Saturday’s feast of Our Lady of Czestochowa included celebrations marking the 300th anniversary of the first canonical coronation of the Black Madonna of Jasna Gora.
Pope Francis sent a video message for the occasion, in which he speaks of the closeness of Our Lady. He assures that — as reflected by the scars on the face of this image of Mary — our Mother in heaven suffers with us, because she takes our problems to heart.
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The Holy Father says, “The sacred image, in fact, shows us that Mary is not a distant Queen, who sits on a throne, but the Mother who embraces the Son, and with Him, all of us, her children.”
Francis affirmed: “She is a true Mother, with her visage signed, a Mother who suffers because she truly takes to heart the problems of our lives. She is a Mother who is close by, who never lets us out of her sight – a tender Mother, who holds us by the hand on our daily journey.”
“Let this be the propitious time, in which to feel that no one of us is an orphan.”
(Vatican Radio translation)
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Our Lady of Czestochowa was crowned Queen and Protector of Poland by King John II Casimir in 1652. However, the first canonical coronation of the image was by Clement XI on Sept. 8, 1717, and thus Poland adopted 2017 as the jubilee year to mark the anniversary.
St. Pius X in 1910 and St. John Paul II in 2005 also crowned the image.
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And today we celebrate...