A Snowfall in Summer: The Dedication of Our Lady of the Snows

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The heat clung to Rome like a fever. It was the kind of August night when even stone walls seemed to sweat, and sleep came only in restless fragments. Yet somewhere on the Esquiline Hill, an old Roman couple knelt beside a flickering oil lamp, whispering prayers into the darkness.

They had no heirs, no children to carry on their name. Only wealth—and the question of what to do with it. They wanted to honor God, but how? To whom could they entrust their legacy?

“Show us, Blessed Mother,” the wife murmured.

That night, something extraordinary happened. Both the husband and wife awoke from a dream unlike any other: the Virgin Mary herself had appeared to them, asking for a church to be built in her honor—on a spot she would mark with snow.

Snow. In Rome. In August.

And as dawn broke over the golden rooftops, Rome stirred to an impossible sight: fresh snow blanketing the summit of the Esquiline Hill. Word traveled fast. Pope Liberius himself had had the same vision. Wrapped in awe and solemnity, the Holy Father walked barefoot into the snowfall and traced the outline of the new church into the cold whiteness, as if sketching heaven into the earth.

It would be a house for the Mother of God.

Years passed. The miracle became legend, but the church remained—completed not in the days of Pope Liberius, but later, under Pope Sixtus III, following the great Council of Ephesus in 431 AD. That council had declared with thunderous clarity what the faithful had always believed: that Mary is Theotokos, God-bearer, not simply the mother of Christ’s humanity, but of the Word made flesh.

The basilica that rose from the snow became St. Mary Major, the first Marian church in the West, a mosaic-covered testimony that Christ is fully God and fully man—and that His mother, chosen from before the foundations of the world, bore the very Author of Life.

Even today, step into that church and you’ll hear it. Not in words, but in stones. In golden mosaics that shimmer like eternity. In the reliquary that holds fragments of the Holy Crib of Bethlehem. In the hush that falls over pilgrims who enter its ancient doors - history preserved in stone. From the ancient mosaics depicting scenes from Christ’s infancy to the reliquary holding the fragments of the Holy Crib, St. Mary Major stands as a living testament to the Church’s unwavering belief in the divine maternity of Mary.

The dedication of this basilica—born of both legend and doctrinal truth—remains a milestone in the Church’s proclamation that Jesus Christ is truly God and truly man, and that Mary, His mother, is rightly honored as Mother of God.

“To affirm that Mary is the Mother of God is to defend the truth of the Incarnation.” – Council of Ephesus, 431

“Mary is the Mother of God because her Son is divine. To deny her that title is to divide Christ.” – St. Cyril of Alexandria, Council of Ephesus, 431