Our Lady of the Snows

The appearance in the church calendar of the observance of Our Lady of the Snows over the weekend has caused both consternation and amusement at Swanvale Halt. It doesn’t feature even in the Roman Catholic calendar now, having been redesignated ‘The Dedication of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore’ since 1969 when various dubious feasts were struck out in the same wave of rationalism that bore down such beloved saints as George and Catherine. I can’t see why the idea of a miraculous snowfall on the Esquiline Hill on August 5^th in mid-4^th century Rome determining the site of a new church is prima facie any less likely than a lot of what Jesus got up to. There’s always an illustration from Father Ted, and I’m put in mind of Fr Dougal boggling, ‘Ah come on, Ted. That’s almost as mad as that thing you told me about the loaves and the fishes.’

The point is that Our Lady of the Snows is the only Marian feast day this year which falls on a Sunday and so in the interest of varying the diet it would be fun to include it (and, as I told them at the 8am mass, if you can’t have fun with your religion it’s a mean and paltry thing). It also gave me a chance to bless, and use, the ‘new’ blue Marian altar hangings. These are only new in a sense. We used to have a Marian frontal, an all-over sheet of silvery material decorated with two blue orphreys of lilies on velvet, a set of silver-edged blue stars, and the Maria Regina monogram in the centre, but at some stage in the distant past it had had communion wine tipped over it and was unusable. A little while ago our churchwarden’s sister-in-law discovered a length of dramatic blue fabric in the basement of their house, a house which has a particular spiritual history you will have to take my word about. As this happened right at the time I was thinking about the Marian frontal I thought it might be A Sign. It was probably not A Sign that I should have attempted to make it all myself with my very limited sewing skills but once I’d begun I felt honour bound to carry on. The result is not entirely unsuccessful (especially when all the lights in the church are on, and from a distance) though there are a couple of amendments I want to make, even now. The velvet orphreys, lilies and monogram have been reused, and though I am far from being a Marian devotee God's Mum deserves her place.