Mother Mary in her Apparitions
This article is a compilation of the original one I wrote for this site and a presentation I gave during a Marian conference at Sonoma State University in September 2025, organized by Fr. Christopher Agoha and his Newman Center.
Table of Content
Does the Catholic Church Make Apparitions Up? How Does it Deal with them?
The Challenge of Marian Apparitions
What Are Apparitions?
What is the Meaning and Purpose of Apparitions?
What Do Apparitions Say About Reality?
1. Does the Catholic Church Make Apparitions Up?
How Does it Deal with them?
Many people blame the Catholic Church for having made Mother Mary into something that goes far beyond the Bible and somehow resembles a pagan goddess. What they don’t realize is that the Queen of Heaven, depicted in Revelation 12:1, has been revealing herself in apparitions throughout the world, on every continent, and since the very beginning of Christianity.[i] The Catholic Church never chose all this activity - God did. The faithful masses, and especially women, usually love it when their Heavenly Mother appears to someone, but the Church as an institution has a sort of love-hate relationship with Our Lady of the Apparitions, as I call her. It appreciates her for bringing people to the faith, but it seems to fear a loss of control whenever the Spirit moves freely. You see, God has this nasty habit of speaking through uneducated, un-ordained peasants, mostly women and children, and sometimes it dares to call the clergy on its shortcomings.
Most priests and bishops will not be happy to be lectured by little peasant “brats”. It’s an interesting detail that our heavenly mother forces them to endure just that on a regular basis.
Photos above: the visionaries of Lourdes, France in 1885, Fatima, Portugal in 1917, Banneux, Belgium in 1933, and Kibeho, Rwanda in 1981-89 in their Sunday best after their apparitions had reached a certain level of acceptance.
Imagine you are a priest or a bishop. You are the expert on God, trained through 5 – 10 years of study, then given power to help Jesus become present in the Blessed Sacrament, power to forgive or not forgive sins, power to reign your flock. And now you are asked to listen to some kid, an uneducated peasant or worker child who claims to see the Mother of God and tells you where to build a big church?! Or worse yet, maybe those kids tell you that Mary would like you to rethink your position in an argument you are having with the local Franciscans! (This happened in Medjugorje.) Imagine you are the bishop and feel what that’s like….
The Church and civil authorities usually grill these poor little souls, accuse them of being imposters. In Fatima the civil administrator of the district threatened to boil them in hot oil unless they recant their “lies” about having seen Our Lady. But invariably the visionaries, though scared, refuse to say they didn’t see what they saw and they answer their interrogators with deep yet simple truths.
Read any account of the famous apparitions (like Lourdes, Fatima, Rue du Bac in Paris, or the Virgin of Guadalupe) and you’ll find Church authorities who are trying to block the whole thing, who interrogate and disrespect the visionaries, who refuse to believe until undeniable, miraculous proof is piled up before them. Then they send that proof to scientists of all sorts for investigation.
Next, they let a lot of time pass, hoping people will forget about the whole thing. And finally, years or decades later, if they have to, they will admit that there really was an apparition of Our Lady and give their official stamp of approval. Even then, they may still spend a few decades procrastinating actually doing some of the things she asked for.[ii]
On top of all that, the Vatican decided to classify all accredited apparitions as “private revelations” that are not necessary for salvation. However, as far as I can tell, her messages are rarely private and never unnecessary. In 1982, Our Lady of Medjugorje was asked why she had been appearing so often and in so many places. She answered: “It is necessary to awaken the faith. It is a gift from God. (…) If it is necessary, I will appear in each home.”[iii]
So, if you want to blame someone for Mother Mary’s position in the Catholic Church, blame God who sends her to appear and the masses who appreciate them, not the Vatican!
2. The Challenge of Marian Apparitions
To be fair, I will concede that the apparitions of the Queen of Heaven do pose a serious theological challenge. Because even though the clergy puts great stress on the opinion that Mary is not God, our Lady sure comes across as divine. She appears from heaven, speaks for God, acts for God and calls Jesus “my son” even though she’s obviously not talking about the historical Jesus anymore. She makes the sun dance, writes messages into the sky and performs countless other miracles. In short, she acts like God and feels like God.[4] Why? Because she was divinized. The catechism of the Catholic Church lists in the subject index the phrase: “divinization of man as Jesus’ goal”. Paragraph 460 says: “The Word became flesh to make us "partakers of the divine nature": (2 Pet 1:4) "For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God." (St. Irenaeus, 2nd century) "For the Son of God became man so that we might become God."( St. Athanasius, 4th century) "The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods." (St. Thomas Aquinas, 13th century)
When we can say with Paul: “I live, but not I, Christ lives in me.” (Gal 2:20), when we have lost our self completely in God like so many great saints did, when we have mortified our flesh and died to our old self, crucified our old self with Christ, when we can honestly say with Catherine of Genoa (1447-1510): “My I is God; I know no other I than this my God.”[5], then we are a divine presence to others, like the Virgin Mary. Many saints and especially St. Alphonsus de Liguori, talk about Mary’s oneness with God due to her will being completely unified to God’s will and due to her being the spouse of the Holy Spirit. Just as husband and wife become one flesh (Genesis2:24, Matthew 19:5, Mark 10:8) so Mary became completely one with her spouse. Many Catholic theologians talk about Mary becoming divine and omnipotent by God’s gift of grace, while Jesus was always divine and omnipotent by nature.
In iconography Jesus and Mary’s divine nature is often depicted by the color blue and their human nature as red. Jesus’ inner garment is blue because he was divine before he became human; Mary’s inner garment is red because she was human before she became divinized, entirely one with God.
Besides the theological, there is also the emotional challenge of how to love a God who has multiple aspects and who speaks to us through countless saints and angels. Christians deal with this all the time. How often do I hear people say, they love Jesus, but they don't feel much connection with God Father, or vice versa. And how many have no clue as to what to do with the Holy Spirit! To have a deep emotional relationship with all three persons of the Holy Trinity is not easy and extremely rare.
For me the same issue came up when Our Lady of Medjugorje said in October 2003: “I call you anew to consecrate yourselves to my heart and the heart of my Son Jesus.”[6] It didn’t make sense in my mind, because when you consecrate yourself, you give yourself entirely to a heavenly person. How could I give myself entirely to Mary, and then, when I was already given away, give myself again to Jesus? I had a real problem with this, also because I didn’t feel that I could love Jesus and Mary exactly equally. A friend of mine was helpful when he reminded me that God commanded us to love our father and mother but didn’t say we had to love them in exactly the same way. Even our worldly parents don’t expect us to have the exact same love for our father and mother. Sometimes we will feel closer to one, other times to the other. The only important thing is that we somehow love them both. Still I resisted, until one day I thought to myself: ”Quit thinking about it; just do what She says!” When I gave myself entirely, first to Mary and then to Jesus, it immediately became clear to my heart that they aren’t two, but one, and that consecrating myself to both allows them to celebrate their union in me.[7] To me they are like two sides of the same coin or like the two triangles in the star of David: one points down, representing the movement of God towards humanity and one points up, representing the movement of humanity towards union with God. What joy I felt! Intellectually I had seen them as one already for quite some time, but I hadn’t “gotten it”; emotionally until then.
I suspect that Catholics all over the world and of all ranks have a similar problem: We don’t want to dilute our love for God by spreading it around to all kinds of heavenly persons and saints. And we feel slightly inadequate when we don't love all aspects of God equally. The solution however is not to narrow God down to something we can love easily, but to expand our love to match God’s reality. To me, the solution is not to create a hierarchy where maybe the Son is less than the Father and the Mother is less than the Son. Rather we would do well to realize in our hearts that all persons, aspects, and extensions of God are one but not mingled, distinct but inseparable.
3. What are apparitions?
Mary has been appearing all over the world since the year 40 AD and there are endless things I could say about apparitions in general and each one in particular. I will only say what most others may not talk about.
There are many kinds of spiritual experiences. Apparitions are one of the crown jewels among them, but I think many of us have spiritual experiences. We may not talk about them for fear of being called crazy, or seeming proud, or just because it feels so private and nobody else talks about them. Or maybe, like Fr. Christopher Agoha, we told our mother when we were 7 that we saw the Virgin Mary and got a slap in the face for it.[8]
However, I think it’s important to talk about spiritual experiences as a normal part of the spiritual life and to teach people how to become receptive to these graces. Then we can rejoice that they are not something of the distant past or reserved for only a handful of saints. We can become more aware of how close Heaven is. Just this week I found out that two people in my parish saw an apparition of Mary right here in Santa Rosa, California! I would have never guessed….
Among all the possible kinds of spiritual experiences, apparitions stand out as something that is completely initiated by Heaven. I have never heard of an apparition somebody asked for or expected. They usually come as a complete surprise or even shock and most often to regular children, who weren’t even noted for their spirituality until Mary appeared to them.
I would define apparitions as occasions when a being of light takes on human form, gets into a human costume so to speak, in order to communicate something to us humans.
People can talk to them, sometimes even touch them. They appear to be human, except they also radiate with a heavenly beauty. For many visionaries it’s an instant visit to heaven. Mary comes to them on earth, but with her comes heaven (or maybe she is heaven?) and so, in her presence they are in heaven. They don’t feel bodily pain. You can prick them with a needle or shine a flashlight into their eyes and get 0 reaction.
Maybe that’s what happened to Paul in 2 Corinthians 12, where he was “taken up into the 3rd heaven and heard words not to be spoken of”.
Again and again people describe Marian apparitions as starting with a light gathering in the sky. Gradually the light turns into a human form. It seems that Christians largely ignore this part. I’ve never heard anybody comment on it. They seem to imagine that Mary sits in heaven in the form that they saw her clothed in. But the Queen of Heaven can clothe herself in anything. In the Bible she is seen “clothed in the sun” (Revelation, 12:1). In 1947, in Tre Fontane outside of Rome, she was seen “clothed in the love of the trinity”. In 1973, in Akita, Japan she clothed herself in a statue of Mary with Asian features. From there she spoke, emitted light, shed tears and bled.
Left: The visionary of Tre Fontane, a former atheist turned Catholic, with his children. Mary said: “I am the one that is of the Divine Trinity: daughter of the Father, the Mother of the Son, and Spouse and Temple of the Holy Spirit” … “I am the Virgin of the Revelation.” She was clothed in the trinity, her green mantel denotes God Father, the creator, her white dress stands for God the Son, the unblemished, perfectly pure lamb of God, and the pink sash represents the Holy Spirit. https://www.mdrevelation.org/the-colours-of-the-virgin-of-revelation/
Right: Mary bleeds for us through a statue in Akita, Japan.
When she appears to White people, she clothes herself in their features, when she appeared to St. Juan Diego in Mexico City, she looked like an Aztec princess. In Kibeho, Rwanda she looked more like a Black than a White person. Perhaps Heaven clothes itself in human forms so that we can learn to “clothe ourselves in God”. (Gal. 3:27, 1 Cor. 15:53-54, Eph. 4:24)
I guess many Christians don’t know what to make of the Virgin Mary forming out of light, because they are to believe in the resurrection of the body and the bodily assumption of Mary into heaven. But I think their notion of what “body” means in heaven is too worldly. In Mahayana Buddhism the Buddha’s “body of truth” (dharmakaya) is the limitless expanse of the universe, present everywhere. Maybe this thought can help Christians. Mary’s body in heaven is light, not light as we see it here on earth, but a heavenly, living light.
4. The Meaning and Purpose of Apparitions
I used to think apparition stories were folklore for children until an event at our parish. A woman sang a song about Lourdes, the famous apparition site in France, where Mary appeared in 1858. In the introduction to that song, she explained that Mother Mary asked Bernadette, the visionary, to dig in the earth in order to uncover the sacred spring of healing water and that this was a symbolic act pointing to the fact that we have to dig through our subconscious, through several layers of our mind and soul, to get to the holy well of the divine in us – that water of which Jesus says, drink of it and you shall never thirst again. (Jn 4:14)
It hit me like a ton of bricks that something intelligent could be said about apparitions and that everything that happens during Marian apparitions has a deeper meaning, besides what happened on the outer, historical level.
Later I learned that even before the time of Jesus, Judaism recognized various levels of meaning in scripture. In the 4th century, St. Augustine formulated 4 levels or senses of meaning of scripture for Christianity: the literal, symbolic, moral, and mystical.
I propose that just like scripture, so too the book of salvation history, which God continually writes, has levels of meaning. Everything that happens in Marian apparitions, everything she shows or says, also has not only a literal, historical, but also a moral, symbolic, and mystical dimension. For example, in Lourdes, Mary appeared at the village dump to a teenaged girl who could barely understand what she was taught in Sunday school, supposedly because she wasn’t very intelligent.
The grotto in Lourdes where Mary appeared - a former dump
Let’s take a moment and meditate on that. Close your eyes, take a deep breath, let go of everything that’s been swirling around your head. ….. Now imagine you are passing the nearest dump, or maybe you are just taking the garbage out, and right where everyone throws their garbage suddenly appears a lady who radiates with heavenly beauty. Don’t try to make sense of it, just notice how you feel in your body and heart when you see a heavenly lady at your local dump. Someone from heaven is with you at a completely mundane place. Breathe her energy into yourself. What does that do to you? What does this communicate to you? …… Psalm 113, 7-8 says: “(God) raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the trash heap.”
To me it’s about pure grace; about the closeness of God, who is with us not only in church, but everywhere, and who can transform any place into the Kingdom of Heaven when we remember and open to him.
Why does Mary appear at all?
As she said herself in Medjugorje: “It is necessary to awaken the faith. It is a gift from God. (…) If it is necessary, I will appear in each home.”[9] Faith in whom? Yes, certainly she promotes faith in the Holy Trinity and the Catholic Church, but also faith in herself.
A year before the end of WWI, from May to October 1917, Our Lady appeared in Fatima. One of the things she said to St. Jacinta, one of the three visionaries, is this: “Tell everybody that God grants us His graces through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, that they should ask her for them, that the Heart of Jesus wants the Immaculate heart of Mary to be honored along with Him, that they should ask the Immaculate Heart of Mary for peace because God has placed it in her keeping.”[10]
To me this points to a core aspect of Marian apparitions in general. They are God’s way of ensuring there is some kind of a gender balance in our spiritual life. God who created us male and female in God’s image, who therefore is Father and Mother and who manifests and communicates to us as Jesus and Mary, keeps sending apparitions of our heavenly Mother in order to fulfill the need of many, maybe not all, for not just a Father, but also a Mother in heaven.
Mary revealed this image, showing the cross of Christ inseparably anchored and interwoven in her M and their Sacred Hearts of equal size, positioned next to each other.
Images like the Miraculous Medal and some messages given in apparitions suggest that we don’t have to see Mary as below Jesus. Heaven allows us to revere her as the co-redemptrix, the mediatrix of all graces, with whom God is happy to share power. God is not on a power trip like we humans. Jesus makes quite clear several times that he is not interested in hogging power the way “pagans” do. It’s not even Christian to want to “lord it over” others.[11] Instead, he is “meek and humble of heart” (Mt: 11:29) and wants to share his throne with as many as possible. As he says in Revelation 3:21: “To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I was victorious and sat down with my Father on his throne.” Surely his mother was victorious.
Mary and Jesus sharing a throne. Mosaics in the apse of Santa Maria Maggiore and Santa Maria Trastevere, Rome, AD 1290 and 1140.
Marian apparitions are a corrective in so many ways. Bringing more gender balance into the Church is one important aspect, but there are others. She often points back to practices that were in danger of being neglected or forgotten, like fasting, doing penance, going to confession, venerating Mary with great devotion, and embracing poverty of spirit.[12]
Let’s consider why Mary mostly appears to poor, uneducated children in the country? Why did God take birth through Mary — herself such a humble country girl? Why was Jesus’ father a carpenter in a county and town of bad reputation, rather than a priest serving in the temple in Jerusalem or a king? It means salvation/enlightenment/divine union doesn’t come from all our oh so intelligent head tripping and arguing over doctrines, but from a humble openness to God and from letting go of all our ideas into “poverty of spirit”. It comes from letting go of all our worldly ambitions, from letting go of any desire for power of any sort. In the Kingdom of Heaven everything is upside down: the poor are rich, the rich go hungry, the persecuted are blessed…. Nothing makes sense to the human mind. We have to let go of our human mind in order to “put on the mind of Christ” and enter the Kingdom.
5. What do apparitions say about reality?
When you read about Marian apparitions, it can be a bit disconcerting. What kind of a world is that where a lady appears in the sky, makes the sun dance, writes messages in the clouds, unlocks prison doors, stops battles, lets a river of fire appear in the sky……..? If you believe all those things, you are no longer in a stable, material world; you’ve entered a fluid, divine realm where anything is possible and nothing is “cast in concrete” anymore. You may feel like you are losing ground. Here’s what Mary is quoted as saying in an apparition that was not approved by the Church, but I find deeply meaningful anyway: “Remember, it is when you find no ground beneath your feet, you shall realize you are in flight to my embrace.” [13]
Don’t be afraid to fly beyond your usual reality! Let go and let God!
Endnotes:
[1] In 40 AD, Our Lady was still alive in Ephesus, but bi-located to Zaragoza, Spain in order to help St. James the Greater establish Christianity there. She gave him the Black Madonna statue and pilar that came to be known as Our Lady of the Pilar. This is significant, because in the temple in Jerusalem the pilar near the arc represented the feminine face of God, the Shekhina.
[2]The most tragic example of the Church not listening to Our Lady is Fatima. During WWI, she requested that the whole world be consecrated to her in a way that would involve all bishops, all over the world. She warned that if they did not do this, Russia would spread its errors (communism) around the world, and an even more horrible war would come soon. If they did it, she promised, WWII would be averted. They waited 67 years! Only in 1984, did Pope St. John Paul II fulfill her request. 5 years later the Iron Curtain fell.
So, the pride of the Vatican is co-responsible for all the deaths in WWII, the rise of communism and all the deaths due to that, more than 100 million total! I pray the bishops will humble themselves under Mary!
But not just the bishops. As I was writing this talk, I realized how I too sometimes still drag my feet when it comes to obeying Our Lady. E.g. on August 25th 2025, in her monthly message to the visionary Marija in Medjugorje, she said: “Dear children, my little children, my beloved ones; you are chosen because you have responded, you have put into practice my instructions and love God above all else. Therefore, little children, pray with all your heart that my words may be realized. Fast, sacrifice yourselves, love out of love for God Who created you, and be, little children, my extended hands to this world that has not come to know the God of love. Thank you for having responded to my call." Sacrifice yourselves! Am I happy to hear that and rush wholeheartedly to obey? No! I too drag my feet and say: “Can we talk about this?! Can it not be too hard please? Can it not hurt please? Can it not cost me too much please?”
I realize that if I want the Church to obey Mary immediately and fully, I can work on being what I want them to be and offer my efforts to God, that He may move me and the Church in the right direction, together.
[3] Steve Shawl, The Medjugorje Messages: 40th Anniversary Edition, The Medjugorje Web, DeKalb, IL.: 2021, p. 80
[4] Steve Shawl’s describes his own experience: “Then, in an instant, there was a beautiful bright white light in front of me that filled my entire field of vision. It was a light I had never seen before. It had depth and life. I could see its beauty, color, and brightness, but also felt its purity and holiness. I was literally pushed back in my chair, and I could feel the warmth of the light on my face. The whole experience is very difficult to explain or put into words, but I knew it was Divine. I knew Our Lady was there before me. I felt indescribable love and peace pouring down upon me.” Ibid. p. 17
[5] Quoted in: Martin Buber, Ecstatic Confessions: the Heart of Mysticism, Harper & Row Publishers, San Francisco: 1985, p.107, quotes taken from Marabotto e Vernazza, Vita mirabilis et dottrina celeste di Santa Caterina Fiesca Adorna da Genova, Padua: 1743
[6] Steve Shawl, op. cit. p. 185
[7] How can Mary and Jesus be one? In her apparitions in Tre Fontane, outside Rome, in 1947, she introduced herself this way: “I am the one that is of the Divine Trinity: daughter of the Father, the Mother of the Son, and Spouse and Temple of the Holy Spirit” … “I am the Virgin of the Revelation.” She was clothed in the trinity, her green mantel denotes God Father, the creator, her white dress stands for God the Son, the unblemished, perfectly pure lamb of God, and the pink sash represents the Holy Spirit. https://www.mdrevelation.org/the-colours-of-the-virgin-of-revelation/
[8] Father Christopher Agoha has been receiving visitations from Our Lady for the past roughly 50 years. His mother slapped him when he first mentioned it, because she shared the Nigerian belief that if someone in the family sees a ghost, it means someone else in the family will die soon. So, she really didn’t want her son to have any kind of vision. To this day, he is reticent to talk about this openly in public, but he agreed with me when I said: “Don’t be afraid. It’s time to come out of the closet!”
He calls his encounters ‘trances’ and no, he’s definitely not crazy at all! He’s a high functioning priest and canon lawyer and a friend of his bishop. Bishop Robert Vasa knows about “his lady” and believes her, but I suppose, he deems the whole thing a private matter.
I would summarize Mother Mary’s messages to Fr. Christopher in 5 points:
1. Call on me under the title Miraculous Mother of Divine Presence.
To understand what that may mean, I would encourage you to try my meditation on the incarnation and see for yourself.
2. Add this prayer to the Hail Mary: “Miraculous Mother of Divine Presence be present with ….”
3. Help fulfill the prophecy that “All generations shall call me blessed.” (Lk 1:48)
4. She gives him predictions about people he is connected to and personal messages sending him here and there.
5. She wants a shrine in her honor where she is invoked as the Miraculous Mother of divine presence. He feels that the outdoor statue at the Newman Center in Cotati, California where he currently lives, fulfills that request, because she told him he would find such a little shrine already in place. I think that’s maybe a good start, but not really a full-fledged shrine.
[9] Steve Shawl, Op. cit. p. 80
[10] 2018 calendar of ANF.org (ANF stands for America Needs Fatima)
[11] See: Matthew 20:25–28: “ But Jesus called them to him and said, ‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
And Luke 22:25–27: “And he said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you. Rather, let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves. For who is the greater, one who reclines at table or one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at table? But I am among you as the one who serves.”
[12] That great virtue embodied by St. Francis, inspired by Jesus’ words in Mat 5:3.
[13]In the End my Immaculate Heart Will Triumph: Consecration Preparation for the Triumphant Victory of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Queenship Publishing Co., (800) 647-9882, p.14. The martial language in this booklet is sometimes hard to take, but the rest is well worth it.
[14] My favorite book about apparition stories is Roy Abraham Varghese’s God Sent: A History of the Accredited Apparitions of Mary, Crossroad Pub Co: 2000
