Among the former patriarchal basilicas of St. Peter, St. John Lateran, Santa Maria Maggiore and St. Paul outside the Walls, which were built in the XVI. Based on the motu proprio issued by Pope Benedict in 2006, they are already called papal basilicas, and Santa Maria Maggiore plays a particularly important role at Christmas. The manger relic from Bethlehem has been kept here for centuries. Just like the construction of the basilica, the history of the relic is also surrounded by legends.
According to one of them, around 350 AD, the Virgin Mary appeared in a dream to Pope Liberius and a patrician named John on the same night. He asked them both to build a church in his honor wherever they see snow the next day in Rome. It was the 4th of August. The following day, a wonderful snowfall marked the floor plan of a church on the Esquilinus Hill, thus the ancestor of today's Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore was built. Since then, the Church has celebrated the feast of Our Lady of the Snows on August 5.
The high altar of the basilica covered with a marble canopy, i.e. in front of the papal altar, there is a chapel in a semicircular recess, the present form of which is the work of the architect Virginio Vespignani and the painter Francesco Podesti. Here, the manger relic is kept in a crystal urn on a marble plinth, placed in a silver and gilded holder, surrounded by angel figures, angel heads and garlands of flowers. The existence of the relic is first mentioned by Origen (185–255). St. Jerome mentions the Bethlehem sanctuary in his letters, and also talks about pilgrims coming there from all over the world. From the middle of the 7th century, the Bethlehem relic is no longer mentioned in the East, but it begins to be venerated in Rome, in the largest Marian Basilica. Pope Theodore I (642–649) was famous for his veneration of relics. He is the first during whose reign the adjective ad praesepe, "to the manger", already appears next to the name of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. This place was also called the Roman Bethlehem. On Christmas night, the popes said midnight mass here for centuries.
A part of Jesus' manger was returned to Bethlehem three years ago. The decision to return the relic was made after Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas asked Pope Francis to do so during his visit to the Vatican.
The reliquary made of crystal itself forms a manger, inside which are found the wooden relics that, according to tradition, are the pieces of the manger of the Child Jesus.
Source: Hungarian Courier
