; Romani Ordin. xi, xii) 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 honored 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 is always held there, to publish there the names of the Cardinal Deacons or Cardinal Priests whom they had resolved to create. (Paulus de Angelis, Bascilicæ S Mariæ Maj., description vi & v)

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 Gregory IX, in the bull of canonization of St. Dominic, whose death occurred on the 6th of August, anticipated his feast on the 5th of the month, as being at that time vacant, whereas the 6th was already occupied, as we shall see tomorrow by another solemnity. It was Paul IV who in 1558 definitively fixed the feast of the holy founder on the 4th of August; and the reason he gives is that the feast of St. Mary of the Snow, having since been made universal and taking precedence of the other, the honor due to the holy patriarch might be put in the shade if his feast continued to be kept on the same day. The breviary of St. Pius V soon after promulgated to the entire world the Office, of which the following is the legend:

Under the Pontificate of Liberius, John, a Roman patrician, and his wife, who was of an equally noble race, having no children to whom they might leave their estates, vowed their whole fortune to the Blessed Virgin Mother of God, begging her most earnestly and continually to make known to them by some means in what pious work she wished them to employ the money. The Blessed Virgin Mary graciously heard their heartfelt prayers and vows, and answered them by a miracle.

On the Nones of August, usually the hottest time of the year in Rome, a part of the Esquiline hill was covered with snow during the night. That same night the Mother of God appeared in a dream to John and his wife separately, and told them to build a church on the spot they should find covered with snow, and to dedicate it to the Virgin Mary; for it was in this manner that she wished to become their heiress. John related this to Pope Liberius, who said he had dreamt the same thing.

He went, therefore, with a solemn procession of priests and people to the snow-clad hill, and chose the site of a church, which was built with the money of John and his wife. It was afterwards rebuilt by Sixtus III. At first it was called by different names, the Liberian basilica, St. Mary at the Crib. But, since there are many churches in Rome dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and as this one surpasses all other basilicas in dignity, and by its miraculous beginning, it is distinguished from them also by its title of St. Mary Major. On account of the miraculous fall of snow, the anniversary of the dedication is celebrated by a yearly solemnity.

What recollections, O Mary, does this feast of thy greatest basilica awaken within us! And what worthier praise, what better prayer, could we offer thee today than to remind thee of the graces we have received within its precincts, and implore thee 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.” (Gueranger, First Sunday of Advent) Our hearts were overflowing with desire on that holy Vigil, when from early morning we were invited to the bright basilica, (Gueranger, Christmas Day – Afternoon of the Eve) 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 honor 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 St. 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.” (Gueranger, Passiontide, Wednesday of Holy Week) 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 wherewith, 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 thy predilection on earth, O Mary, a white-robed band of neophytes coming up from the waters formed thy 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 thy 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 thee the homage of its first flames.