Marian Apparitions: Be Discerning, but Also Be Open to Hope
Adele dedicated the rest of her life to teaching the children of the area, while her father built a shrine at the spot of the apparition. So many pilgrims came to the site that eventually a much larger church was erected to accommodate the crowds. In 2010, Our Lady of Champion became the first officially recognized Marian apparition in the United States, and as of today it remains the only one to enjoy an official approbation from the Catholic church.
Reports of Marian apparitions go all the way back to the first century, when, during her lifetime, Mary was said to have appeared in present-day Spain to the Apostle James, in a miraculous act of bilocation. Yet apparitions are a touchy subject for a lot of Catholics. No Catholic is obligated to believe in any of the hundreds, if not thousands, of reported sightings of Our Lady over the centuries. Yet scores of Catholics have found their faith deepened by what they believe to have been appearances of Mary at places like Fátima and Lourdes. In Mexico, it’s not an exaggeration to say that Our Lady of Guadalupe singlehandedly ended the Aztec practice of human sacrifice and turned the entire country toward the Catholic faith. These apparitions are powerful indeed to those who believe.
I can’t say I’ve ever experienced a Marian apparition, but I do believe I’ve felt Mary’s presence on a couple of occasions. As such, I understand why apparitions are so powerful, and sometimes even life-changing, for those who experience them. And I can say that feeling Mary’s maternal love firsthand was instrumental in bringing me back around to the Catholic faith I was born into. I am thus inclined to believe those who likewise have claimed to experience the Blessed Mother in some way and have had some kind of transformative life experience as a result.
I got to thinking about this topic after I stopped into our church’s new bookstore over the weekend. There I had a chance encounter with a woman who had a missionary’s zeal for a sixteenth-century Marian apparition in Quito, Ecuador. In Spanish, it’s called Nuestra Señora del Buen Suceso. It was mistranslated into English as Our Lady of Good Success, which makes Mary sound something like Lady Luck, an idol we might pray to for prosperity. But what the title actually means is Our Lady of the Good Event, the “event” being the purification of Mary in the temple during the presentation of the infant Jesus, as recounted in the Gospel of Luke. The focus of the apparition is on purification because Mary wants us to purify ourselves so we can resist trials and stand strong in the faith.
Anyway, when I went home to do some research on this apparition, I found myself floored by the predictions Our Lady had made for the twentieth century. You’d have to be pretty jaded to insist that Mary’s warnings hadn’t virtually all come true, and that they don’t bode well for our world.
If most Marian apparitions have anything in common, it’s that they offer warnings of things to come. Mary chooses human emissaries to take her warnings to the people so that they’ll have a chance to remedy their ways and avoid divine punishment. In other words, she comes to us out of her love for humanity. She wants lost souls to be saved before it’s too late.
Sometimes, though, Mary doesn’t have to speak a word. Her presence in itself is enough to call people to reflect, and perhaps to change their ways. Silence, after all, does often cut through in a way that words sometimes fail to do.
Think, for example, of all the reports over the years of weeping statues and portraits of Mary. If she’s crying in our presence, it’s presumably because of the anguish she feels over how many will be lost if they don’t turn their lives around. She’s giving us a chance; it’s up to us to listen. No words need be spoken. The message is clear.
Likewise in Zeitoun, Egypt, Mary never uttered a word when she appeared on the roof of a Coptic church over a period of three years, from 1968 to 1971. It’s estimated that the total number of people who came out to see the apparitions ran into the millions. The faithful have speculated ever since on what her silent presence was meant to impart, but many who were there reported a strong feeling that Mary was looking directly at them, despite the throngs of thousands who came to see each event. Others reported smelling the sweet odor of incense, and many said they saw large dove-like figures hovering in the sky around the church. There were also numerous reports of miraculous healings from illness. The Egyptian government investigated the apparitions and could find no evidence of trickery. The Coptic pope himself authenticated the apparitions after appointing a group of bishops to look into the matter.
All this, yet the apparition itself remained perfectly silent for three years.
One apparition that has long resonated with me comes from a story that originates in Constantinople. In the tenth century, the city was under threat of a barbarian invasion. St. Andrew the Fool for Christ and his disciple, Epiphanius, were participating in an all-night prayer vigil at the church in Blachernae, in the northwestern part of the city. This church was notable for housing some of Mary’s relics. Suddenly, in the middle of the night, St. Andrew saw the Blessed Virgin descend into the church, accompanied by a host of angels and saints. Kneeling, she wept in prayer, after which she spread out her veil, which miraculously covered all the people in the church as a sign of her protection. The city was subsequently spared from attack, and the event has since been commemorated in parts of Eastern Orthodoxy as the Holy Protection of the Theotokos (a Greek title for Mary meaning “God-bearer”). The event is the subject of many Orthodox icons, and I myself wear a gold pendant that depicts the scene, as a reminder that the Theotokos offers her loving protection to all who believe. And yet she didn’t have to come carrying a verbose message to Constantinople. Her prayers and actions were sufficient.
I realize that there are people of particular Christian persuasions who take issue with the idea of Mary as a protector. But I think we see Mary prefigured in the character of Sophia, the Wisdom of God, in the Old Testament books of Proverbs, Wisdom, and Sirach, inasmuch as Mary offers herself to anyone who seeks her out. A lot of people don’t seek her out, even though she’s usually hiding in plain sight, just as Sophia was, standing at the city gates and offering her counsel to anyone who would listen. See, for example, the first chapter of Proverbs. Sophia is far more fleshed out in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles than she is in 66-book Protestant Bibles that omit, among others, the books of Wisdom and Sirach, where she figures prominently. And maybe that’s why some Catholics are more open to seeing the connections to the Blessed Mother and how she takes us under her protection, reminding us that we’re not alone on our journeys.
But at the same time, this isn’t just a Catholic thing. The Zeitoun church was part of the Oriental Orthodox tradition. The Blachernae church, Eastern Orthodox. Even the Anglicans observe the feast of Our Lady of Walsingham, based on a series of appearances of Mary to the English noblewoman Richeldis de Faverches in 1061. She’s there for you, if only you take the time to look and listen.
In a bit of hyperbole that’s typical of the way Christians in the East pray, an old Orthodox prayer refers to the Theotokos as “the salvation of all Christian people.” All that really means is that she gathers us under her protection for the purposes of directing us toward her son, making her what you might call a gateway to salvation. And her promise of protection is itself far more than just a sentimental gesture. It’s the real deal. Consider that Constantinople was spared from an invasion after the Blessed Virgin appeared to St. Andrew in Blachernae. Or consider Our Lady of Champion, that sole U.S.-approved apparition. The chapel, convent, and school that had been built on the site of Mary’s appearance to Adele Brise survived a massive wildfire that scorched 1.2 million acres of land. Adele refused to leave and instead organized a procession to ask for the Blessed Mother’s aid. Those who had taken shelter at the chapel lived, while some two thousand people in the surrounding area perished in the fire. The five acres of land that had been consecrated to Our Lady was completely spared of the devastation.
Freakish coincidence? You tell me.
It does take a measure of faith to allow yourself to be open to the fact that Our Lady may be engaging in some divine intervention on our behalf. But I think the evidence speaks for itself. Thousands saw the sun dance in the sky at Fátima. The statue associated with Our Lady of Akita wept abundantly and even reportedly displayed stigmata for a time. The tilma on which Our Lady of Guadalupe left her image should have disintegrated long ago, yet it remains intact nearly half a millennium later — and the image may contain incredible details and even hidden prophecies that only add to its fascinating mystery. The examples go on and on.
Speaking of prophecies, there have been many. At Fátima, Akita, and elsewhere, Mary shared grim accounts of the future and encouraged prayer and repentance as an antidote. In Ecuador, Nuestra Señora del Buen Suceso predicted in great detail how, beginning in the middle of the twentieth century, social disintegration would lead to a widespread loss of faith and a disregard for the sacraments, attacks on the institution of marriage, hatred of the priesthood, the growth of immodesty, the corruption of children’s innocence, and the emergence of heresies within the church itself. Think about how many marriages today fail, and how the very purpose of the institution has been distorted. Think about how crude and vulgar popular culture has become. Think about how children are being aggressively sexualized and their bodies irreversibly mutilated. Think about the vocation crisis in the church. And think about the weakening of the faith in the name of ecumenism that’s happened in the years following the Second Vatican Council — which, notably, took place in the middle of the twentieth century. These were prophecies Our Lady gave four hundred years ago, and she very precisely specified when these things would begin.
Not only that, but she also predicted that the pope would one day declare the dogma of papal infallibility, and that this same pope would go on to declare the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. The pope would also be likened to a prisoner in the Vatican, through the loss of the Papal States. Sure enough, Pope Pius IX declared papal infallibility at the First Vatican Council in 1870 and established the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in 1854. He also considered himself a prisoner in the Vatican after losing control of the Papal States to Italy.
There’s more. Our Lady also envisioned that in the nineteenth century, Ecuador would have a Catholic president who would consecrate the nation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus — and would subsequently be assassinated. That is exactly what happened to Gabriel Garcia Moreno, Ecuador’s president from 1861 to 1865 and again from 1869 to 1875, who did indeed consecrate the nation to the Sacred Heart.
It’s eerie just how well her words match the events of our world over the past sixty years, and how so many of her predictions have come true with breathtaking accuracy.
Our Lady’s words of warning in Ecuador for the twentieth century closely mirrored what Our Lady of LaSalette would say to two children in France in 1846. And it would seem that some of the Virgin’s prophecies sometimes hit a little too close to home. In 1879, one of the two children, Mélanie Calvat, published a document that expanded on the secrets given to her three decades earlier. Among them, she said, was that “Rome will lose the faith and become the seat of Antichrist.” (You can read the entire document here.) The document initially received an imprimatur, which is essentially the church’s seal of approval. But in 1923, the church had second thoughts and pivoted from approval to prohibition, placing the document on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, a bygone list of publications that Catholics were forbidden to read. Why the dramatic change of heart? Perhaps the modernists who were slowly amassing power in Vatican City in the early part of the twentieth century thought Mélanie’s words would draw some uncomfortable attention to their own machinations.
Discernment is, to be sure, important when considering the messages that come from these apparitions. After all, as St. Paul tells us, demons can disguise themselves as angels of light. But simply disliking what they say is not sufficient means for dismissing them. Sometimes Our Lady delivers hard truths for our own good. If she’s warning that corruption is coming, even to the highest levels of the church, and that the faithful have to counter it by remaining prayerfully diligent and encouraging repentance, it’s probably safe to say that the message is authentic and not diabolical in origin. It seems unlikely that a demonic entity would encourage people to get to church, pray, and resist corruption and evil.
Now, are some of these apparitions fraudulent? Sure, it’s possible. It’s easy to imagine a church rigging up a portrait or statue to “cry” if someone in that church community is looking for attention — or prestige, or money. And it’s true that some people thinking they’re receiving some kind of supernatural message might simply have a vivid imagination or be suffering from some kind of mental illness. There’s a reason, in fairness, that Rome takes a skeptical stance toward claims of apparitions and is very slow to authenticate even a small handful of them. There’s also a reason the Eastern Orthodox encourage people not to engage their imaginations when praying, as it’s all too easy for the brain to cook up experiences that have more to do with wishful thinking than with anything supernatural.
I put my own Marian experiences to this kind of test. One of them was extremely intense. Did I just imagine it? Did I want to have the experience? I can never say definitively that it was of otherworldly origin. But I’m also inclined to believe it, because I’ve had other brushes with the supernatural throughout my life, and I didn’t seek those out, just as I didn’t seek out this experience with Mary. And I’m also the kind of person who will research something to death before I believe what someone else tells me about it. My mindset tends to default to the skeptical, which is precisely why I’ve struggled with faith my entire life. Therefore, if I can find a way to explain the inexplicable, I usually will.
But my Marian experience had no rational explanation that I could find. And so I choose to believe that it was a message from her. I never expected any kind of detailed missive as others have received. Mary tends to talk to little kids and nuns anyway, not to fat middle-aged men. But she did give me a feeling, and a pretty powerful one at that. It’s something I can’t put into words, because it was an experience beyond words. And my concept of divinity is of something that lies beyond words and concepts. Our words can only point vaguely to the underlying truths that our limited brains could never fully comprehend, no matter how hard we try.
So my experience squared with my understanding of how the supernatural works. It fits. I can never convince anyone else of what I experienced, and that’s OK. Faith is a very personal thing, after all. And what I felt certainly didn’t feel diabolical in any way. It felt like unconditional love, if anything at all. And it helped lead me back to the church. So I think all’s well on that front.
I also came to the conclusion that maybe I needed just a little divine nudge to get me over my tendency toward disbelief that at the time was paralyzing my spiritual life. I was not endowed with the gift of faith. I have to work at it tremendously hard. “Blessed are those who have not seen and have yet believed,” Jesus told Doubting Thomas. Our Lady of Champion said the same thing to Adele Brise. That’s all well and good, but some of us apparently need a little push to get us there. And I think our Blessed Mother understands that.
So does her son. It’s easy, for example, to take a skeptical stance toward reports of Eucharistic miracles, most of which involve consecrated hosts growing human tissue. One isolated instance could be a hoax. But how do you explain that the flesh on all of them, when scientifically examined, exhibit exactly the same blood type — which, in turn, is the same blood type found on the Shroud of Turin? It’s one thing to guard against gullibility, but quite another to ignore patterns. At some point, you have to admit that there just might be more to the story than you think.
In any event, I think Mary understands that all of her spiritual children are different and therefore need to be approached in whatever way will lead them back to her protection. What works for one may not work for another.
Still, as the Orthodox would advise, you absolutely have to pay attention to the kinds of nudges and messages you receive. And if something seems fishy, either you’ve misunderstood it or there was something about the source of the message that warrants further examination. Two prominent examples I can think of in this regard are the apparitions at Medjugorje and the Divine Mercy apparitions to Sister Faustina Kowalska.
Over in Medjugorje, a small village in Bosnia and Herzegovina, reports of Marian apparitions began back in 1981. Since then, this apparition has continued to deliver messages to pilgrims. But just what is this apparition? The tone of its proclamations has seemed off to many observers over the years. Most notably, this apparition evidently once stated that “all faiths are the same before God.” That is a heretical statement — in particular, it’s the heresy of indifferentism. It is definitively not something Mary would say.
As coincidence would have it, it’s the same thing that Pope Francis stated to a group of young people in Singapore just last month — that all religions are equal paths to God. And as further coincidence would have it, just six days after Francis made that statement, the Vatican gave its nihil obstat to the Medjugorje situation. That means the Vatican has no objection to taking pilgrimages there or showing Marian devotion there. It stopped short of declaring the apparitions valid, but one can be fairly certain that this mealy-mouthed papacy, with its history of saying something without actually coming out and saying it, was sending a message with its nihil obstat that it approves of the alleged Marian messages flowing out of the village.
A similar situation exists with Sister Faustina, who claimed to experience apparitions not of Mary but of Jesus himself. From her experiences was born the Divine Mercy devotion, which is very popular in the modern Catholic church. The problem with it is that it emphasizes unconditional mercy without the need for penance. In particular, it promotes the easy-believism of Luther and other Protestants who hold to a sola fide, or “faith alone,” viewpoint. While it’s theologically accurate to say that sincere faith is what saves a person, sola fide carries with it a distinct sense that it doesn’t matter how you live your life. All you have to do is believe. No inner transformation necessary. No good works necessary. Just believe in God’s mercy and you’ll get it, no questions asked, even if you live the most rotten life imaginable. This runs counter to all Catholic (and Orthodox) belief.
Penance is a key component of the Sacrament of Reconciliation, for example. You break the window and confess to doing it: Dad forgives you, but he’s still going to hand you a broom and a dustpan to dispose of the broken glass. Divine Mercy skips the broom and dustpan and says, “Don’t worry about it. I know you’re sorry, so you don’t have to try to clean up the mess you made.”
There’s a reason the Divine Mercy devotion was banned for more than twenty years, by two popes. John Paul II reversed course by allowing it, but there’s no clear reason why he should have. Faustina’s diary alone should — and did — cast doubt on the veracity of her apparitions. Not only did Jesus allegedly guarantee her eternal heavenly bliss, a declaration that commits the error of presumption, but he also said he was uniting himself with her “as with no other creature.” So apparently, Jesus thought more highly of this heretofore obscure Polish nun than he did of his own mother. In fact, Jesus loved Faustina so much that he said he would bless the entire world just for her sake.
In essence, Faustina makes Jesus come off like a lovesick man promising the moon to the apple of his eye. As my daughter would put it, the Jesus of Faustina’s imagination is “down horrendous” for her, which is just gross. This all seems to say more about the mindset of a lonely, neurotic nun than it does about the Son of God. Whatever this entity was that Faustina experienced, one thing is certain: It did what all diabolical entities do — appeal to the ego. Faustina’s Jesus didn't encourage humility but instead played into her sense of pride. It put her on a pedestal and told her that she was blessed among all women. Red flags everywhere in this devotion. Her own sisters were telling her to be careful with the visions she was experiencing. Perhaps she should have listened. Even worse, at one point, one of her fellow sisters commented that Faustina emitted the stench of a rotting corpse. Sounds exactly like something you'd expect from a person infected with evil. Mary’s presence is often associated with the sweet smell of roses. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that her divine son wouldn’t leave someone he’d been communicating with reeking of death.
To top it off, Faustina claimed that Jesus repeatedly flung consecrated hosts at her; when she objected, he said he wanted her, and only her, to be able to hold him in her hands. This was at a time when communion was distributed only on the tongue, as only the consecrated hands of a priest were deemed worthy enough to be able to touch the body of Christ. Nowadays, receiving communion in the hand is commonplace in the modern Mass. What would have been seen as an abuse in the old church is now not given a second thought. Did the modern church take Faustina’s diary entries to heart in pushing for reception in the hand — denigrating the sacredness of the sacraments, just as Nuestra Señora del Buen Suceso predicted would happen?
Overall, it seems that nothing good has come of the church’s embrace of the Divine Mercy devotion. It fits in with the philosophy of the modern church that faith should be easy and not cost anyone much of anything, so in a way it’s perfect for what the church has become. For many, it seems to have replaced the rosary, since it’s quicker and easier — again, all too perfect for the attention-deficient modern mind. And considering Sister Faustina’s apparitions are extremely suspect, and that the Divine Mercy has largely supplanted the older devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, it seems this is one instance where a little bit of discernment and skepticism could go a long way. And I have to say that I always found the painting of Jesus associated with the Divine Mercy to be unsettling in a way I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Considering the man who painted the portrait was not just a member of the Freemasons, who are avowed enemies of Catholicism, but also went on to paint a portrait of himself as Judas before committing suicide, I’m inclined to think that there really is something wrong with this whole thing.
Then you have apparitions that fall somewhere between seeming legitimate and feeling a little bit off. A good example is The Lady of All Nations. This apparition came to Ida Peerdeman, a Dutch woman, over a stretch of fourteen years. Most of the messages didn’t raise suspicion — until the apparition asked for a prayer to be promulgated throughout the world. The prayer ended with this line: “May the Lady of All Nations, who once was Mary, be our Advocate. Amen.”
Who once was Mary? What could that possibly mean? Was Mary throwing off her old persona to try to become a patroness and protector for all people, not just Christians? Not surprisingly, Peerdeman’s bishop removed the phrase, although he backed off when Peerdeman told him Mary wasn’t happy with the change. In 2005, the Vatican permanently reworded the phrase to read, simply, “the Blessed Virgin Mary,” and the official line is that there’s no evidence that the apparition was of supernatural origin. To my knowledge, Mary hasn’t weighed in on Rome’s decision. But perhaps common sense should tell us that there’s something not quite right here. Again, discernment is key.
So what do you do when you think you’re receiving a message from the heavens? Well, once you’re convinced that it’s not just wishful thinking in your head and that the message doesn’t have any diabolical undertones, I think the best thing to do is just to listen with an open mind and an open heart. Why are you getting this message? What are you supposed to do with it? I think my “messages,” such as they were, have been meant to break through my skeptical exterior and give me some sense of hope and guidance. In a world whose ugliness can beat you down, sometimes you need a reminder that love exists. That you are loved, even if you feel completely alone in the world. That you should persevere and never give up. As Our Lady told Adele Brise: “Go and fear nothing. I will help you.”
To that end, I think it’s notable that even with the prophecies of doom and gloom that so many Marian apparitions have brought with them, Mary always brings hope that the storm will pass and goodness will triumph in the end. That, after all, is a core message of Christianity — that all will be well, even if it’s sometimes hard to see it in the immediate moment.
“My Immaculate Heart will triumph,” Mary said at Fátima. And that’s a beautiful message.
All we have to do is trust her. After all, our Blessed Mother wouldn’t lie to us.
Comments
Post a Comment