Visions of the Virgin

“Only a Woman, divine, could know all that a woman can suffer.” 
― Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop

By Alex P. Vidal

NEW YORK CITY -- Do you believe in miracle?
Pious Catholics hold a special place for Mary, the mother of Jesus, praying for her daily for favors and blessings.
Some say that the virgin has appeared to them right here on Earth. 
Many of these claims are not verified--dismissed as products of overactive imaginations or as outright hoaxes--but two apparitions, which defy scientific explanation, have stood the test of time and remain highly cherished by Catholics around the world.
The Fascinating Book of History tells us that in February 1858, Bernadette Soubirous, a poor, sickly 14-year-old peasant girl, was gathering firewood near a stream when she suddenly had a vision of a beautiful lady dressed in white. 
Overcome with fear, she rushed home to tell her mother, who told her to keep away from that place.
However, Bernadette returned and would repeatedly see the Virgin--18 times in all.

CHAPEL

One message stood out: A chapel must be built on the site where Bernadette had first seen Mary.
Bernadette's parish priest was highly skeptical of the visions and dismissed the little girl and his childish fantasy.
In spite of ridicule, Bernadette stuck to her story. It was only after people began reporting that their ailments had been cured after washing in the stream where the visions occurred that the church decided to endorse the apparition.
A shrine was built on the site and, to this day, is visited annually by millions. These pilgrims flock to Lourdes, hoping to cure physical ailments by washing in its now famous waters.
Hundreds of miraculous healings have been reported, all of them verified by church and medical experts.
In May 1917, Lucia Santos and her cousins Jacinta and Francisco were tending their sheep in the town of Vila Nova de Ourem in the parish of Fatima, Portugal.

LIGHT

Suddenly, they saw a tremendous flash of light. Thinking it was lightning, the children rushed for cover, only to see the same flash again.
The children described seeing "a Lady more brilliant than the sun." This was the first in a series of Marian apparitions reported by the children.
Mary impressed upon the children the importance of daily prayer (especially reciting the rosary) and penance. She also told the children that there would be a second war, much worse than the first.
When World War II began almost two decades later, many saw this as the fulfillment of the prophecy. The Virgin also gave the children a brief glimpse of hell and further revealed a mysterious secret, which church authorities kept under wraps until 2000. (The third secret was revealed to be a vision of the deaths of the pope and other individuals.)

MIRACLE

Word of the apparitions soon spread, and by October 13, 1917, a crowd of 70,000--believers and skeptics alike--flocked to Fatima on the hot rumor that a miracle was about to occur.
They were not disappointed. Newspaper reports of the day document how onlookers saw the sun burst through rain clouds and then begin dancing and spinning across the sky in a zigzag pattern, trailed by a brilliant ray of colors.
The so-called "Miracle of the Sun" solidified belief in the apparition, and a shrine was built on the site. 
Each year, scores of pilgrims visit the site, hoping to get the graces of Mary first experienced by the three children. 
 

Ave Maria

“What a joy to remember that she is our Mother! Since she loves us and knows our weakness, what have we to fear?”

- Saint Therese of Lisieux, Doctor of the Church

By Alex P. Vidal

“HAIL Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”

These words of the Ave Maria, spoken daily by millions of Roman Catholics, summarize one of the most perplexing elements in the riddle of Roman Catholicism, the cult of prayers and veneration addressed to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The late Dr. Jaroslav Pelikan, who wrote The Riddle of Roman Catholicism on the eve of the Second Vatican Council and in the early phase of the Cold War, explained that other elements in that riddle may seem strange or even fascinating, “but the cult of the Blessed Virgin is downright repugnant to many non-Roman Christians.”

Non-Catholics look upon it as “a species or vestigial remnant of pre-Christian paganism,” Pelikan explained.

He noted that “they smile intolerantly” when they see or hear the invocation of the saints by the Roman Catholics, or read notices in the “Personal” column of a metropolitan newspaper that say: “Thanks to St. Jude and the Blessed Virgin for obtaining an apartment for us.”

Pelikan observed that even those Protestants who look at the mass with respect rather than suspicion are caught short by the veneration of Mary.

OBNOXIOUS

“In the eyes of many Protestant lay people this is surely the most obnoxious feature of Roman Catholicism,” Pelikan stressed. “Here, they say, you have to draw the line beyond which Christianity dare not go.”

Protestant theology, too, sees in the cult of Mary, as it has climaxed now in the dogma of the Assumption, one of the chief barriers between Roman Catholics and Protestants.

Pelikan said even sympathetic Protestant theologians felt constrained to warn in 1950:  

While today the majority of the churches with tears of penitence confess before God that they share in the guilt of a divided Body of Christ, and in common prayer and serious scholarly effort seek to diminish the area of disagreement and increase the area of agreement…the Roman Church would increase the area of disagreement by a dogma of the Assumption. Creation of a dogma of the Assumption would be interpreted today in the midst of the efforts at closer relationships between the churches as a fundamental veto on the part of the Roman Church.

“Thus there is little sympathy for Roman Catholic Mariology outside the borders of the Roman communion,” stressed Pelikan, who died on May 13, 2006 after a battle with cancer at age 82.

HOLY MARY

Calling Mary “holy” was originally a way of speaking not about Mary herself at all, but about Jesus Christ, suggested the one-time Lutheran professor of church history at Yale Divinity School.

Almost every reference to her in the earliest Christian literature is, in point, a reference to her son.

When Paul says that Christ was “born of woman,” he is saying nothing about Mary, but is asserting that our Lord was truly human. (See Gal. 4:4.)

Pelikan pointed out that even the narratives of Matthew and Luke, which tell of her conceiving without a man, are aimed at the glorification of Christ, not of Mary.

“Whatever else may be said about the idea of the virgin birth, it is a declaration about Jesus Christ,” wrote Pelikan. “It means that even in the circumstances of his humble birth Jesus manifested God’s power and freedom over the created world and its laws.”

He added: “To that power and freedom it points as a sign. Even without the sign of the virgin birth, the gospels of Mark and John and the epistles of Paul are able to speak of the power and the freedom of God in Christ.”

Pelikan explained that the sign loses its powers as a sign, its “significance,” when it is interpreted as merely an incredible happening or when it is taken as a key to the holiness of Mary.

“Mary and Pontius Pilate are the only two ordinary people mentioned in the Apostles’ Creed,” disclosed Pelikan. “Both are there as signs pointing to Jesus Christ—one to show his lordship even in infancy, the other to show his lordship even in death.”

Pelikan believed that “neither Mary nor Pilate is important as a figure in history except for the role each of them played in the career of our Lord.”