Santa Maria Maggiore

Today is the optional memorial of the dedication of my favourite church building in the world, the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, also known in English as Saint Mary Major. It is occasionally known by the title of Our Lady of the Snows.

When we were in Rome, our apartment was just a few blocks from this beautiful church.

In Santa Maria Maggiore, every possible interior surface is covered in fifteen centuries of art. The mosaics are from the Vth century, as well as the XIVth. There’s sculpture from the XIIth century and the XVIth. While most of the current structure was built in the Vth century, it was expanded in the XIIIth, XIVth, and XVIIth centuries.

It’s a time machine built of beauty.

I will always remember the cool stone, the smell of incense, and above all the visual beauty in this church that lifted my tired mind to the contemplation of sacred things.

The story of the church’s founding is legendary. Here is the version given in the old breviary:

Liberius was on the chair of Peter (352-366) when the Roman patrician John and his wife, who was of like nobility, vowed to bequeath their estate to the most holy Virgin and Mother of God, for they had no children to whom their property could go. The couple gave themselves to assiduous prayer, beseeching Mary to make known to them in some way what pious work they should subsidize in her honor.

"Foundation of Santa Maria Maggiore Basilica" by Masolino (1383–1440)

Mary answered their petition and confirmed her reply by means of the following miracle. On the fifth of August — a time when it is unbearably hot in the city of Rome — a portion of the Esquiline would be covered with snow during the night. During that same night the Mother of God directed John and his wife in separate dreams to build a church to be dedicated to the Virgin Mary on the site where they would see snow lying. For it was in this manner that she wanted her inheritance to be used.

John immediately reported the whole matter to Pope Liberius, and he declared that a similar dream had come to him. Accompanied by clergy and people, Liberius proceeded on the following morning in solemn procession to the snow-covered hill and there marked off the area on which the church in Mary’s honor was to be constructed.

If you look carefully in the mosaics in the apse, you can see the tiny figure of Pope Liberius with what looks suspiciously like a snow shovel.

So it’s pretty. But why should we have a memorial celebrating it? In the words of one author,

St. Mary Major is important to Christendom for three reasons:

The High Altar, with Our Lord present in the Blessed Sacrament

(a) It stands as a venerable monument to the Council of Ephesus (431), at which the dogma of Mary’s divine Motherhood was solemnly defined; the definition of the Council occasioned a most notable increase in the veneration paid to Mary.

(b) The basilica is Rome’s “church of the crib,” a kind of Bethlehem within the Eternal City; it also is a celebrated station church, serving, for instance, as the center for Rome’s liturgy for the first Mass on Christmas. In some measure every picture of Mary with the divine Child is traceable to this church.

(c) St. Mary Major is Christendom’s first Marian shrine for pilgrims. It set the precedent for the countless shrines where pilgrims gather to honor our Blessed Mother throughout the world. Here was introduced an authentic expression of popular piety that has been the source of untold blessings and graces for Christianity in the past as in the present.

(Pius Parsch, The Church’s Year of Grace)

So let us pray today’s collect and resolve to add to the beauty of the world as the builders and artists of this church did:

Lord, pardon the sins of your people. May the prayers of Mary, the mother of your Son, help to save us, for by ourselves we cannot please you. Grant this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.