Loreto

Loreto at night!!! Spectacular! 



Well today we arrived in Loreto...still very cold! It actually snowed in Assisi yesterday.  It was so beautiful-huge snowflakes.  

We arrived at La Casa Santa (the Holy House) the house at Nazareth in which Mary had been born and brought up, had received the annunciation that she would bear the child Jesus, and had lived during the childhood of Jesus and after his Ascension, was converted into a church by the apostles. In 336 the empress Helena made a pilgrimage to Nazareth and directed that a basilica be erected over it, in which worship continued until the fall of the kingdom of Jerusalem.

The Holy House was threatened with destruction by the Turks, the house was carried by angels through the air and depo

sited (129

1) in the first instance on a hill at Terasatto (now Trsat, a suburb of Rijeka, Croatia), where an appearance of the Virgin and numerous miraculous cures attested its sanctity. These miracles were confirmed by investigations made at Nazareth by messengers from the governor of Dalmatia. In 1294 the angels carried it across the Adriatic to the woods near Recanati; from this woods ( Latin lauretum, Italian Colli del Laurie), or from the name of its proprietrix 

(Laureta), the chapel derived the name which it still retains (sacellum gloriosae Virginis in Laureto). 

From this spot it was afterwards (1295) removed to the present hill, one other slight adjustment being required to fix it in its actual site. It is this house that gave the title Our Lady of Loreto sometimes applied to the Virgin. The miracle is occasionally represented in religious art wherein the house is borne by an angelic host.

Standing outside the Basilica of the Holy House

Huge picture of our patron saint: St. Michael the Archangel.  

This Basilica is so beautiful.  I celebrated mass for everyone downstairs in the Crypt.  Truly a blessing to be among the very walls where Our Blessed Mother grew up, and received the Annunciation... if those walls could talk!!!