5 Things to Know About Marian Apparitions | Explorer

[Music] I think the Catholic Church is very careful on a lot of matters, including miracles. But they actually do approve miracles and say that they really do happen. In almost every canonization, the pope is declaring that a miracle was worked or two miracles were worked, in order for the saint to be said to be with God.

So the Catholic Church, even in this modern day and age, says that miracles do happen. There have been thousands and thousands of cases looked at by the Church, many of which have been approved, in which miracles are said to have occurred throughout every country of the world, throughout all of history.

One of the things that people find fascinating about apparitions is that, by and large, the vast majority of them are apparitions of the Virgin Mary. There have been claims of apparitions of Jesus and of the saints, but by far, there are many more apparitions of the Virgin Mary. Now, people might relegate this as a vestige of the past, but in fact, the messages of Mary and apparitions are important for all the faithful.

The Church is very cautious to approve apparitions and has been so throughout its history. The reason it’s very cautious is because many of the apparitions contain messages which instruct the faithful how to live their lives, how to become closer to Christ. Some of the apparitions claim very wild things, end-time prophecies, the return of UFOs to the Earth, some very crazy things.

So the Church needs to ferret out the things that are going to be a problem for the faithful or go against faith and morals, and make these statements as a pastoral matter for the Church. The very first claimed apparition, at least according to tradition, is that by St. James in Saragosa, Spain, in the year 40 AD.

In that instance, he was struggling with how to promote the faith amongst the people that he was trying to evangelize. In his moment of despair, Our Lady appeared to him to encourage, and this is known as Nuestra Señora de Pilar in Spain. The earliest known apparition of the Virgin Mary isn't quite an apparition at all; it's more a bilocation. Our Lady appeared while she was still living, so that’s kind of an interesting fact.

There are many people the world over, singular people, who say that they've seen the Virgin Mary or getting messages or had a miracle. But in Medjugorje, six children have gone through 30 plus years in either a coordinated effort of a great hoax or in a tremendous miracle, with the Virgin Mary actually appearing to them.

Medjugorje is unique in the sense that there are so many messages—thousands and thousands of messages—daily happening since 1981. Those messages have been distributed all around the world through a very well-orchestrated network. This has never happened in the history of the world, and it happens at a time when, through the internet and social media, it's quite easy now to get messages such as Medjugorje out to the faithful.