Hitting walls on the Milk Grotto… No dice so fa…
admin December 20th, 2006
Hitting walls on the Milk Grotto…
No dice so far on finding any obviously-credible support of the “Milk Grotto” – but I did find a site (with NO e-mail contact info) that is ostensibly owned by the Franciscans, specifically Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land – haven’t been able to find out much about them. If they’re legit, I wish they’d hire an experienced webmaster, who could tell them about domains and contact info and so forth. Calling your site “Franciscan Cyberspot” is fine, but I could call my site “Franciscan Cyberspot” – I have no way of verifying if they are who they say they are.
Anyway, their site is ridiculously hard to navigate. The links are hereand here, but since the site is not very well designed, I’ve also pasted the relevant references below – these are the most credible references I’ve been able to find to the Milk Grotto. Nothing on New Advent, nothing on Catholic Answers, nothing on the Holy See’s site…but there are a couple of small references to it on this obscure site (and some personal pages as well).
1.2 In the sanctuaries: the friars serve in welcoming the pilgrims and also the care and maintenance of the shrines.
The new chapel called the Theotokos beside the Milk Grotto Shrine in Bethlehem will be inaugurated t the end of this year.
and
The Church on the “Milk Grotto”
In Bethlehem the sacred area around the Nativity Grotto has been the focal point of all tradition. Nevertheless in Bethlehem a small Chapel has been for long centuries a devotional site. The “Milk Grotto” over which today a small Chapel rise, is frequently visited by local women, Christians and Moslems alike, to ask for the intercession of Mary. mother of Jesus. A legend recalls how some Mary spilt some milk while breast feeding baby Jesus and this is the reason for the “white” stone of the cave. A tradition going back to the VII century located at this site the burial place of the innocent victims killed by Herod the Great after the birth of Jesus.
Argh.
