Today is the feast of Our Lady Consolata.
Tradition has it that the image of the Mother of God “Consolata” was found near the Church of Saint Andrea by a young blind man from Briançon (France), who went looking for the image after a vision.
As a result of his discovery of this miraculous image, which had belonged to the original church in its early centuries and had since been lost, the blind man regained his sight. The image, from that moment on, has been seen as a sign of the divine mercy, as a vehicle for divine grace and miracles through faith.
I was probably 13 years' old when I met the first Consolata Missionary. He had come to our home to confess my grandmother who was sick. It was two years' later when I really met the Consolata Missionaries. We were looking for a priest who would journey with our youth group. That was also the beginning of a personal journey as they opened our eyes to the reality of the missionary dimension of the Church somehow unknown to us those days. The day after I celebrated my 18th birthday I joined the Consolata seminary...
The Consolata Shrine is in Turin (Northern Italy). I found the link to this video in the webpage of the Shrine (www.laconsolata.org).
