marian anniversaries     june

Saturday after Corpus Christi

Nuestra Señora de los Milagros, Ágreda, Soria, Castile and Leon, Spain

A shepherd from Yanguas, named Miguelillo, was herding the flock of a knight of Ágreda through the rangeland of Extremadura along the Machatel River when a White Lady appeared to him and led him to the image of the Virgin of Miracles. He put it on his burro, intending to transport it to his homeland, but on reaching Yanguas, found a great river encircling the town. So he took the walnut statue to Ágreda instead, arriving on Corpus Christi, 1347. Six hundred years later, June 7, 1947, it was canonically crowned there. The feast day of Our Lady of Miracles is tied to that of Corpus Christi, the Catholic celebration of Christ's bodily presence in the eucharistic sacrament, established in 1264 for the Thursday after the Sunday after Pentecost (Trinity Sunday), and now often observed on the following Sunday. So, in Ágreda, the Virgin's fiesta shares in and augments that of her Son.