Today, July 18, 2024, marks the 368th anniversary of the apparition of the Virgin Mary in the Church of St. Maria Greca, where the mortal remains of the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta also rest.
The church was built precisely because of the prodigious discovery of the icon of the Greek Madonna on July 18, 1656. The liberation of Corato from the plague was attributed to that event. The image of the city's patroness is still kept in the shrine below.
“Saint Maria Greca, as a Divine Samaritan, trusted the children of the land of Corato so much that she sowed in it, drop by drop, the truths of the Divine Will.
She has established her dwelling among us since 1656 and wanted to call her little daughter of the Divine Will, Luisa, next to her, so that this presence would show us the way to “Fiat Voluntas Tua” and be a model of life for us to follow.
May Mary, an example of trust in God, awaken this fundamental virtue in the hearts of all of us and in the whole Association so that we too can be witnesses of trust in divine providence in the world around us.
Moreover, Mary with the bell, which we see represented in the miraculous picture, calls all of us to the Fiat, just as it happens for Her when the Divine Fiat called Her to perform Her Acts in the Divine Will.
In the fifteenth meditation of the Queen of Heaven, our Heavenly Mother teaches us that the little bell that called Her was the Fiat; She would hear the mysterious sound of the Divine Will which called Her in the sound of the little bell, and her Heart would rejoice and run to go wherever the Fiat was calling Her. For the Virgin Mary, the little bell and my actions, even the most humble ones, were joys and feasts which the Divine Fiat prepared for Her; and extending Itself also outside of Her, It called Her to extend Its Will in order to form Its Kingdom in the smallest of her acts.
And our celestial Mother acted like the sea, which hides everything it possesses, and lets nothing but water be seen. So She did: She hid everything in the immense sea of the Divine Fiat; She saw nothing but seas of Divine Will, and therefore all things brought her joys and feasts.
Brothers and sisters as we cross the threshold of this Marian temple, let us be conquered by that flow of Trinitarian love within which we find the trusting heart of Mary. We turn to her beseeching her to extend also in us the sea of the Divine Fiat so that we, as her children, may see and know nothing but Divine Will.
(From the meditations of Sister Assunta Marigliano)