March being the month of the Annunciation, the meditation on the1st Saturday of the month will focus on this joyful mystery. As the Annunciation took place in the house of the Blessed Virgin in Nazareth, this1st Saturday will be celebrated in two of the world’s great shrines dedicated to the holy house of Nazareth: Walsingham (UK) and Loreto (Italy).
The Walsingham shrine, 150 km north of London, is the main Marian shrine in Great Britain. It was here, in 1061, that Our Lady asked to be honored by building a copy of her house in Nazareth. For mysterious reasons, this was completed by angels. This shrine, known as the “Nazareth of England”, prefigures the miraculous translation of the real house of Nazareth that would take place two and a half centuries later in Italy.
The shrine of Loreto in Italy is where the house of the Blessed Virgin in Nazareth was miraculously transported to escape the conquering Muslims in Palestine. While they had taken control of the holy places, including the Holy Sepulchre, God did not allow the house of the Blessed Virgin to be touched. The miraculous translation of the Holy House was carried out by angels who moved it to Italy on December 10, 1294. It’s worth noting the wonderful coincidence of this date with the request for the 1st Saturdays of Fatima, which was also made on December 10. In the Church’s liturgical calendar, December 10 has been the (non-binding) feast of the transfer of the Holy House of Nazareth for several centuries.
Today, the Holy House is housed in a magnificent basilica, and for 700 years has been one of the great shrines dedicated to the Blessed Virgin. During a pilgrimage to Loreto, John Paul II underlined the importance of the Holy House, which “played a very active part in the life of the Christian people for almost the whole of the second millennium”.
Numerous explicit acts of the Holy See confirm the translation of the House of Nazareth: the bulls of Paul II, Leo X, Paul III, Paul IV and Sixtus V; the decree of Urban VIII, in 1632, to establish the feast in the March of Ancona; that of Innocent XII, in 1699, to approve the Office; finally the indults of Benedict XIII and his successors, to extend this feast to a large number of Catholic provinces. (source: Dom Guéranger, the famous 19th-century Benedictine monk whose cause for beatification is underway, and to whom Pope Francis recently paid tribute).