HOMILY FOR VOTIVE MASS OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY – YOUTH PILGRIMAGE FOR THE JUBILEE OF HOPE 2025
SFORZA CHAPEL, BASILICA OF SANTA MARIA MAGGIORE, 30 JULY 2025
Many years ago I saw a very beautiful image of The Virgin at Prayer in the Dominican church of St Clemente near the Colosseum—a wonderful church we will be visiting in the coming days. When I got back home, I discovered the same painting in the Art Gallery of New South Wales near our cathedral! Was I seeing double? Had I stolen the painting and brought it back with me to Australia in my luggage? Or had I uncovered a great art fraud, with either Rome or Sydney displaying a mere replica? No, both were painted by Giovanni-Battista Salvi or ‘Sassoferrato’ as he was known. And it turns out that this great baroque artist was a big time copycat, at least of his own work, even a cheat. He did multiple, almost identical images and sold them to different patrons as if each was the original! And so there are ‘originals’ of the Virgin at Prayer, with slight differences, on display in Rome, Sydney, Auckland, Bergamo, London, Melbourne, Strasbourg, Stockholm, Venice and Warsaw.[1] It’s also available as a coffee mug, T-shirt or beach towel…
In Sassoferrato’s Virgin at Prayer—or should we say Virgins at Prayer—Mary is a young Italian beauty with a perfect complexion, a red tunic and ultramarine cloak, made from ground lapis lazuli, and hands together in prayer. What moment does the work capture? Well, we know Mary was conceived without original sin, never sinned herself, was ‘full of grace’ and overshadowed at the Annunciation by the Holy Spirit while she was at prayer. We know she pondered prayerfully as she received Jesus into her womb at the Incarnation, carried Him in the ciborium of her body to her cousin Elizabeth, and brought Him forth into the world in Bethlehem, placing Him in that crib that is the principal relic of this great basilica. We know she prayed anxiously and pondered prayerfully as she and Joseph protected the Boy from Herod, did for Him all that the Law required, searched for Him when He went missing, and brought Him up. We know she shadowed His public ministry and prayed to Him directly at the wedding feast at Cana. We know she joined the apostles in praying for the coming of the Holy Spirit in the lead up to Pentecost. No doubt she prayed everyday, many times a day! So there are many occasions that Sassoferrato might have been capturing.
Such perfect prayerful discipleship might make Mary seem rather distant from us in our broken humanity and imperfect prayer. Yet the painter makes clear that she is very much one of us, with her looks, her clothes, her gestures. She does not even have a halo.
Another artistic representation of Mary is to be found in the nearby Borghese chapel. Above its altar is the miraculous icon of Salus Populi Romani, Protectress of the Roman People. Throughout his pontificate, Pope Francis came to pray before it, especially before and after his apostolic journeys. When the world was ravaged by COVID-19, he had her brought to St Peter’s Square for a prayer service, just as his illustrious predecessor, St Gregory the Great, had done in the 6th century, when the icon processed through the streets of Rome to invoke God’s protection from the plague. Pope Francis asked to be buried nearby.
It’s origins are contested but tradition attributes the icon to St Luke who interviewed Our Lady for the infancy narrative of his Gospel: supposedly he had her sit for her portrait at the same time, using the Holy Family’s own kitchen table as the canvas. In the 4th century St Helena identified it in the Holy Land, along with Christ’s crib and the True Cross, and brought them to her son, the Emperor Constantine, for safekeeping in Rome. Pope St John Paul II had a copy made of the icon to travel with the World Youth Day Cross, and in 2007-08 it made its way all around Australia. Another copy is often used for outdoor Masses in St Peters Square. So Sassoferrato wasn’t the only Marian copycat!
Why so many images of Mary? Why pray before them? Why carry them about in times of need? Well, ever since the Annunciation, when an angel called her “full of grace”; ever since the Visitation, when a cousin called her “Mother of my Lord” or Queen Mother, and she responded that “all generations will call me Blessed”; ever since the Nativity, when the Magi showered gifts on Mother and Child, along with their prayers; ever since the Wedding Feast of Cana, when people asked her for help; ever since a woman in a crowd cried out “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that suckled you!”; ever since the Crucifixion, when as we heard in our Gospel (Jn 19:25-27) she stood faithfully by her Son’s side and was given to the Church represented by John; ever since Pentecost, when she received the Holy Spirit along with the rest of the Church; ever since her assumption body and soul into heaven—ever since, Christians have thought of Mary as a kind of prayer factory, and sought her intercession in times of difficulty. We turn to her as one of us, who knows from the inside what it’s like to suffer or be needy; but we turn to her also as the best of us, and Mother of our Lord, confident she can get those prayers answered! Every Marian image says to us what Jesus said today to His young friend John: “Behold your mother”.
For like any true mother, Mary cares for her children. She accompanies, intercedes, protects. She does not replace Jesus, she brings us to Him. The only direction Mary ever gave in public revelation was at Cana, when she said “Do whatever Jesus tells you” (Jn 2:5). It was said out of tenderness for us by a mother who knows best. So it is that in Australia, we honour her as ‘Help of Christians’, for when there were no priests or sacraments in colonial Australia, Catholics turned to her for strength and protection. She is our Patroness to this day.
Which is why, in St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney, though we have no miraculous icon or Byzantine mosaic, we can boast a very beautiful statue of her as Help of Christians, stained glass windows of her under many titles, and a much-loved painting of her as Our Lady of the Southern Cross, copied for Domus Australia.
In becoming faithful disciples of Christ, we each become like her: not photocopies of her, not slavish imitations by art fraudsters, but individual artworks as beautiful and prayerful as Mary, each with its own character. And so, dear young friends and fellow-pilgrims, not only during this time of pilgrimage in Rome, but throughout the pilgrimage of your life ahead: as children of God and of Mary, turn to your Blessed Mother for inspiration, for intercession, for a dose of sheer beauty, and let her lead you always to her divine and human Son. A Son who loves you enough to share everything with you, even His Mum, and so make you His adopted sister or brother!
[1] In the Basilica of San Clemente in Rome, the Art Gallery if New South Wales in Sydney, the Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki in Auckland, the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, the National Gallery in London, the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Strasbourg, the National Museum of Stockholm, Sta Maria della Salute Church in Venice and the Palace Museum in Wilanów Warsaw.
INTRODUCTION TO VOTIVE MASS OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY
YOUTH PILGRIMAGE FOR THE JUBILEE OF HOPE 2025
SFORZA CHAPEL, BASILICA OF SANTA MARIA MAGGIORE, 30 JULY 2025
Welcome my young friends to the first great basilica in the world built to honour the Blessed Virgin Mary after she was declared Mother of God by the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus in 431. It is one of the four major papal basilicas with holy doors for receiving the Jubilee indulgence.
In this church are the putative Crib of the Baby Jesus; magnificent mosaics of Christ and the Virgin as a Byzantine emperor and empress; the miraculous icon of Salus Populi Romani (about which more later); the tomb of St Jerome, the great Scripture scholar; and the ceiling gilded with the first gold brought back from the New World by Christopher Columbus. Here, too, are buried several popes, including the Counter-Reformation Dominican Saint Pius V, who promulgated the first Catechism, the Tridentine Rite of Mass, and the 15 mysteries of the Rosary; and most recently Pope Francis.
This particular chapel was commissioned by the Sforza brothers, both cardinals, designed by Michelangelo and further decorated in subsequent centuries. Amidst so much beauty we contemplate the beauty of God, His mother and His saints, and repent of the times that we have damaged His artwork that is our souls, with our sins…