A telling vision at Knock

There have been many reports of apparitions of Mary, the Mother of God, across the world in recent decades and centuries. Some have been recognised and approved by the authorities of the Roman Catholic church while some have not.  A few turned out to be hoaxes.  Most attract the presence and prayers of large numbers of people.  No approved apparition is imposed on the beliefs of Catholics. One is free to accept, reject, doubt or remain indifferent to all such apparitions.  What is required is faith in the truths revealed by God and taught by the Church through Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition and the Magisterium.

All that said, many holy places associated with claimed apparitions of Our Lady are important sites and, in my view, can be accorded some degree of credibility and importance in one’s spiritual life based on the evidence of the fruits flowing from such a place. ‘You will know them by their fruits.’ says Jesus in Matthew 7:16.

Here in Ireland, Knock – a village in the West of Ireland is home to the national shrine of Our Lady of Knock. By 1879 Ireland had recovered from a devastating famine only 30 years previously but was threatened by another especially in that part of the West of Ireland.  People were desperate and fearful at that time.

On 21 August, 1879, some 15 local villagers reported seeing a heavenly vision for a period of about two hours. Their account of what they saw is remarkably consistent and nobody involved in the apparition retracted their stories even decades later prior to their death.  In my view, the witness of the seers is credible. However, it is also fascinating and unique. Here are some standouts:

• Three human figures are identified – Saint Joseph (silent as always!), Mary the mother of Jesus wearing a crown and gazing upwards to heaven with her hands in orans position akin to a priest at mass and beside her a figure recognised as Saint John the Evangelist (might he be pointing to the sixth chapter of his Gospel which is very eucharistic in content?). 
• This is how one of the witnesses described Mary:

Her hands were raised to the height of the shoulders, as if in prayer, with the palms facing one another, but slanting inwards towards the face; the palms were not turned towards the people, but facing each other as I have described; she appeared to be praying; her eyes were turned as I saw towards heaven.

• Beside the three human figures is an altar with a lamb standing on it and around and above the lamb a circle of angels.
• Behind the Lamb was a cross.
• Mary is depicted by the witnesses in the ancient orans posture (arms outstretched,  elbows slightly bent, palms facing outward or upward, eyes raised toward heaven), a traditional Christian attitude of prayer in which the hands are raised towards heaven. The gesture expresses prayer, praise and intercession before God and is still used by the priest during the celebration of Mass.
• Not a word  is said for the duration of the vision.  (Had anyone said anything I assume that it would be in the perfect and beautiful North Connacht Irish dialect!).
• But, there is another detail that seems to be overlooked – around the corner from the southern gable end of the church where the apparition was reported there is an engraved stone on the Western end of the parish church with the following inscription:
• My House shall be called the house of Prayer to all Nations'. (Isaiah 56:7 and cited by Jesus in the Gospels in Matthew 21:13).

In my view, this is one of the key message of the ‘silent vision’ – that Knock would be a place of prayer to many, many peoples in which Mary would gather her scattered children around the one altar where the Passover Lamb would renew, heal and restores broken lives and broken societies. The message of Knock can be summed up in one word: Mass.

Now, this is an Ireland worth working for and a world that cries out for leadership, witness and hope.

Postscript

The county in which Knock is situated is Mayo. A curious feature of the county crest, used by both Mayo County Council and the GAA, is the motto Dia is Muire linn ("God and Mary be with us").

On that rainy August evening in 1879, when some of the witnesses ran to tell their neighbours of the extraordinary sight at the parish church, they might have greeted one another in the traditional Irish manner: Dia dhuit, to which the reply would have been Dia is Muire dhuit. Such greetings were, and remain, deeply rooted in Irish life and culture.

It is tempting to see a providential connection between that ancient greeting and the events reported at Knock. That evening, I suggest, God, Mary, the saints and the angels became visible to people of faith for a while in the village on the hill (Cnoc) and for a brief time the veil separating heaven and earth was drawn aside. Fifteen ordinary people were granted a glimpse of heavenly realities and left to tell the world what they had seen.

And of all the 32 counties of Ireland, Mayo was the one chosen, in the bleak years of 1879,  to be a visible sign and house of prayer to all Irish people and others - that thin place in a barren landscape where the veil was lifted back for a while.  The Queen of Heaven and of Ireland had exercised (as she usually does) what we, nowadays, call a preferential option for the poor