Introduction
This Series of blog posts will feature a selection of saints and blesseds who were visionaries (those who saw the Lord or the Blessed Virgin Mary in an apparition), stigmatists (those who bore in their physical bodies the wounds of the Crucified Lord), and those whose remains continue to be incorrupt from the time of their death up to the present time. Because of the limitations of this research, it cannot cover all the saints and blesseds who have been chosen by the Lord as instruments of His divine power, to be visionaries, stigmatists and whose remains have been kept intact up to this contemporary age.
A study not meant to lessen the significance of God's power and presence in the ordinary
Although this Series will study God's power in the extraordinary, the study is not meant to detract the reader from the importance of God's goodness and presence in daily and ordinary living. God's power also irrupts in the most insignificant tasks and situations people of faith find themselves doing: like seeing the sun rise after attending the early morning Mass; witnessing the birth of a firstborn child; seeing an elderly woman recover her speech after a stroke; receiving the kindness and generosity of strangers; and many more commonplace experiences - commonplace yet also charged with the splendor of God's goodness and mercy. This blog post however will seek to only inform the reader that God sometimes chooses a few of His servants to magnify His divinity and power for a special purpose.
Visionaries
God reveals Himself many times to His children in their daily life; most especially in the celebration of Word and Sacrament. However, in the history of the Catholic faith, He sometimes reveals Himself to a select number of His servants. These are the visionaries who receive messages from God, and who are asked to make the messages of the vision known to all people. These visionaries are either witnesses of an apparition of Christ or the Blessed Virgin Mary. (Many saints and blesseds also witnessed apparitions of saints and angels, but this study will examine only those apparitions of Jesus and His Mother). One common experience of these visionaries is the suffering they feel from the disbelief and doubts of their family members, townsmen, or companions. They are privileged to see Christ or Mary, and to receive important messages from them. But the people around them and the Church authorities are often skeptical and will surely investigate their claims of "seeing". Almost all visionaries are asked by the people and the Church for a sign or proof that they are indeed "seeing" Christ or Mary and receiving messages from them.
Visionaries of the Blessed Virgin
Three popular visionaries of the Blessed Virgin are: St. Bernadette Soubirous, St. Catherine Labouré, and St. Juan Diego. The first two are French women, while the third is a North American native of Mexico.
St. Bernadette Soubirous
Bernadette was just fourteen years old when Mary revealed herself to the young girl as the "Immaculate Conception". Since the young Bernadette was unlettered and simple, she had to overcome the skepticism, ridicule, and harrassment from her townsmen in Lourdes, France. But Bernadette was unshakeable in her story that Mary wanted the people to do penance for the conversion of many sinners, and to pray at the site of the apparitions (occuring from February 11 - July 16, 1858 A.D. at the rock of Massabielle, Lourdes). At the site where Mary appeared, there is a hidden spring which produces about 27,000 gallons of water per week. Many miraculous cures were attributed to the water at Lourdes, France.
In 1866 A.D., Bernadette joined the Sisters of Notre Dame of Nevers where she spent the rest of her life. Before and after the events of the apparitions, Bernadette lived a very ordinary and uneventful life. She was canonized as Maria Bernarda in 1933 A.D. not because of her privileged calling as a visionary of Mary, but for her genuine life of prayer, simple devotion, and faithful obedience to the will of God. (The example of St. Bernadette shows that the Church values more the life witness of the visionary rather than the extraordinary events of the apparitions themselves.) Bernadette's life story was made into a novel by Franz Werfel (The Story of Bernadette, 1942 A.D.) and was made into an Oscar-winning movie using the same title.
St. Bernadette Soubirous is an example of the biblical truth that God uses the humble and the lowly for His divine purposes. It was because of Bernadette's faith conviction in the veracity of the apparitions, that some of the sick in the world who are searching for a cure to their illness, are flocking every year in pilgrimage to the grotto at Lourdes, France. This is the grotto where the young Bernadette saw Our Lady of Lourdes. Miraculous cures have been noted to have occured in the grotto, but the more important miracles are the conversions of heart experienced by all who pray before Our Lady of Lourdes - Catholics and non-Catholics alike.
To be continued
The story of the other visionary of Mary (St. Juan Diego) and the visionary of Christ (St. Margaret Mary Alacoque), will be featured in the next blog post. After this story on the visionaries of Christ and Mary, will be the stories on the stigmatists of the Church: the two most popular being St. Francis of Assisi and St. Pio of Pietrelcina.
No comments:
Post a Comment