While May is traditionally dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, many feast days or fiestas throughout the year are devoted to representations of the Blessed Mother. Many cities and towns are dedicated to her because of how she prefigured the establishment of these early settlements.
For Catholics worldwide, the month of October is dedicated to Our Lady of the Holy Rosary. It is one of the significant Marian feast days, particularly for devotees of the Blessed Virgin Mary and believers of the significance and powers of the Holy Rosary.
The feast day of Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary of Manaoag is consistently celebrated by Filipino migrants in Austria, particularly the natives of Manaoag, Pangasinan, a town more than 100 miles north of Manila.
The original image of Our Lady of Manaoag is currently enshrined at the Heart of Jesus, Parish, Töllergasse, 1210 Vienna.
It is reported that the image of Our Lady has performed miracles based on various testimonies inscribed in the said church’ murals and accounts by people who have received tremendous help and favors granted.
The feast day began with the prayer of the Holy Rosary conducted on the grounds of the Töllergasse Parish. A procession of the image of „Apo Baket“ followed, ending in the church. It was a special celebration as flower offerings were made in the liturgy. The APA Choir rendered the liturgical songs with the Marian songs.
In his sermon, the celebrating priest Mag. Jorge Francisco Curiel Rojas, a Mexican priest assigned at the St. John Capistran parish, 1200 Vienna, related God’s greatness that He gave us Blessed Mary, who is just like us, to be the Mother of Jesus, the Savior of the World.
It was a remarkable celebration because the church was jam-packed with Filipino devotees.
The celebration of the Feast of our lady of Manaoag in the Sacred Heart of Jesus parish may be considered the culminating activity for the feast day of Our Lady of Manaoag in Vienna. The event was organized by the Association of Pangasineneses in Austria, led by its President Charito Mina.
Filipinos love the Blessed Mother that has brought them through the joys and uncertainties in life. For them, her connection to Jesus, her son, is what keeps their relationship to the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts honest. They often credit the Blessed Mother and her apparitions for maintaining the Philippines’ Catholic faith.
Like any other gatherings, the feast day celebrations concluded with the partaking of food donated by devotees.
Our Lady of Manaoag is a title of the Blessed Virgin Mary venerated in Manaoag, a town in Pangasinan, the Philippines. Under this title, she is invoked as patroness of the sick, helpless, and needy.
The devotion to Our Lady of Manaoag includes two feast days: the first in the summer, on the third Wednesday after Easter, and then again on the first Sunday in October. The summer feast commemorates the papal coronation of the image of Our Lady of Manaoag in 1926, and the October feast is connected to Mary’s title as Our Lady of the Rosary.
Our Lady of Manaoag is depicted in a 17th-century ivory and silver image of the Virgin Mary with the Child Jesus. Brought to the Philippines from Spain in the early 17th century by Father Juan de San Jacinto, the statue is enshrined at the high altar of the Minor Basilica of Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary of Manaoag.
The church was built on the site of a Marian apparition in Manaoag. Documents dating back to 1610 attest that a middle-aged farmer walking home heard a mysterious female voice. He looked around and saw an apparition of the Virgin Mary on a cloud-veiled treetop, holding a rosary in her right hand and the Child Jesus in her left arm, all amid a heavenly glow. Mary told the farmer where she wanted her church to be built, and a chapel was built on the hilltop site of the apparition, forming the nucleus of the present town.
People come to Manaoag to offer devotions to the town’s patroness, locally referred to as “Apo Baket.”The Association of Pangasinenses in Austria organizes the annual celebration of our lady of Manaoag.
- hector pascua
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