The Awesome story of Our Lady of the Grand Return

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This story is about a week or more old and not everyone on here, but I thought I'd post it here anyways:

Our Lady of the Grand Return: A Story of Hope for our Times

February 19, 2020 | James R. Bascom

In the year 636 A.D., a small boat without sails, oars, or sailors floated into the harbor of Boulogne-sur-Mer, a charming port city on the English Channel in northern France.

When the townspeople gathered around it, they discovered that the boat contained a wooden statue of Our Lady holding the Child Jesus in her left hand. She gave an air of divine majesty, yet was calm and maternal. Our Lady’s statue was solemnly carried into the chapel and the newly christened shrine of Notre Dame de Boulogne became one of the most well-known and visited shrines in Christendom. Her feast day is February 20, and is celebrated locally in Boulogne on October 22.

Medieval chroniclers wrote about the many miracles of Our Lady of Boulogne. A chronicle of the life of the holy King of France, Saint Louis IX, includes several references to the miraculous cures obtained through the intercession of Our Lady of Boulogne. She was especially powerful towards sailors and expectant mothers.

England Invades
In 1544, disaster came to Boulogne-sur-Mer. Henry VIII, King of England, declared war on France and sent a fleet with 47,000 troops across the Channel. One of the first cities he attacked was Boulogne, laying siege to it on July 18. Boulogne, although a walled city with very strong defenses, was manned by only 2,000 soldiers. The city surrendered on September 14, 1544.

The invading Protestant army sacked the city. Statues, altars, relics of saints and other sacred objects were hacked to pieces and burned in the streets in an orgy of hatred for the Catholic Faith. Worst of all, the statue of Our Lady of Boulogne was dragged out of the church, mocked and insulted and taken back to England as a trophy of victory. They transformed Our Lady’s medieval shrine into an armory.

The English finally surrendered Boulogne on April 25, 1550, and shortly afterwards returned the statue of Our Lady. The church and city were rebuilt and restored over the following decades and Our Lady’s shrine reacquired much of its original splendor.

Huguenots Attack
The same Revolutionary virus that had infected Europe was preparing bloody rebellion and religious civil war in France with the Huguenots, the French Protestant sect.

During the night of October 11, 1567, hundreds of Huguenot soldiers secretly broke into the church of Our Lady of Boulogne. They wrecked the church and tore out the miraculous statue. Tying a rope around her neck, they dragged her through the muddy streets until they reached the main gate of the old town. There they mocked and blasphemed her.

But when they tried to chop Our Lady into pieces, a miraculous force protected her. They hit her over and over again with swords and hammers, but the statue, as if made of steel, suffered no damage. The miracle infuriated the Protestants even more, and they threw the statue into a great bonfire. Again, Our Lady was miraculously preserved intact amidst the flames. The Huguenots took the statue out of the city and they threw her down a well.

By the following spring, order was restored to the port city. A local Catholic woman, knowing the whereabouts of the miraculous statue, secretly retrieved it and took it to her house. On September 26, 1607, to the acclamations of large crowds of faithful, Our Lady solemnly reentered Boulogne.

Devastation of the French Revolution
The French Revolution began in 1789 with tragic consequences for France and Our Lady of Boulogne.

On November 10, 1793, after the Revolutionaries in Boulogne finished celebrating in a former church the so-called “Feast of the goddess of Reason,” they began an orgy of destruction. Full of hate for the Catholic Faith, they piled numerous statues, paintings, vestments, and relics in the city square and destroyed everything in a giant bonfire.

A mob of thugs armed with picks and screaming the Marseillaise dragged Our Lady of Boulogne to the main square. The sans-culottes put a red Phrygian cap on Our Lady’s head, symbol of the French Revolution, and began to mock and blaspheme her. When they tired of this, they burned her in a great bonfire, dancing like savages in celebration for the victory of “reason” over “superstition.”

Not satisfied with the destruction of the miraculous statue, in 1798 the revolutionary government completely demolished the shrine. Devotion to Our Lady of Boulogne, who for more than eleven centuries had served as a symbol of the mutual love between the French people and the Mother of God, came to an end.

Or did it? Did Our Lady abandon the France that had abandoned her? Or, seeing her children do penance and return to the true Faith, would she make a Grand Return just as she did after the previous disasters, first under the English and then under the Huguenots?

Continue reading the rest of the story here: Our Lady of the Grand Return: A Story of Hope for our Times

You don't see many Catholics on the internet these days, even less who are as proud of their faith as you are. Lots of people my age don't believe in anything these days. So God bless you sir!

Thank you sir! There are more of us around than you think, but we mostly hover around our own sort of cyber-enclaves and don't go out much.

AND G^D SAID...

-- Exodus 20:3-5

The Roman Catholic Church has forgotten its true calling.

That's why even when I was a practicing Catholic, I couldn't understand this Mary fever. It just never made sense to me other than possibly adressing some emotional needs of the worshippers (who possibly had much better relationships with their mothers than fathers and couldn't image the "Father" figure as loving?).

Praying to tree stumps is for druids and other pagans. Praying to idols is for apostates and blasphemers. Christians pray to and worship G^D alone -- Sola Deo.

Whoa, iconoclast!

That's the idea, Magz ...

Quote:

Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and burn their Asherah poles in the fire; cut down the idols of their gods and wipe out their names from those places.

-- Deuteronomy 12:3

This forbids adoration of demonic false gods, not veneration of holy people in Heaven. The problems is, your adoration of God consist of mere prayer and thus, is very difficult to distinguish from mere veneration.

You live in Poland, a country I consider to be one of the greatest on earth at this time. I find it very disturbing that you don't understand the difference between adoration and veneration, it makes me wonder about the state of catechesis in the country, I thought was one of the greatest. Dear Blessed Mother pray for this woman I believe is still a sister of mine and daughter of Thine!

I have a close relationship with Our Lady not because I had a better relationship with my mother, but precisely because I had a worse relationship with my mother and thus, needed Her Maternal care and healing. On a snowy January, I was finally healed of those wounds and am now able fully serve Her and Her Son and God.

Sit laus Deo!

Triumph of Our Lady of the Snows

Last edited by Greatshield17 on 25 Feb 2020, 5:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.

You're the blasphemer, not I.

Blessed be the Great Mother of God, Mary Most Holy!

But are they in Heaven? Only tradition says so, not the Bible. Do you hold mere tradition as pre-eminent over Gospel and Scripture?Shall I post all kinds of sanctimonious presumptions about you? After all, that would only be fair.

I do not pray to dead mortals, nor to images or idols. I pray to G^D. I have no idea as to the the identities of those whom you pray to.

Excuse me, but dead Mary is not "Most Holy" -- G^D is.

Quote:

"Nothing and no one is holy like G^D, no rock mountain like our G^D. Don’t dare talk pretentiously -- not a word of boasting, ever! For G^D knows what’s going on. He takes the measure of everything that happens..."

-- 1 Samuel 2:5

Are you calling Prophet Samuel a liar? Are you declaring Scripture to be untrue? Do the words of men carry more importance to you than the Word of G^D?

Sola Deo, et Sola Scriptura.

Most Holy G^D, I pray for the sake of the Christ, that you would bless me and show me the error of my ways as you bless this man, my brother, and show him the error of his ways.

Amen.

The Infallible Authority of Sacred Scripture, when rightly interpreted, and Sacred Tradition, which is handed down to us by the Apostles, teach that when a person dies in a state of grace with his or her debt for the temporal punishment due to sin paid, that person enters directly into the Beatific Vision as Our Lord promised. The belief that souls enter "soul-sleep" or enter Sheol as they did in the Old Covenant, is a tradition of Man invented by the Seven-Day Adventist group. I reject traditions of Man, I follow the true Traditions of the Apostles of Christ.

As for judgement, it's quite clear from your behaviour, that you're either a Protestant, or a member of a group that holds Protestant beliefs yet vehemently rejects the label of Protestant. Either way, all people who follow Protestant beliefs, with the exception of High-Church Anglicans and High-Church Lutherans, which I doubt you are either of which; reject the belief in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. They reject the belief that the Mass is a re-presentation of the Once and for All Eternal Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, and thus, their services are prayer services, not sacrifices. Thus my claim stands that, the exterior appearances of Protestant Adoration are difficult to distinguish from mere veneration.

Really? That's interesting considering Samuel spent much of his childhood in the Tabernacle which was considered holy, and contained the Ark of the Covenant, which was considered very holy, and was later moved to the temple which was considered holy. Not to mention Samuel was a member of the Nation of Israel, which the Lord declared a holy nation.

And what about that strip of land occupied by Palestine, and the secular, pro-abort, pro-porn State Israel, (which many right-wing Protestants seem to have a weird obsession with, and which quite frankly has none of the holiness the Ancient Israel mentioned above had.) isn't called it the Holy Land? And what the Bible, aren't most Bibles entitled "The Holy Bible?"