nolasco 4

St. Peter Nolasco built in El Puig, near Valencia... 

the Monastery of St. Mary of the Angels of El Puig...

in Spanish: Nuestra Señora de los Angeles del Puig.

For four Saturdays, seven strange lights were seen... 

at night over a certain spot, they looked like seven stars. They were observed to drop from heaven seven times, and to disappear in the earth in the same place. 

St. Peter Nolasco felt certain that this strange phenomenon announced something. So he commanded men to dig about the spot. They had not gone far into the earth, when they came upon a clock of prodigious [wonderlijke] size, beneath which was a beautiful icon of the Virgin Mary. 

Nolasco took it up in his arms as avaluable gift from heaven, and built an altar on the spot where it was buried. This altar became very celebrated for the number of miracles performed there.

According to tradition... 

the image was fashioned by the angels, and made of the very stone of the sacred sepulcher where the most holy body of the Mother of God lay hidden for three days.

After Her assumption into Heaven, the holy angels took the statue - they had created from Gethsemani  - to El Puig, placing it in a church dedicated to the Blessed Virgin. 

The statue of Our Lady of El Puig remained there, until it was buried beneath a large bell by the religious who lived at its first monastery, when the Moors entered into Spain at the time of the Goths.

It remained in the earth for well over 500 years, until... 

Divine providence facilitated the happy discovery... 

by Saint Peter Nolasco.

[bron]