The Story of the Divine Child

Let us consider this on the holy house at Loretto: "THE house in which the Holy Family spent so many years in Nazareth is indeed a sacred relic; it still exists and is highly prized. There is a singular history connected with it, and the facts are well authenticated. The Holy House is no longer in Nazareth, for in the year 1291 it was transported entire, by the ministry of angels, to Tersatz on the eastern coast of the Adriatic. At that time the house had disappeared from its foundations and was found in this town declarations are made that angels were seen high up in the air carrying a house. In 1295 the angels again took up the house and carried it across the waters to Loretto, where it now is. The angels themselves seem to consider this house a very precious relic, and they are so interested in it that they have located it on the spot where it is now. The Holy House is not a very large building: it is twenty seven feet long and twelve feet wide; it is of broad. thin red brick. It stands now in the centre of a beautiful church of the walled town of Loretto as we enter the church there stands before us a marble house with rich and artistic carvings around it, portraying the life of the Holy Family in the various scenes for which we have scriptural authority; this marble house screens the real one erntirely, so that you cannot see it or touch it. But why did not the angels keep this Holy House in Nazareth, where it really belongs? We can hardly answer this, except that it showed the interest God Himself felt in this Holy House, and that it might not be desecrated by unholy hands, He had it remoyed to its present place. It certainly required supernatural power to bring it entire all that way from Nazareth, so many hundred miles, to its present position. For in those days the sacrilegious Turk was ruling over that country he was destroying sanctuaries and turning them into mosques, he was persecuting the Christians, of whom many suffered martyrdom. In order, then, to bring it and keep it forever in a Catholic country God permitted this miracle to he wrought. What truth there is in the translation of the Holy House to Loretto we will not attempt to state, or on what grounds it is believed. This we know, that many Pontiffs have believed in the miraculous translation, have granted many indulgences to those who make pilgrimages to it, so that very many who love the Blessed Virgin think themselves happy to go there and pray in that house as it is preserved to-day; they can gain plenary indulgences there, and many miracles have been and are continually wrought there. The Litany of the Blessed Virgin, which we recite so often, has its origin in Loretto.