Marian apparitions

In my last post, the comments turned to visitations and visions of the Virgin Mary. I thought I'd write a little about the shrine of Lourdes, where, since 1858, there have been 66 verified miracles, as an example of such appartitions.

First, how does the Church feel about Marian visions? Wikipedia writes ...

According to the doctrine of the Catholic Church, the era of public revelation ended with the death of the last Apostle and when the New Testament was finished. A Marian apparition, if deemed genuine by Church authority, is treated as private revelation that may emphasize some facet of the received public revelation for a specific purpose, but it can never add anything new. At most the Church will confirm an apparition as worthy of belief, but belief is never required .... John Paul II's particular devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary was indicated in his coat of Arms ... He also visited many of the most famous alleged apparition sites, notably Fatima, Lourdes, and Knock, and according to some reports may have experienced another visitation on his last visit to Lourdes in 2003.


- John Paul II's Coat of Arms

Every year, Lourdes is the place of mass pilgrimages - it's estimated that 200 million people have visited the shrine since 1860. I recently read an article from the Tablet about the shrine. Here are some bits from it ...

What pulls them (the pilgrims) is the story at the heart of Lourdes: the image of a 14-year-old, poverty-stricken, asthmatic girl kneeling in ecstasy in a muddy grotto, her face utterly absorbed by a conversation with a lady only she could see. The veracity of Bernadette’s 18 visions in 1858 can never be “proved” – she was the only one who saw the lady – but despite the most formidable pressures brought on her to deny the events, Bernadette stuck to the truth of her experience, never embellishing it and never seeking to profit from it. The most diligent historical research has uncovered no lies, deceit or subterfuge.



At the heart of Lourdes today remains healing. The lady who appeared to Bernadette made no mention of cures, only that people should come and wash in the spring. But the stories of healings began almost as soon as Bernadette uncovered the spring to which the lady had directed her. And they continue to this day in increasing numbers, according to Lourdes’s “miracle doctor”, Patrick Theillier, head of the Medical Bureau. It was set up in 1883 to assess the reports of sudden, inexplicable cures as result of bathing in the waters or praying at the Grotto .... “Nowadays we have broader sense of pathology as psycho-spiritual,” he (Theillier) says .... “There’s a climate of trust here, of tenderness, which has everything to do with the presence of Mary, the presence of the feminine, of the mother.”

With all the interest in Marianism, there's a question that arises, one I read in another article elsewhere. Someone asked ... if we (Marian Catholics) could explain exactly what devotion to the Blessed Virgin contributed to our spiritual life, and why we were not satisfied to go straight to Our Lord with our petitions. In my further reading, I was able to come up with possible answers.

If nothing else, Mary exemplifies two things ... motherhood and generosity of spirit. At the time of the early church, there were those who believed Jesus was only divine, a strictly spiritual being. An emphasis on Mary as Jesus' human mother helped to show his human nature which we share with him. And then there is Mary's choice of response to God's request, through the angel Gabriiel ... Mary agreed, held nothing back. This is significant if you imagine that she had a true choice, free will. Mary cooperated with God, who needed/desired her contribution ... human/divine interdependance.

Like us, Mary was human, and it may be her human act of freely chosen relationship with Jesus/God that make people turn to her in reverance.