Visions of Jesus and Mary

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Since the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ in Calvary until today, a number of people have claimed to have had visions (and indeed personal conversations) with Him and with Saint Mary in person. Discussions about the authenticity of these visions have often invited controversy. The Catholic Church endorses but a fraction of these claims, yet some of these visionaries have received beatification and some have achieved sainthood.

The very first visions of Christ, and personal conversations with Him, after His Crucifixion and prior to His Ascension were recorded by the apostles in the Bible. One of the most widely recalled examples of a vision of Jesus is the doubting Thomas conversation (John 20:24-29) between Him and Saint Thomas the Apostle after His death. The last book of the Bible itself is simply based on a series of visions. In the Book of Revelation the apostle Saint John the Divine recorded visions that became part of the New Testament.

Many visions of Jesus following His Ascension have been reported after the Book of Revelation was written. But the Book of Revelation itself specifically mentions the case of “false prophets” (Rev 19:20) and undoubtedly not everyone claiming to converse with Jesus can be believed. Over the years, a number of people claiming to converse with Jesus for the sake of monetary gain have been exposed. A well known example was the preacher Peter Popoff who often claimed to receive messages from God to heal people on stage. Popoff was debunked in 1987 when intercepted messages from his wife to a small radio receiver hidden in his ear were replayed on the Johnny Carson national television show.

The Catholic Church has, at times, taken a harsh view of some people who have claimed religious visions. In December 1906, during the reign of Pope Pius X the former Polish nun Feliksa Kozlowska became the first woman in history to be excommunicated by name as a heretic. Some visions of Jesus have simply been classified as hallucinations by the Church, while in a few cases the Church has chosen to remain silent on the authenticity of claimed visions.

The Holy See does, however, recognize a few post-Ascension conversations with Jesus as valid. The Vatican biography of Saint Teresa of Avila clearly refers to her gift of interior locution and her conversations with Jesus. The Vatican biography of Saint Juan Diego discusses his conversation with the Virgin Mary. The Vatican biography of Saint Faustyna Kowalska goes further in that it not only refers to her conversations with Jesus, but quotes some of these conversations. The post-Ascension visions of Jesus and the Virgin Mary have, in fact, played a key role in the direction of the Catholic Church, e.g. the formation of the Franciscan order and the devotions to the Holy Rosary and the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

In 1205, while praying in the Church of San Damiano just outside Assisi, Saint Francis of Assisi reported a vision in which an image of Jesus came alive and told him: "Francis, Francis, go and repair My house which, as you can see, is falling into ruins." This vision lead Saint Francis to renounce the outlook of his merchant family, embrace poverty and form the Franciscan order. For several centuries thereafter, the Franciscans became a key force in the renewal of the reach of Christianity. During another vision in 1224 Saint Francis reportedly received the very first recorded case of stigmata.

In 1251 the English Carmelite priest Saint Simon Stock reported a vision of the Virgin Mary at Cambridge England. According to Saint Simon, in this vision the Virgin Mary had a scapular in her hand and told him: "whoever dies in this garment, will not suffer everlasting fire.” Saint Simon instituted the confraternity of the Brown Scapular. Also known as the Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the brown scapular is perhaps the best known, and most widespread of all small scapulars.

In her early life, Saint Catherine of Siena was a withdrawn Dominican tertiary who lived, fasted and prayed at home in Siena Italy. In 1366, when she was 19 years old she reported her first vision of Jesus after which she started to tend to the sick and the poor. In 1370 she reported a vision in which she was commanded to abandon her life of solitude and to make an impact on the world. She corresponded with Pope Gregory XI and other people in authority, begging for peace and for the reformation of the clergy, writing over 300 letters. Her arguments, and her trip to Avignon, eventually became instrumental in the decision of Pope Gregory XI to return the Avignon Papacy to Rome where she was summoned to live until her death. She is one of only three female Doctors of the Church.

In 1372 Saint Julian of Norwich was on her deathbed and had been given her last rites when she reported a series of visions of Jesus, followed by a sudden recovery. Almost twenty years later she wrote about these visions in her book “Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love” perhaps the first book in the English language written by a woman, presumably because she was unfamiliar with Latin. Her book mentions her illness and her recovery as she saw the shining image of Christ. The sixteen revelations start with the crown of thorns and proceed through the death of Jesus, ending with His resurrection and how Christ still dwells in the souls of those who love Him. She is also celebrated in the Anglican Church.

In 1531, Saint Juan Diego reported an early morning vision of the Virgin Mary in which he was instructed to build an abbey on the Hill of Tepeyac in Mexico. The local prelate did not believe his account and asked for a miraculous sign, which was later provided as an icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe permanently imprinted on the saint’s cloak where he had gathered roses. Over the years, Our Lady of Guadalupe became a symbol of the Catholic faith in Mexico. By 1820 when the Mexican War of Independence from Spanish colonial rule ended Our Lady of Guadalupe had come to symbolize the Mexican nation. Today it remains a strong national and religious symbol in Mexico.

On St. Peter's Day in 1559 Saint Teresa of Avila (Teresa de Jesús) reported a vision of Jesus present to her in bodily form. For almost two years thereafter she reported similar visions. In some visions she suffered bodily pain which led to the motto often associated with her: "Lord, either let me suffer or let me die." Saint Teresa’s visions transformed her life and she became a key figure in the Catholic Church eventually being recognized as one of only three female Doctors of the Church. One of her visions is the subject of Bernini's famous work The Ecstasy of St Theresa in the basilica of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome.

From 1673 to 1675 Saint Marguerite Marie Alacoque recalled a series of visions of Christ speaking to her. In December 1673 she reported that Jesus permitted her to rest her head upon His heart, and then disclosed to her the wonders of His love. This led her to the founding of the Devotion of the Sacred Heart. Initially, her life, actions, beliefs and writings became the subject of extreme scrutiny by the Catholic Church. However, she was eventually declared a saint in1920 and the Feast of the Sacred Heart is now officially celebrated 19 days after Pentecost.

Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich was an Augustinian nun who lived from 1774 to 1824 in Germany. She was bed ridden as of 1813 and had visible stigmata which would reopen on Good Friday. She reported that since childhood she had visions in which she talked with Jesus and the Holy See later came to accept her claims. In 1819 the poet Klemens Brentano, was inspired to visit her and began to write her visions in his words, with her approval. In 1833, after her death, the book “The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ” was released by Brentano and was used in part by Mel Gibson for his movie The Passion of the Christ in 2003. In 1852 the book “The Life of The Blessed Virgin Mary” was published. Anne Catherine’s visions allegedly led to the discovery of the house in which the Virgin Mary lived in Ephesus Turkey prior to the Assumption of Mary. She also had visions of the future Catholic Church being undermined by political forces and Freemasonry from within the Catholic Church's own hierarchy. The remedies she saw for the protection of the Catholic Church were the Holy Rosary and Eucharistic Adoration.

In 1843 Sr. Marie of St. Peter, a Carmelite nun in Tours France reported visions of conversations with Jesus and the Virgin Mary in which she was urged to spread the devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus, in reparation for the many insults Jesus suffered in His Passion. This resulted in The Golden Arrow Holy Face Devotion (Prayer).

In 1858 Saint Bernadette Soubirous was a 14 year old shepherd girl who lived near the town of Lourdes in France. One day she reported a vision of a miraculous Lady who identified Herself as the Virgin Mary in subsequent visions. In the first vision she was asked to return again and she had 18 visions overall. According to Saint Bernadette, the Lady held a string of Rosary beads and asked Saint Bernadette to drink water from the spring nearby and to request that the local priests build a chapel at that site of the visions. Eventually, a number of chapels and churches were built at Lourdes - which is now a major Catholic pilgrimage site. One of these churches, the Basilica of St. Pius X can accommodate 25 thousand people and was dedicated by the future Pope John XXIII when he was the Papal Nuncio to France.

In 1899 Saint Gemma Galgani reported a vision of Jesus after which she experienced recurring stigmata. She reported the vision as follows: “At that moment Jesus appeared with all his wounds open, but from these wounds there no longer came forth blood, but flames of fire. In an instant these flames came to touch my hands, my feet and my heart.” Thereafter she reported receiving the stigmata from every Thursdays night to every Saturdays morning during which time she also reported further conversations with Jesus. The Congregation of Rites has yet refrained from making a decision on her stigmata.

The Franciscan Italian priest Saint Padre Pio reported visions of both Jesus and Saint Mary as early as 1910. For a number of years he claimed to have experienced deep ecstasy along with his visions. In 1918, while praying in the Church of Our Lady of Grace he reported ecstasy and visions which this time left him with permanent and visible stigmata, the five wounds of Christ. The stigmata remained visible on his hands and feet for the next fifty years. Padre Pio was examined by many physicians, none of whom could offer an explanation for the fact that his bleeding wounds were never subject to infection.

The visions of the Virgin Mary appearing to three shepherd children at Our Lady of Fatima in Portugal in 1917 were declared "worthy of belief" by the Catholic Church in 1930 but Catholics at large are not formally required to believe them yet.

The Holy See has, at times, reversed its position on some visions. In 1931 Saint Faustyna Kowalska reported visions of a conversation with Jesus when she was a simple Polish nun. This resulted in the Chaplet of Divine Mercy as a prayer and later an institution which was condemned by the Holy See in 1958. However, further investigation resulted in her beatification in 1993 and canonization in 2000. Her conversations in Jesus are recorded in her diary, published as “Divine Mercy in My Soul” - passages from which are at times quoted by the Vatican. Divine Mercy Sunday is now officially celebrated as the first Sunday after Easter.

On the first Friday in Lent 1936, Sister Maria Pierina De Micheli, a nun born near Milan in Italy, reported a vision in which Jesus told her: “I will that My Face, which reflects the intimate pains of My Spirit, the suffering and the love of My Heart, be more honored.. He who meditates upon Me, consoles Me”. Further visions reportedly urged her to make a medal with the Holy Face. In 1958, Pope Pius XII confirmed the Feast of the Holy Face of Jesus as Shrove Tuesday (the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday) for all Roman Catholics.

From 1944 to 1947 the bed ridden Italian writer and mystic Maria Valtorta produced 15,000 handwritten pages of text that she said recorded the visions of her conversations with Jesus about His life and the early church. These handwritten pages were characterized by the fact that they included no overwrites, corrections or revisions and seemed somewhat like dictations. The fact that she often suffered from heart and lung ailments during the period of the visions made the natural flow of the text even more unusual. These pages became the basis of her book The Poem of the Man God. The position of the Catholic Church with respect to her book is unclear and subject to varying interpretations. The Holy See does not endorse the book, but no longer forbids it. Since 1992 the Holy See has chosen to remain silent on its position with respect to the work.

In the book Visions of Jesus Phillip Wiebe chronicled the stories of 30 people from truly diverse backgrounds who claim to have had recent conversations with Jesus. Wiebe analyzed these claims from multiple perspectives, including hallucinations, dreams and real visions.

Among recent visions, the reported apparitions of Virgin Mary to six children in Međugorje in 1981 have received the widest amount of attention and these visionaries have had the strongest following among Catholics worldwide.

As recently as 1985 other visionaries such as Vassula Ryden have recorded their conversations with Jesus in various books, resulting in further discussion and controversy.

Some of the visions of Jesus and Mary are related among visionaries in different ages. For instance, in the 1980s Vicka Ivankovic and Marija Pavlovic two of the visionaries in Međugorje both stated that the Virgin Mary told them that the visions reported in the 1940s by the Italian mystic Maria Valtorta of her conversations with Jesus are authentic.

External Links:

Franciscan Archives on St. Francis of Assisi: http://www.franciscan-archive.org/patriarcha/

Vatican Biography of St. Teresa of Avila: http://www.vatican.va/news_services/liturgy/saints/ns_lit_doc_19930321_teresa-de-jesus_en.html

St. Julian of Norwich at the Julian Site: http://www.umilta.net/julian.html Poem by St. Julian of Norwich at the Vatican: http://www.vatican.va/spirit/documents/spirit_20010807_giuliana-norwich_en.html

Vatican Biography of St. Juan Diego: http://www.vatican.va/news_services/liturgy/saints/ns_lit_doc_20020731_juan-diego_en.html

Vatican Biography of Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich: http://www.vatican.va/news_services/liturgy/saints/ns_lit_doc_20041003_emmerick_en.html

Vatican Biography of St. Faustyna Kowalska: http://www.vatican.va/news_services/liturgy/saints/ns_lit_doc_20000430_faustina_en.html St. Faustyna Kowalska’s Diary: http://our.homewithgod.com/divinemercy/

Oxford University Press: Visions of Jesus. http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/ReligionTheology/HistoryofChristianity/?view=usa&ci=9780195097504