Kapel Ossenkapel | Handel

Handel. This Ox Chapel was built on the site of the original Marian miracle of Handel.

Handel is the oldest Marian pilgrimage site in North Brabant. A miracle took place in these parts in 1220, in what was then wild and desolate heathland. A statue of Mary was found in a hawthorn there in the middle of nowhere. As a result, people started building the then chapel in Handel. But the oxen that came to bring the first cartload of stone refused to stop at the right place and drove all the way to the current location of the church. (The Handel chapel became a church in 1946) A holy spring then sprang up there during the construction of the chapel when there was a severe lack of water, the moors around Handel being very dry at the time, one and all drifting sand. That holy spring further provided three recognised miraculous healings and around it, more recently, the processional park was built.

Now, processions still come to Handel every year and, just like then, they go the last stretch in procession along the Keskesdijk. Here there are seven keskes along the road depicting the seven sorrows of Mary. The latest addition to this dike is the Ox Chapel. This was erected in 1891, when the keskes were renewed. The Ox Chapel consists of red brick with a natural stone plinth. The inside is painted white with a red-tiled floor. On the wall behind altar, two sandstone reliefs (retables) are hung against the wall illustrating the original legend and the present location of the Marian chapel in Handel. One retable depicts a shepherd with who finds a statue of Mary in a tree at this location. The other depicts the ox cart with the stones meant for this location.

Sources:

W. van Lierop, T. Thelen, Langs velden en wegen, 2006, Heemkundekring de Kommanderij, Gemert

P.S. van Asseldonk (Capuchin), History of Our Lady of Handel, 1970

Hoppenbrouwers, F., et al, Children of Mary: the pilgrimage from Valkenswaard to Handel, 1993, Kempen Druk Hapert, Eindhoven