Beads of Joy Blog II (2025 - 2026)

May 17 Our Lady of Tears Spoleto, Italy (1494) Photo created by Google AI Image Creator. "Jesus wept." - John 11:35 A Mother Who Weeps Is a Mother Who Cares In 1494, Italy was gripped by fear. The French king Charles VIII was marching his army southward through the peninsula, threatening upheaval and invasion across the land. The people of Spoleto, that ancient Umbrian city clinging to its hillside in central Italy, watched the news and feared what was coming. And then, according to the tradition of this city, an image of Our Lady began to weep. In the Catholic tradition, a weeping Madonna is never simply a curiosity. It is understood as a sign of maternal compassion, a mother's tears shed for the suffering of her children, a call to repentance and prayer before greater tragedy arrives. Mary does not weep from weakness. She weeps from love. Her tears are not despair. They are the most intense form of intercession. A shrine was established in Spoleto around the weepi...

May 16 - Apparition of Our Lady to St. Catherine of Alexandria Photo created by Google AI Image Creator. "I have chosen you and have not rejected you." - Isaiah 41:9 She Comes to the Imprisoned Saint Catherine of Alexandria is one of the most celebrated martyrs of the early Church, a young noblewoman of extraordinary learning who, according to tradition, confounded fifty pagan philosophers in debate, converted the Empress of Rome, and was ultimately martyred under the Emperor Maxentius around the year 305. Before her martyrdom, during her imprisonment, the tradition holds that Our Lady appeared to Catherine with the Christ Child, consoling her, strengthening her, and promising her the crown of heaven. It was a visitation entirely in keeping with who Mary is; she comes especially to those who suffer for the faith. She comes to the imprisoned. She comes to the ones who are forgotten by the world because they would not compromise what they believed. Catherine had used her br...

May 15 Our Lady of France (1860) Photo created by Google AI Image creator. "Behold, I make all things new." - Revelation 21:5 Despite Everything, We Are Still Yours France has been called the Elder Daughter of the Church. The nation that built Chartres and Reims, that produced Saint Bernard and Saint Louis, that gave the world the Miraculous Medal and Lourdes, France has had a relationship with Our Lady that runs deep and long and complicated. Because France has also had its revolutions. Its anti-clericalism. Its passionate attempts to dismantle the Church from within its own borders. The nineteenth century saw all of it: the Revolution's aftermath, Napoleonic upheaval, powerful movements that wanted religion stripped from public life. And yet in that same turbulent century, France received some of the most remarkable Marian gifts in history. Our Lady appeared to Catherine Labouré in 1830, giving the world the Miraculous Medal. She appeared at La Salette in 1846, ...

May 14 Our Lady of Bavaria (1330) Photo created by Google AI Image Creator. "He has remembered His mercy to His servant Israel." - Luke 1:54 Mary in the Heart of Germany Bavaria, that great southern German state of mountain valleys, Baroque churches, and centuries of unbroken Catholic faith, has always been deeply Marian. And in 1330, a formal celebration of Our Lady of Bavaria marked one of the early expressions of something this region understood from its soul: Mary is not merely a universal figure of the universal Church. She is also Bavaria's own mother, present in its particular landscape, and its history, and most importantly, its people. The fourteenth century was a time of Marian flourishing across Europe. The great Gothic churches were rising. Confraternities of Our Lady were forming in every town and city. A spirituality of tender, personal devotion to Mary, shaped by the Cistercians and the Franciscans, was weaving itself into the fabric of daily life. The ...

May 13 Our Lady of Fatima Portugal (1917) Photo created by Google AI Image Creator. "I am the handmaid of the Lord." - Luke 1:38 She Came Because She Loves Us On May 13, 1917, three shepherd children were tending their flock in a hollow of land in Portugal called the Cova da Iria, the Cove of Peace, when a woman appeared above a small oak tree. She was clothed in white and gold, more brilliant than the sun, and she looked at Lucia, Francisco, and Jacinta with a love that silenced every fear. She asked if they were willing to offer themselves to God, to accept suffering as reparation for sin and for the conversion of sinners. These three children, ages seven to ten, said yes on the spot. That is what innocence does in the presence of grace. Our Lady told them she would return on the thirteenth of each month for six months. She asked them to pray the Rosary daily. She spoke of peace, of penance, and of the dangers ahead for the world if people did not turn back to God. And ...

May 12 Our Lady of Power Aubervilliers, France Photo created by Google AI Image Creator. "He has shown strength with His arm." - Luke 1:51 The Greatest Power in the Universe Just north of Paris, in the town of Aubervilliers, the faithful gathered for centuries at a shrine called Notre-Dame des Vertus, Our Lady of Powers, or Our Lady of Virtues. The origins of the devotion reach back to the early medieval period, when an image of Our Lady was enshrined in the parish church and the surrounding community began to experience what they understood as miraculous intervention. By the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, processions from Paris to Aubervilliers had become a regular feature of the region's Catholic life. The city came to the suburb. The grand came to the humble. All of them came for the same reason. The title of Power, or Virtues, speaks to something the world misunderstands about Mary. She is not powerful in the way that armies are powerful, or wealth is pow...

May 11 Our Lady of Aparecida Patroness of Brazil Photo created by Google AI Image Creator. "He has filled the hungry with good things." - Luke 1:53 Found in the River In October 1717, three fishermen on the Paraíba River in Brazil cast their nets again and again and caught nothing. Then one of them pulled something from the water, a small clay statue, dark and headless, worn smooth by the river. They cast again and brought up the head. They fitted the pieces together, placed the image in the boat, and cast once more. The nets were filled with fish. The statue was a small image of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, probably made by a Franciscan friar decades earlier and lost in the river. But the fishermen understood what had happened: she had made herself known. She had come to them in their emptiness. In their nothing-caught-all-night, she had shown up. A shrine was built. Pilgrims came. The dark little clay image, humble, headless when found, reassembled by fishermen...

May 10 Our Lady of Saussaie Paris (1305) Photo created by Google Image Creator. "Behold your mother." - John 19:27 She Comes to the Quiet Places In the year 1305, just beyond the crowded streets of medieval Paris, in a grove of willows on the outskirts of the city Saussaie being the old French word for a place of willows, a Marian devotion took root that would draw pilgrims from the surrounding region for generations. It was not a cathedral, or a basilica. It was a grove of trees, a quiet place outside the noise of the city, where someone encountered Our Lady and something holy began. Medieval Paris was already a city of breathtaking Marian devotion. Notre-Dame was rising on its island. The Sainte-Chapelle blazed with light. Confraternities of Our Lady met in every parish. And yet she also appeared in a willow grove. In the ordinary edge of things. Just beyond where the city ended and the quieter world began. This is who she is. She is not only found in the grandest cathedral...

May 9 Our Lady of Loreto Photo created by Google AI Image Creator. "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us." - John 1:14 The Smallest Room in the World In the Marche region of Italy, on a laurel-covered hill above the Adriatic coast, there is a small stone room enclosed within marble, enshrined within a magnificent church, visited by millions across seven centuries. It is not large. It is not grand. By every external measure, it is just a room. According to the cherished tradition of the Church, it is the room of the Annunciation, the house of Nazareth, where Gabriel spoke, where Mary said yes, and where the Son of God took human flesh. The Santa Casa, the Holy House, was transported miraculously to this Italian hilltop in 1294 when the Crusader presence in the Holy Land collapsed. Popes have knelt here. Saints have wept here. Emperors have sent treasures here. Bramante designed the marble casing. Sansovino and Raphael and others of the Renaissance's greatest gave their...