Salve Maria!
Here is a "Virtual Tour" of the Miraculous Shrine of Our Blessed Mother under the invocation Our Lady of Good Counsel of Genazzano. Her feast is commemorated on the 26th of April annually, and we the Heralds of the Gospel are very devoted to this miraculous image of Mother Mary.
On April 25, 1467, the small town of Genazzano was commemorating the feast of St. Mark. Divine Providence had something special in store for this day. About four o’clock in the afternoon, the people who had gathered in Santa Maria Piazza witnessed a truly heavenly spectacle.
“What is that silvery cloud, moving swiftly across the sky and emitting splendorous rays? Where does it come from and where is it going?”
“And those angelic voices? What marvellous music! We have never heard anything like it!”
The puzzlement and excitement of the inhabitants of Genazzano mounted as they watched a luminous cloud gradually descend from the sky and settle alongside an unfinished wall of an old church which was being rebuilt. This church, for centuries dedicated to Our Lady of Good Counsel, was under the care of the religious of St. Augustine.
“Suddenly”—a historian narrates—“the bells of the high campanile, which stood before their eyes, began to peal, though they could see and knew that no human hand touched them. And then, in unison, every church bell in the town began to answer in peals as festive. The crowd were spellbound, ravished, and yet full of holy feeling. With eager haste, they filled the enclosure. They pressed around the spot where the cloud remained.
“Gradually, the rays of light ceased to dart, the cloud began to clear gently away; and then, to their astonishment, there remained disclosed a most beautiful object. It was an image of Our Lady, holding the divine Child Jesus in her arms, and she seemed to smile upon them and to say, ‘Fear not I am your Mother, and you are and shall be my beloved children.’”1
Where had this miraculous fresco come from? In view of such a miracle, some promptly said: “From Paradise!” But, as we shall see, it was not long before the enigma was solved, through two Albanian soldiers who arrived in Rome in search of the portrait of their beloved Patroness.
