by Br. Alexis Bugnolo
Yes, Virginia, there is a God. And God has a Mother, the Blessed Virgin, whom Christ gave to each of His disciples, as their own heavenly Mother.
The greatest spiritual consolation is having our honest prayers heard.
Years, ago, when I was a hermit at Noto, in Sicily, the Bishop let me reside at the Sanctuary of Our Lady Stairway to Heaven. Grateful for this benefaction, and having noticed that the Stations of the Rosary on the road leading to this Sanctuary were not all in good order, I organized a fund raiser to repair one of the most damaged.
Some months later, while admiring the repair one morning, as I returned from Noto, a man stopped by in his car, along the main road, and asked me why I was praying before that Station, when I should be praying before the one opposite.
Then he told me, how, passing this Station many years ago, he received a devastating phone call: his son was just involved in a life threatening car-accident and had been rushed to the hospital. His wife, hearing this news, had had a heart attack and was being rushed to the hospital, and his father had has a stroke the night before and was in the emergency room.
He collapsed with grief before the First Station, The Annunciation of the Lord, and begged Our Lady to help him. To his utter amazement, just 24 hours later, he heard the news that his son was not gravely injured, his wife would speedily recover and that his father was to be released from emergency care.
From that day onward, he made a point to stop at this Station every day on the way to work, to amend his life, to return to the practice of the Catholic Faith and to live for God and Our Lady.
I myself want to give glory to God and show gratitude for a tremendous favor from the hands of the Virgin.
Beginning in 2004, whenever I found myself in Italy, on the Feast of St. Alexis, my patron saint, I would make a personal pilgrimage to his Basilica on the Aventine, here at Rome, and after venerating his relics, pause to pray before the Icon of Our Lady, kept there. You can see an image of this beautiful icon above.
Each year I prayed that Our Lady help me find a hermitage where I could live my religious life as a Franciscan hermit, confident that when the time was in accord with God’s Plans, She would answer me.
This year, when I came to visit the present property where I have opened the Hermitage of the Holy Cross, I was concerned that perhaps the owners would not allow me to rent it, seeing that there was not even one religious image in the building. As I examined the property, I went into every storage room. And in the upstairs’ closet, I found to my amazement an old holy card, with the image of this Icon on it. On the back, it said: Our Lady of Intercession, venerated in the Basilica of St. Alexis, Rome.
Today, I am in this house, and I have enthroned Our Lady under this title as Queen and Lady of the Place. A place beyond all my hopes and dreams, where I can at last live my religious life with greater observance. And just in time for the 25 anniversary of my perpetual vows.
Sweet Mother of God, thank you! Thank you 1000x 1000x!
How wonderfully Blessed you have been. To find nothing and then come upon this Holy Card is all you need and it reminds us as well , Our Lady is always there if we just ask.
Brother Bugnolo, please pray for me. I never got vaxxed nor did my wife or our 7 year old son. However, he got it from school last week and then I and my wife got it. We just didnt think he would even get it or even pass it to us. I am in hospital now on oxygen, steroids and monoclonal antibodies. I am in Canada and have no access to therapeutics. Please pray for me. My real name is David McKenzie. I was raised a Catholic but fell away over the years.
I will pray for you and your family very much.
So true!
Br. Bugnolo, I rejoice at the blessings the Blessed Virgin has bestowed upon you. I pray for you and the hermitage every day.
What a wonderful experience brother. Our Lady guided you to the place you are meant to be after all.
Brother B-
Thank you for sharing what our Blessed Mother has done for you & the other gentleman’s experience. She truly does hear our prayers.
I’m getting ready to pray a Rosary for your intentions.
Thank you! I will will also for you!
Thank you for sharing this beautiful story with us!
So beautiful! Thank you for reminding us that we have all we need in Our Lady and Her Son and our Beautiful Catholic Faith! All Praise and Glory be to the Holy Trinity!
DCutolo
I have been praying for the conversion of my wife for years. The lack of spiritual unity in my marriage is driving us towards separation. And I worry much since we have 4 children.
Would you be so kind as to pray for her?
Thanks.
John
I too will pray for you both!
Thank you for lifting our hearts to Jesus thru Mary.
You are right. This morning I asked the Virgin Mary to give me an clear sign ( I am very confident, because She usually answer me in a very surprising way!). My request concerned the origin of the Pandemia and the whether the virus is artificial.
The Virgin Mary is very powerful! I believe She gave an answer to everybody! Now we have to use our discernment!
Added comment is here: Added comment: https://www.proselitismodellascienza.it/2021/10/22/morti-solo-per-covid-i-numeri-choc-dal-rapporto-iss-deaths-only-for-covid-the-shocking-numbers-from-the-iss-report/
How beautiful, Brother! Thank you for sharing this wonderful story about our Mother’s love and solicitude!
Like in India we say reverently to the mother – JAI MATA DI (PRAISE BE TO THE MOTHER)
Dearest Brother Bugnolo,
Giggling with joy here at the blessings Our Lady has endowed through our Lord Jesus Christ. One of greatest signs of gratitude is a child-like giggle tickling the spirit of Our Holy Mother and Lord Jesus in what is given…Especially, in the current world of so much corruption and love of sin.
Thank-you for sharing your joy in this blessing. No doubt, The Lady of Intercession has now become the Queen and Lady of the Place. It was meant to be.
My life turned around for the better when I started praying the Rosary in 2017. Our Lady not only helped me get close to Her Son, Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, She also helped me defeat my struggles along the way. Since then, I vowed not to go back to my worldly ways and on to praying the Rosary daily (at least 15 decades) and promote Our Blessed Virgin Mary, Her Rosary and the Brown Scapular. I also retired on July 16th 2021, Feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel. Praying that She will continue to guide and protect me now and at the hour of my death.
Our Lady Refuge of Sinners, pray for us.
Hello Brother,
I am a catholic but recently i’ve been questioning the catholic teachings. if you allow me to ask you few questions, maybe you can help me understand.
-First, why do we need mother Mary to bring us closer to Jesus? She already told us to go to him not go to her. why do we need he to intercede for us. Why do we have to pray the rosary and repeat the hail Mary times and times. Pagans do this to pray to false Gods.
-Second why do we have to have an icon, picture, or statue of a saint or of Jesus? God already told us do not make them “You shall not make for yourself any graven image, nor any manner of likeness, of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth”.
-Third, why did the Roman church change the holly Sabbath which is “Saturday” to Sunday? We know that Sunday was the day of the sun when the Romans used to worship their false Gods.
-Fourth, why do we need a priest as an intermediary to confess our sins to. Aren’t we supposed to have a direct relationship with God? The church is telling us that no, only through the priest Jesus can forgive our sins. And Isn’t it better to go ask forgiveness directly from the person i wronged? By having a priest as an intermediary here i become dependent on him. that is a type of control.
Thank you for your help and sorry for my long questions i appreciate your answer.
The essence of devotion to the Mother of Jesus is to remember Her words, “Do whatever He tells you” That is why the last thing Our Lord did upon the cross was to give Her to us as our Mother in the order of grace. With Mary we remember that God is our Father, Jesus our Savior and brother, and that we need to be pure and humble to be His true disciples. All Christians who attempt to be such without Mary end up in apostasy because of pride and presumption. There is no other way to Christ than with this spirit which led Our Lady to say, Let it be done unto me as you have said. If we accept the truth of the Gospel then we cannot take Our Lady out of the Christian religion. Mediation is not an obstacle as the proud lecherous reformers of the Reformation claimed, because mediation in the Biblical sense is what we would call networking today. Without Jesus we cannot connect to the Father. And rejecting or ignoring Mary we cannot connect to Jesus. Mary is not a god, and not all prayer is adoration. Pray specifically is requesting and asking. And we can ask not only God directxly, but ask friends in Heaven and on Earth to pray with us to God. That is Mary’s role as the Mother of all Christians. While it is true that a sincere prayer is sufficent, being weak and often beset by many sensory and physical distractions and temptations it is good exercise to pray the same prayer over and over. We need to ingrain Christianity in our souls and minds to as to extirpate the demonic influences which culture ingrain in our minds and bodies by pagan living. Since God the Son became a Man in the womb of the Virgin, it has pleased God that through images of His Son and His Saints we should remember and recognize how to worship God in body and soul, since we are body and soul, both must worship God. We do not regard images to be gods or magical, any more than the photo of your wife in your wallet is borne around for magical reasons. We do this to rememer, because remembering is one of the chief commands of the Christian religion, as Christ said at the Last Supper: do this in memory of Me. The Roman Church did not change the sabbath to Sunday, rather, the Son of God by rising on Sunday began the New Age and the new calendar of the children of light. We worship Christ on Sunday, the sabbath obligation being fulfilled by Christ has passed away, and in the New Covenant Sunday, not Saturday is the day to worship the true God, Father and Son and Holy Spirit. We need a priest to intermediate, because Christ our High Priest ordained the Apostles and directed them to ordain men in every place who receiving the mark of His High Priesthood would network us with Him in every age and place. There is no Christian religion without that system of networking because He created it. And if He is your Divine Master, not just a your favorite guru, then you have no problems with that. It is true that some can repent of their sins witihout confessing to a priest, but most cannot and most do not eve know how to, so again, networking with an expert helps 99%, plus there is this added blessing, that for the sake of humbling ourselves before His representative on earth, He forgives us more abundantly, blesses us more generously, and fortifies us more potently, because God resists the proud, but to the humble He gives grace.
As for the icon itself, is it not the same image as the Santa Maria della Concezione in Rome’s Campo Marzio? There is also the “Pompallier Madonna” painted copy of that icon made somewhere between 1650 and 1850. Another lookalike is to be found at the Barberini Palace Museum.
The most famous of these is Santa Maria in Aracoeli on the Capitoline Hill. The Aracoeli and Campo Marzio icons portray a similar “Madonna Avvocata” (Our Lady Interceding) but with a golden crown added latterly.
What is curious and unique about the Sant’Alessio Mary is that she presents a star-studded tunic with prominent pearl fibula, i.e. a signature brooch once exclusively worn by Byzantine Emperors. Her hands are tiny and out of proportion, the left one disconcertingly designed. Typically, iconic hands and faces appear long and slender, as in the style of Mannerism revitalized by El Greco, for example. Moreover, there is no MP and OY (Greek, for Mother of God), typically found in the upper left and right hand corners of holy Marian icons.
As far as I remember, this icon of our Lady is from the 13th/14th centuries. But perhaps at the website of the Basilica you can find more information. The brown color, inasmuch as I understand it, is the oxidized original color: imperial purple, perhaps?
uh oh, if imperial purple was the original color, then, given the imperial pearl fibula, might this not be an icon of a Byzantine empress? The golden halo is not a problem either, since original mosaics show them on Constantine, Pulcheria, Zeno, Justinian, Heraklios, Irene, Theodora, Alexius I and IV Angelan, and a bevy of other Byzantines “born to the purple” and considered by the Greek Orthodox to be bona fide saints. They say that the imperial power of the Theotokos icon was connected to the imperial power of the reigning “Augusta” or “Augustus.”
The Basilica of St. Alexis at Rome was once part of the Monastery of the same name, which was confided to Greek Monks around the year 1000 A. D.. It was very wealthy and owned most of the farmland south of Rome. It was here that the devotion to St. Alexis which was famous in Syria was brought. The Basilica is on the Aventine which was the ancient home of Senators and Consuls, and is still a very posh neighborhood.
Hello Br. Alexis. I can’t describe to you how I felt reading this article. At first, I thought you addressed it to me as my name is also Virginia. But your story was saddening to me. It spoke to me of the spiritual journey I am in now and how I have consistently failed to devote the ample time to bagging Our Lady for Her intercession. I have no doubt at all about the powerof Her intercession but I am ashamed that I keep running around looking for help.
Thank you very much for reminding me that I have a Mother who is always ready to come to my help. And I thank God too for answering your prayer, showing you the way and inspiring you to encourage others. God bless.
What a beautiful icon of Our Blessed Mother! It is clearly inspired by Byzantine era iconography (if not of the same epoch), and very likely brought from the East. Your story here, including the holy icon, reminds me of the Third Secret of Fatima in which Lucia saw the Blessed Mother suspended before the Angel (as if interceding and intervening) holding out her right hand with a powerful radiance coming out of it. Then a big Cross (symbol of the hermitage of the Holy Cross?) sits above a mountain, where she sees a “bishop dressed in white” who seemed like “the holy father” walking up toward the big Cross but then gets slayed along with clergy and religious who perhaps intend to flee to the hermitage? In any case, what came to mind relating the big Cross in the Third Secret pertains to the mission of the hermitage, which is certainly one of interceding for the Church alongisde the Blessed Mother of Intercession, and also, as the Cross represents in the Third Secret: a place of refuge for seminarians, clergy or religious, who are called to be witnesses of Truth in this terrible age of great tribulation.