It's December 10, which means it's one of my favorite feast days to celebrate!!
The Feast of Our Lady of Loreto draws the gaze toward something astonishing: a home, a simple stone dwelling, that God chose as the first earthly sanctuary of the Incarnation. A house so ordinary that it could have been overlooked. A house so sacred that Heaven marked it forever.
According to tradition, the Holy House of Nazareth was carried miraculously from the Holy Land to Italy, preserved as the place where Mary heard the angel’s greeting, where she spoke her "fiat", where the Word became flesh within her. The house stands as a sign that God does not need grandeur to begin redemption. He only needs a willing heart and space carved out for Him.
This is what struck me as I prayed the Litany of Loreto all of those years ago, specifically the title Cause of Our Joy. Mic Drop. The words fell with unusual weight and they revealed that joy is not attached to ideal circumstances but to presence; God’s presence invited into the intimate, vulnerable interior of a woman’s life.
Loreto has always been about this interiority. The Holy House is more than an artifact; it is an icon of the human person. A shelter bearing marks of time, disruption, and miraculous preservation. A place where the divine meets the human in the quiet, hidden rooms of daily life.
This is the heart of my work. Women come to me with their “houses” shaken, sometimes shattered. Nervous systems stretched thin from years of vigilance. Bodies holding the memory of birth that ended abruptly or violently. Hearts still bracing for impact long after the crisis has passed. Their interior homes have been shifted, sometimes even relocated, without their consent. They do not recognize themselves. They wonder if they will ever feel whole again.
Loreto gives us language for this. Our sweet Blessed Mother is here to save us once again. Deo Gracias!
The Holy House did not stay in Nazareth. It was moved. Uprooted. Lifted. Carried. Set down in unfamiliar places again and again. By every natural measure, it should have fallen apart. Instead, God Himself preserved it, not by keeping it immovable, but by sustaining it through its displacement. The miracle was not that the House avoided disruption but that the House remained a dwelling for grace through it.
This is what I see in the women who come to me. Their lives have been relocated, sometimes violently. Pregnancy that ended differently than expected. Postpartum seasons that unearthed fears they did not know lived inside them. Trauma that rearranged their inner architecture. Their sense of safety, the structure of their interior home, shifted so abruptly that they began to live in survival mode. They assumed the damage was final.
Yet Loreto tells a different story!!
A house can be shaken, lifted, and moved and still remain chosen. Still remain holy. Still bear God. Still become a dwelling place for joy.
Just like you.
This is why Mary is called the Cause of Our Joy! She brings Christ into the very home where ordinary life unfolds. She teaches us that joy does not originate from perfection but from presence. Joy comes not from a life without rupture but from a God who rebuilds every place touched by rupture.
Theologically, Loreto shows us three truths every traumatized woman needs to hear:
1. God enters the ordinary rooms we would never consider sacred.
Mary’s fiat took place in a house of stone and dust - not a temple adorned with beautiful gold and perfectly kept. The Incarnation began in the everyday, the unremarkable, the domestic. This tells every mother whose home feels chaotic or unfinished that God enters precisely there.
2. Holiness and disruption can coexist.
The Holy House was moved repeatedly, yet its sanctity endured. Trauma does not disqualify a woman from transformation. It reveals the very space where God desires to dwell more deeply.
3. Restoration is not a return to “before.” It is a becoming.
The House did not return to Nazareth; it became a shrine. Likewise, healing is not about becoming who you were before trauma. It is about becoming the woman God had in mind often because of the very places that cracked you open.
This is the essence of my work. I help rebuild the interior house, physiology, faith, and identity, so that joy, peace, and stability can take root where survival once ruled. My work is not therapy. It is not merely mindset. It is the integrated healing modeled in Loreto: theological truth, physiological restoration, and the feminine genius woven together to form a woman capable of receiving God again.
Mary, as Cause of Our Joy, does not offer sentimental happiness. She offers participation in the joy of the Trinity, which is a joy that comes through surrender, through restoration, through being remade.
If your “house” feels displaced or unstable, if trauma rearranged your interior landscape, Loreto is your feast. It is the reminder that God rebuilds. God dwells. God restores. God is unafraid of the very rooms you fear are too broken. May this feast remind every woman that she is not beyond repair. That you are not beyond repair. God chose a simple home for the Incarnation, and He chooses YOU too. Yes, God chose you. He wanted you. When you offer your yes, you becomes the place where His joy takes root.
Mary, Cause of Our Joy, pray for us!
Holy House of Loreto, shelter the women who long to be rebuilt.
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