photo: vaticannews.va
Dear listeners, in the first week of August, the calendar marks the feast of the Consecration of the Basilica of Our Lady of Rome, which is linked to a more interesting religious practice: veneration of Our Lady of the Snows. Legend tells of the miraculous marking of the site on a hill in Rome. After prayers from the local citizens as to what pious work they could support with their money, snow covered the Esquiline hill in August, and this unusual weather event then led to the laying out of the plan of the future Marian temple.
The refreshing story in the hot summer found echoes in the Czech environment and gradually places were created that either refer to the original Roman legend or adapt it to the experience of local believers. Thus we find stories of miraculous healings or help from evil, which led to the founding of many churches and chapels dedicated to the so-called Our Lady of the Snows. Among them are the monumental churches on Jungmann Square in Prague or Republic Square in Olomouc, as well as churches, chapels, and pilgrimage sites all over the country: for example, Kašperské Hory, Horní Police near Česká Lípa, Hvězda in the Broumov region, the wooden church in Velké Karlovice, or the pilgrimage site Malenisko in the Zlín region.
Our Lady of the Snows is, of course, not a biblical figure or a theological great. We can see the snow as a kind of reminder of God's action in our lives. As a contemplative effort to capture the uncapturable... as an answer to a particular prayer. And so we need not even be concerned about the varied renditions of these stories, whether linguistic or artistic, as long as we see them in a contemporary context. Thus, even today, we can visit some places and take away spiritual strength without being in harmony with the decoration of the time in the form of folk artifacts such as statues, pictures or even symbols of healed organs... Many of these may carry important messages about spiritual experience that are otherwise difficult to communicate.
My interest in this theme was sparked by a church that was at first completely unremarkable, even a bit boring. I discovered it during my travels to Upper Austria: a few kilometres from the Czech border, the church of Maria Schnee - Our Lady of the Snows - stands by the main road. Its location reminds me of a highway chapel, and I always liked to stop there. It's a quiet, well-kept place, open to the public. You can sit inside or enjoy the view of the countryside: deep forests stretch out on the horizon towards the Czech Republic. Silence, peace, just a picturesque place of meditation, I always told myself, and I loved coming back here. And then one day I discovered a memorial stone with an inscription behind the church and the dramatic story of the displacement of the Šumava and Nový Hrad borderlands began to unfold before me. I read the history of the place and finally explored the Czech forests through binoculars... It didn't take much work to discover the church tower on the horizon. Yes, you guessed right, the tower of the Church of Our Lady of the Snows!
It is a place of pilgrimage at Svatý Kamen nad Malší and the legend tells - how else - about the apparition of the Madonna sitting on the stone. The stone later split in two and the two parts began to move away from each other. When they are so far apart that a horse-drawn carriage passes between them, the end of the world is said to come... The pilgrimage site began to flourish especially in the Baroque period: there was a healing spring, a chapel, a church, even a monastery. The spiritual activities of the Poor Clares, the Cistercians, the Redemptorists and the Petrini were carried out here, but since the 1950s the whole area in the border zone has been gradually devastated.
When the surrounding villages were closed down and the German-speaking inhabitants moved to Austria, many suffered separation from their original homeland, even the spiritual one. Svatý Kámen had been the spiritual centre of their ancestors for centuries and they had a close relationship with it. And because the Iron Curtain prevented them from visiting the pilgrimage site for a long time, they built a new church on the Austrian side in the 1980s. As the crow flies, the two churches are only five kilometres apart; by car it is a 10-minute drive through Dolní Dvořiště. But back then, during the Cold War, these were two continents that did not intersect... Although, one of the most viable routes for refugees from Czechoslovakia was across the Malše River, which forms the state border here. The terrain here is not as mountainous as to the west in Sumava or to the east in the Novohrad Mountains.
With the fall of the regime came the resurrection of the pilgrimage site at Svatý Kamen. With the help of the Czech and Austrian authorities and financial donations from individuals, the church was rededicated in 1993 and became a symbol of a new miracle: freedom, open borders and shared faith. Today's pilgrim can visit both holy places with a touch of snow and remember the turbulent fate of the local people and their unbreakable faith in goodness.
When the highway soon passes by the Austrian church, I will still continue to drive down to my "highway chapel" of Our Lady of the Snows to give thanks for the gifts we receive in a free country and to pray for those who live in oppression and unfreedom. That's why I'm happy to remain a pilgrim, even though I probably won't see snow here in August.
Adéla Muchová is a pastoral theologian and spiritual accompanist at the Catholic University of Linz.
vaticannews.va/gnews.cz-roz
https://www.vaticannews.va/cs/vatikan/news/2024-08/podcast-adela-muchova-svata-mista-na-snehu.html
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