Our Lady of Good Counsel

Today we celebrate not a person but a title under which Mary is invoked: Mother of Good Counsel, in Latin Mater Boni Consilii. The title is ancient, but it became popular because of something that happened in Genazzano, near Rome, in 1467: a fresco of the Virgin and Child appeared in the Augustinian church, and local tradition says it came from Albania, detaching itself from the wall of a church in Shkodër as the Turks advanced. It was the Augustinian friars who served that church who spread the devotion throughout Europe. In 1903 Leo XIII added the invocation “Mater Boni Consilii, ora pro nobis” to the Litany of Loreto. The decree that came with that decision explained why the title suits her: from the moment she accepted God’s plan, and received from her Son the words she then kept in her heart, she deserved to be called Mother of Good Counsel as well. She is the patroness of Albania and of the Albanian people, venerated in the sanctuary of Shkodër, and for Albanian communities she is a sign of identity even before she is a devotion — including the Arbëreshë communities that have lived in Italy for five centuries. The Smorfia puts the Madonna at number eight. If your name is Consiglia, today is your name day — and in southern Italy it’s a name people still carry.