First, a bit of history: A miracle was misinterpreted in fourth-century Rome.  Or rather I believe a miracle was misinterpreted, as the details are sketchy. Actually, it may have been more of a weather phenomenon than a miracle.  The only fact on which all accounts agree is that during one August morning, snow fell on one of Rome’s seven hills, which are located several thousand miles from St. Louis.

Does God speak through nature metaphors?  Christian records are filled with examples. Earthquakes.  Raining frogs.  Burning bushes. Why not a peaceful snow falling on a Roman hill during an otherwise unheralded august morning?

One version of Our Lady of Snow’s history has it that a wealthy and childless couple had prayed to Mary, asking for a sign on how to spend their wealth, and the snow was sent in answer to their prayers.  Another version has it that Pope Liberius dreamed that the Virgin Mary visited him during the night, telling him to build a church where it would snow the following day. Church history records Liberius as something of a heretic, so it is no surprise this version is less popular.  Still another version ties the two together: The couple prayed and were instructed by the heretic pope. Whatever story you wish to believe, it is certainly a tale of many tellings, but none are authoritative  enough to be formally recognized by the church. 

For many years I’ve studied poetry, paying particular lessons to Eliot’s objective correlative, which demands that metaphors be immediate and striking.  If God deliberately made it snow that August morning, what was the Author’s intent?  Could he have meant something other than “build a church on spot x”? Putting the reality of nigh 2,000 years of history from my mind for a moment, my instinct is to interpret the metaphor as  “scatter your wealth like snow on the hill, for these things are as fleeting.” It just sounds more biblical to me.

After seeing that giant drillbit pointed at heaven, I’m more sure now that my instinctual interpretation was correct.  I parked in front of the visitor’s center and pulled the  airbrake on my truck. It makes a loud popping sound which always draws a stare, so I waited a few minutes before exiting the truck so I could assume a casual air of anonymity.

The drillbit turned out to be an unfortunate bit of commissioned art of a goliath scale, overlooking an amphitheatre, but in no way would its kitch design prepare me for what was to follow.  Beyond a rather ugly church, bulging with bulbous modernism, I found another visitor’s center, containing a restaurant and gift shop.  Next to it was a small hotel.  Signs pointed the way to a retirement community combined with an assisted living facility and nursing home for continuing levels of care, all on the grounds of Our Lady of Snow. 

Connecting it all was a motorized trolley.  Yes, an actual Our Lady of Snow trolley. 

And then it struck me that in some twisted way, my interpretation of God’s metaphor delivered so long ago on a Roman hill is being carried out truthfully today on a hillside on the edge of St. Louis:

Scatter your wealth like snow. 

Tom Woolery