Beads of Joy Blog II (2025 - 2026)

May 21 Our Lady of Vladimir (1115) & Our Lady of Sweat (1611) Photo created by Google AI Image Creator. "My strength is dried up like a potsherd; my tongue cleaves to my jaws." - Psalm 22:15 The Icon That Turned Back Armies Among all the icons of the Eastern Church, the Vladimir Mother of God may be the most beloved and most storied. Painted in Constantinople in the early twelfth century, it is of the type called Eleusa, the Tenderness, in which the Christ Child presses His cheek against His Mother's face in an embrace of infinite intimacy. It is not a theological diagram; it is love made visible. The icon came to Russia around 1131 and was eventually enshrined in the Dormition Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin. Three times, according to the tradition of Russia, it was carried around the walls of Moscow as enemy armies approached: the Tatars under Tamerlane in 1395, under Edigu in 1408, and under Mahmet-Girei in 1521. Three times the armies turned back without eng...

May 20 Dedication of La Ferté Burgundy (1113) Photo created by Google AI Image Creator. "Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain." - Psalm 127:1 The First Daughter of Cîteaux In 1113, in the rolling hills of Burgundy in eastern France, the very first daughter house of the great Abbey of Cîteaux was founded at a place called La Ferté. This was the beginning of the great Cistercian expansion - within a generation, hundreds of monasteries would be planted across Europe. La Ferté was the eldest child of a movement that would reshape the spiritual landscape of the medieval world. The dedication of its church to Our Lady was more than tradition. It was a declaration of identity. The Cistercians understood themselves as Mary's order in a particular way. Their white habit was said to honor her purity. Their churches, stripped of elaborate ornament, were spaces of stark, luminous simplicity, the architectural equivalent of Mary's own humble life. ...

May 19 Our Lady of Flines Douai (1279) Photo created by Google AI Image Creator. "Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother." - Matthew 12:50 The Mary of the Interior Life In 1279, in the region around Douai in what is now northern France, near the Belgian border, a Cistercian abbey dedicated to Our Lady was flourishing at a place called Flines. The Abbey of Flines was a house of Cistercian women, contemplatives who had given their lives to prayer, silence, and the interior life, all under the special patronage of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Cistercians had a particular and beautiful relationship with Our Lady. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, the great twelfth-century doctor and the most eloquent Marian preacher of the medieval Church, had imprinted on his order a deep, almost filial tenderness toward Mary. Every Cistercian church was dedicated to her. Every monk and nun looked to her as their special protector and model. Our Lady of Fl...

May 18 Our Lady of Bonport Abbey (1190) Photo created by Google AI Image Creator. "How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts." - Psalm 84:1 The Good Harbor The Abbey of Bonport, Bon Port, the Good Harbor, stands in the Seine Valley in Normandy, France. Its founding in 1190 is bound up with a dramatic royal story. King Richard I of England, Richard the Lionheart, was nearly drowned in the Seine River at this very location. As he struggled in the water, he cried out to Our Lady, vowing to build a monastery in her honor if she would save his life. He survived, and he kept his vow. The Cistercian abbey of Bonport was founded and dedicated to Our Lady, the Good Harbor who had rescued the king from the river's grip. The name says everything: Mary is the safe harbor. The Good Port. The place where souls find shelter from the storms that life and the world send against them. Bonport Abbey flourished for centuries as a center of Cistercian prayer in Normandy. The ...

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 ...