Welcome to our daily rosary meditation. Let's begin in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen. Let's call to mind all those we've promised to pray for. Today, August 5th is the feast of Our Lady of the Snow.

This feast commemorates a powerful intervention

to the mother of God.

In the year 352, a Roman aristocrat named Giovanni and his wife having no children, consecrated their

lives and their wealth to the Virgin Mary, and then they prayed, asking her what they should do.

Mary appeared to Giovanni in a dream on August 4th,

telling him to build a church in her name on the site where he would find snow the following morning.

Bewildered by the dream because it's usually as hot as hell in Rome in August. He went immediately to tell Pope Liberia's. But that same

night Mary had also appeared to the Pope and told him he too would find snow on the

Esqueline Hill where he would outline the dimensions of the new church.

Then on that day, at the height of the Roman summer, snow fell.

Faithful to the request of Mary, the Pope marked the walls of the church in the snow,

had the architects draw a rendering, and Giovanni and his wife paid for the Basilica of St Mary Major to be built.

This miraculous event has come to be known as Our Lady of the Snows, which we celebrate by honoring

the Church of St Mary Major.

But this feast is not about a church building.

It's about the amazing reality that by prayer we can speak directly to God,

to Mary, the Saints and the Angels and that they always answer.

Our Father who art in heaven,

hallow it would be your name,

Thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

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