Rome has four papal basilicas, and the Church marks the dedication of each. Saint Mary Major stands on the Esquiline Hill and was built or rebuilt by Pope Sixtus III in the years just after the Council of Ephesus of 431, which had defined that Mary is truly Theotokos, the Mother of God. Its fifth-century mosaics, among the oldest Marian images in Christian art, proclaim that definition in stone and glass. The basilica houses the venerated icon known as Salus Populi Romani, before which popes and pilgrims have prayed for centuries, and it preserves relics honored as belonging to the manger of Bethlehem. A later medieval legend gave the day its popular name. It tells of a Roman patrician and of Pope Liberius, both directed in a dream to build a church where snow would fall in August, and of a miraculous snowfall on the Esquiline on August 5. The Church has never proposed the story as history; it is remembered in the Roman custom of letting white petals fall from the basilica's ceiling during the liturgy of the day. For a period the celebration was called Our Lady of the Snows, and the revised calendar restored its proper title, the Dedication of the Basilica of Saint Mary Major. The celebration is an optional memorial in the General Roman Calendar, celebrated in white with proper prayers. Anniversaries of dedication of churches are more than architectural commemorations: the rite of dedication treats the building as a sign of the Church herself, the living temple built of the faithful, and the annual celebration renews that meaning. In the church of its own dedication the anniversary is kept as a solemnity, and in the diocese the anniversary of the cathedral's dedication is kept as a feast.

Optional memorial

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Ordinary time

August 5

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