There are many kinds of apparitions and visions, but Marian ones predominate in the Catholic Church.

The last major Vatican document addressing the topic is the "Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy," issued in 2001.

It quotes a line from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which sums up the church's stance with admirable clarity: "Throughout the ages, there have been so-called private revelations, some of which have been recognized by the authority of the Church. They do not belong, however, to the deposit of faith" (No. 67).

In other words, you do not have to believe in Marian apparitions to be a good Catholic.

But I do.

I've never had a problem believing in them.

My general approach is: If God could create the universe ex nihilo and raise his Son from the dead, then having Mary appear from time to time, and even being the occasion for some miracles, seems easy by comparison.

That statement may sound flip.

But it is entirely serious.

It is surely within God's power to enable these things to happen.

So, I am always amazed when people say, "God wouldn't possibly do that." Oh, really?

I also say this as someone who has visited three major Marian shrines, which have deeply moved me: Lourdes, Fátima and Knock.

The stories of the visionaries and what I experienced in those places go a long way to convince me of the veracity of the apparitions.

There is also a striking sameness among most Marian apparitions (at least these three) that reminds me of the sameness that one finds as a spiritual director who listens for God's voice.

As St Ignatius Loyola says in his Spiritual Exercises, there is a certain quality to God's voice that one can recognize.

Likewise, in these apparitions.

Three stories

I know Lourdes best, having been there several times on pilgrimages with the Order of Malta over the years. Continue reading

• James Martin, S.J., is a Jesuit priest, author, editor at large at America and founder of Outreach.

Mary embodies some of my most deeply held values.

As a young, poor woman from Galilee, she represents how God chose to enter into human existence in the most radically humble way.

Her "Magnificat" is one of the most powerful passages in the Gospels. And her own "yes" to God is, of course, the ultimate model of how a human being should relate to God.

These lessons, though, often become muddled when Mary is presented only as a model for women.

As the theologian Elizabeth Johnson wrote in her book on Mary, Truly Our Sister, Mary is often seen as "the ideal embodiment of feminine essence." She continues,

Whether her perfection then serves to disparage other women or to inspire them, her obedient, responsive, maternal image is at play in the community as the norm for women in contrast to men. When combined with an understanding of God and Christ as essentially masculine, the result reproduces in theology, spirituality and church polity nothing less than the patriarchal order of the world, now with divine sanction.

When viewed through this lens, Mary represents an impossible double standard.

The poet Mary Szybist told me that encountering Mary this way damaged her own sense of self-worth: "The message is that [as a woman] you are valued for your virginity and you are valued for being a mother.

To grow up to be neither a virgin nor a mother leaves the puzzle, under that kind of pressure of imagination, how does one value oneself?"

Mothers, too, struggle with how to relate to Mary's virginity and the emphasis the church places on it.

No one, after all, is both a virgin and a mother.

It was that double standard and the way Mary was invoked as "divine sanction" for the "patriarchal order of the world," that led me to keep her at arm's length through much of my life.

I often told people that, intellectually, I just didn't understand the appeal of Marian devotion.

What it was about Mary that, for example, led some of the most progressive Catholics I knew to pray the Rosary every day.

Mary, despite my hesitations, has always been present to me.

At times it feels I have been haunted by her, to borrow a phrase Dorothy Day used to speak about God.

Perhaps it is my many years of Catholic school, or my teenage habit of praying a Rosary on my morning drive every day, but I have always found myself reflexively reciting Hail Marys in life's liminal moments: washing my hands, waiting for a red light to change, watching hot coffee drip into the carafe.

Without ever really thinking about it, I am always talking to her, always in the same words, echoing the Annunciation ("Hail Mary, full of grace…"), and finally asking her to remember me now and at the hour of my death.

My mental hangups with Mary, though, kept me from talking to her beyond these almost unconscious recitations.

I tried to separate the liberating images of Mary from the oppressive ones, but I never could.

I found that the figure of Mary was too entangled in arguments that did not resonate with me or my understanding of myself as a woman.

Then I became pregnant, and my struggling relationship with Mary became impossible to ignore. Continue reading

Now they will get a closer look - but on a worldwide scale.

The Pontificia Academia Mariana Internationalis, or PAMI, recently announced an "observatory" to investigate claims of appearances of the Virgin Mary and reports of statues of her weeping oil and blood.

This announcement extends PAMI's mission of promoting devotion to Mary and studying phenomena related to her.

While waiting for full Vatican approval, the observatory will train investigators to study mystical phenomena in cooperation with church authorities - for example, trying to determine the substance of reported tears.

Investigating the supernatural has always been a delicate task in the Catholic Church, which has to balance the faith of believers with the possibility of fraud.

Marian apparitions

Catholics believe Mary is the mother of Jesus Christ and the mother of God, who still makes her presence known. And the Catholic Church has officially recognised several sites where Mary has reportedly appeared around the globe.

The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe on a cloak in Mexico City has long been revered by Catholics as a miracle confirming Mary's appearance to the peasant Juan Diego in 1531.

In Fatima, Portugal, in 1917, three children claimed that the Virgin Mary had visited them several times. Crowds drawn by the children's prophecy that Mary would reappear and perform a miracle reported seeing the sun "dance in the sky."

The most recent Marian apparition that a Catholic bishop has declared "worthy of belief" was in Buenos Aires province, Argentina, in 2016.

A local Catholic woman told her priest that visions had begun with rosary prayer beads glowing in multiple homes and progressed to Mary warning her of humanity's "self-destruction."

Mary's tears

There is also a long history of claims of weeping Mary statues.

A well-known example is the Madonna of Syracuse, Sicily - a plaster statue that seemed to shed tears. Investigators appointed by the church said the liquid was chemically similar to human tears.

The shrine now housing the image is shaped like a teardrop.

Recently, weeping statues have been reported in places as distant from each other as Paszto, Hungary, and Hobbs, New Mexico.

It is, however, rare for the Catholic Church to say that an apparently weeping statue has a supernatural cause.

Mary's tears have special significance for Catholics. She is often pictured as crying over the sins of the world and the pain she endured in her earthly life. Mary's earthly sorrows are depicted by seven swords piercing her flaming heart.

Given Mary's religious and symbolic significance, it is not surprising for a supposed apparition site or a weeping statue to become an object of devotion.

And when this happens, the local bishop sometimes decides to investigate.

The possibility of fraud

In examining claims of the supernatural, bishops follow standards set by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which oversees Catholic doctrine.

Perhaps because they address controversial issues, the standards were only made public in 2012 - nearly 35 years after implementation.

The bishop, or a committee he appointed, evaluates the alleged supernatural phenomenon.

This involves interviewing witnesses and, sometimes, scientific tests. Impact on the community is also considered.

Positive aspects include reports of physical healings, religious conversions, or a general deepening of faith among Catholics.

Negative aspects include selling oil from a purportedly weeping statue or claiming a message from Mary that goes against Catholic doctrine.

A well-known case of an apparition that the Catholic Church rejected concerns the visions of Veronica Lueken, the Brooklyn "Bayside Seer," who died in 1995.

Lueken reported a number of messages from Mary that concerned church authorities.

For example, Lueken claimed in 1972 that Mary had told her that the pope was an imposter made to look like the true pope, Paul VI, through plastic surgery.

Although belief in the messages endures among a few Catholics, the local bishop deemed the apparitions not credible.

When it comes to weeping statues, one of the primary questions is whether the event has been staged.

For example, in two cases of statues that supposedly had wept blood - one in Canada in 1986 and another in Italy in 2006 - the blood turned out to be that of the statue's owner.

Liquids can also be injected into the porous material of statues and later seep out as "tears."

Oil mixed with fat can be applied to a statue's eyes, which will "weep" when ambient temperatures rise.

Searching for meaning

The Pontificia Academia Mariana Internationalis seems to be searching for proof of supernatural signs, drawing intellectual curiosity and media attention.

But as a scholar of global Catholicism who has written about claims of the supernatural, I think it's also important to understand what brings people to an apparition site or weeping statue in the first place.

In my hometown of Worcester, Massachusetts, statues and pictures have appeared to weep oil and blood at the home of the late Audrey Santo, who died in 2007 at 23.

"Little Audrey" was left mute and paralyzed as a child after a swimming pool accident.

Despite her physical condition, pilgrims who came to see her believed she was praying for them.

After Santo's death, a foundation was established to promote her cause for sainthood, believing that the statues and pictures in her home were signs that God has specially blessed her.

In my writings about the case of Santo, I was tempted to focus on talk of the supernatural. And the claims surrounding Little Audrey are still debated among Catholics as her sainthood cause stalls.

But what I found most interesting was listening to people share why weeping statues were so meaningful in their personal lives.

At the Santo home, the people I talked to shared personal stories of pain, sadness, hope, and healing.

Ultimately, the sense of togetherness in and through suffering was far more important than talk of scientific proofs of the supernatural.

• Mathew Schmalz is an author at Religion News Service.
• First published in RNS in 1998. Updated and republished with permission.

The Christ child is sleeping in the arms of his mother. The silence that gathers around them ushers in a new world.

Mary is not aware of this, but we who have the benefit of hindsight know how this child will change humanity.

But what of his mother?

How will this birth change her?

How does her life affect us?

Although the writers of the Gospels don't stay with Mary, there are a few scenes we can put together.

In sequence, they reveal not only Mary's life, but also our own.

Mary's "yes" to God is also ours.

Remember how bewildered she was?

She was young and didn't know what the angel meant.

We, too, were young.

Maybe there was hesitation. Uncertainty. Were we doing the right thing?

It felt right, but some people might laugh at us, and call us "Jesus freaks."

However, we also knew good people who have God in their lives, and we trusted them.

In the end, it was about us.

We had a "yes" inside us, and that's what we said.

Male or female, we became pregnant with God, in our own way giving birth to Christ in the world.

In the Gospels, the next time we see Mary, Jesus is twelve, an important time for a young Jew.

Mary and Joseph realise he is missing and are concerned.

Jesus is with a group of learned Jewish men, listening to their teachings.

What does that say to us? Do we have times when we seek to broaden and deepen our spirituality? Or, conversely, do we get anxious when someone close to us is seeking religious information elsewhere?

I laugh at this. My own children are "seekers."

I also laugh that Jesus' first miracle was at a wedding feast, providing a great amount of wine for people who had probably had enough.

It was Mary who insisted that her son perform this first miracle at a wedding feast.

What a wonderful beginning to his ministry!

How do I celebrate the love of family and friends? Have to think about that.

There is only a brief mention of Mary in the rest of Jesus' ministry.

We next see her in what must have been the worst time of her life - her son's crucifixion.

One of the gospels places her at a distance, but in another, Jesus is talking to her from the cross. There would have been a lot of crowd noise, so she must have been close to him,

She would have felt his pain.

His agony would be hers.

We think of our own times of loss, and suffering empties us. It seems as though we, too, are dead in a tomb.

I think of loss in my own life. I'm old enough to understand that projecting blame, anger, and bitterness, keeps us stuck in the tomb.

Resurrection will come, and what is resurrected in us will be greater than what has died.

After Jesus' resurrection, there is no mention of Mary, but if your read between the lines, she was there.

Jesus appeared to Mary Magdala and his disciples. He appeared in rooms and on roads.

He cooked fish on a beach for his friends.

But where was he staying?

I think he was with his mother.

Mary's name comes up again in the Acts of the apostles. She is in the upper room at Pentecost.

Yes, Pentecost!

From the birth of her son to the birth of the Church, Mary has been an instrument of God.

We think of that this December.

Under all the layers of wrapping, this is the true Christmas gift.

• Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator. Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator.

Men and women alike, this is our mission, and the mother of Jesus gives an outline of what that birthing is all about.

Scripture doesn't offer a lot of information about Mary. But if we look at the sequence in the Gospels, and hen choose to understand them as parable, we will see our own spiritual growth.

Mary is our model.

I've spent prayer time with Gospel references to Mary, and while I would like to share these with you, I'd encourage you to make your own journey.

Call

Mary didn't know what God was asking of her. "Hw can this be?" she asked.

When we are called, do we say, "I'm not ready?" "People will laugh at me." I'll make a fool of myself."

Perhaps we eventually say with Mary, "Let it be done to me."

Doubt

When Mary saw Joseph's reaction, she must have experienced doubt, anxiety.

That is natural for us, too. Doubt is our instinct for survival trying to keep us safe. Our ego is slow to understand spiritual growth.

Affirmation

When Mary visits her relative, Elizabeth's baby John recognises Jesus in the womb.

We too get affirmation with spiritual growth. If we are acting from fear or ego, we are likely to feel empty. If we are pregnant with God affirmation will come in all sorts of ways.

Giving birth

Mary could not control the circumstances of giving birth. We can be sure that the time and place was not as she would have chosen.

How often are we surprised at the way God has used us to bring Christ into the world? It was not as we would have chosen. It wasn't even our doing. It was about something that was done through us. Perhaps in our astonishment, we cried, "My soul magnifies the Lord."

Spiritual maturity

At the wedding in Cana, Mary is in a position of authority. She is concerned for the guests who have run out of wine. She knows her son is ready for ministry, even if he doesn't.

The miracle happens.

In her ministry, Mary reminds me of a good friend who had a reputation for powerful prayer. When asked about this, she said simply. "I never pray for myself, only others."

That is a good description of what ministry is about.

Crucifixion

Imagine how Mary suffered at the cross. One of the gospels says she was at a distance. But she must have been close to the cross. In all that horror and mayhem, her son spoke to her, recommending her to John's care.

We have all suffered crucifixions directly or indirectly. If we stand with Mary at the cross, we will feel her helplessness and grief as our own.

Have we been unjustly treated? When have we lost someone we loved? Was there a time when all our hopes and dreams were taken from us?

Looking back, we count the times and know that spiritually, crucifixion can only be understood as part of resurrection.

Resurrection

In the Gospels, the resurrection story is all about Jesus and the disciples. Mary is not mentioned.

If we read between the lines, we see Jesus turnings up unexpectedly here and there, but we are not told where he is staying. He would surely have been with his mother.

Our resurrection stories tend to bring us home to where we are meant to be.

When we look back on our "crucifixions" we sometimes realise we had to be emptied in order to be filled with something new. What is resurrected is always greater than what has died.

Freedom

The next mention of Mary is in the upper room at Pentecost where the wind and fire of the Spiritual Presence of Christ Jesus establishes the new church.

What began for Mary as "How can this be?" is now a place of maturity and freedom.

So it is for us. We were called to walk a path that has become so wide, it doesn't appear to have horizons. God is everywhere.

But freedom does not last. Spiritual Growth is a spiral and we will go through these seven stages again and again, each time moving to a higher level.

Each time the agel will come to tap us on the shoulder, or pull the rug out from under our feet, and we'll be going through it all again.

The good news is it's at a different level and that makes it familiar.

Spiritual journey is not like physical journey in which we leave the road behind us as we travel.

In a spiritual journey, we take the road behind, with us; experience becomes wisdom, and future acceptance makes the journey much easier.

Like Mary, we have the knowledge of Jesus growing in our lives.

This is the ultimate Christmas gift that the church gives us.

• Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator.

Most of us learn something like this in catechism: At the end of our lives we will all be judged by God.

Depending on the outcome, we will then go to heaven (or heaven on the slow track a la purgatory) or hell, and that's that. Forever.

This version of our eternal fate is true, but it is glaringly incomplete.

Every single Sunday, we Catholics publicly profess that we expect "the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come."

I'll bet that most of us don't spend too much time thinking about what this means.

For Christians, the separation of the soul from the body is unnatural.

God created us as embodied souls, and Christ redeemed our matter and souls by his Incarnation, Passion, Resurrection and Ascension.

God took flesh, God exalted that flesh and he revealed his glorious plan for creation: to share this glory with him.

Heaven and Hell are real, but they aren't the end of the story.

On the last day, we will all rise just as Jesus did.

We will have resurrected bodies: mysterious, powerful, yet material and real like his, and our souls will be reunited with them forever.

Where Christ has led, we too will follow, if we remain faithful to our baptismal call to build his kingdom in anticipation of his return.

Mary, the mother of God, is the first and the best Christian that has ever been or will ever be.

Her entire life is an example for us.

She leads the way to Christ. Mary was just as human as we are; she needed a saviour just like we do.

She struggled to understand God's plan through joys and sorrows just like we do.

At the end of her life, Mary died like Jesus (and like each and every one of us will). Death though, for her (and for us!), did not have the final word.

She was resurrected, and exalted, and she reigns with Christ in the kingdom of God which is bursting forth at the seams all around us.

Thus, the Assumption, just like every Marian Dogma, is really a statement about who Jesus is and who we are as his followers.

The Assumption tells us that Jesus is true to his word, and that he will do for all of us exactly as he promised.

Pius XII himself, in the document which promulgated the dogma of the Assumption wrote, "It is our hope that belief in Mary's bodily Assumption into heaven will make our belief in our own resurrection stronger and render it more effective." Continue reading

They are nonetheless helping to spread a craze for Mary, mother of Jesus, wearing designer Brenda Equihua's splashy coats made from San Marcos cobijas: blankets found in many Latinx homes that commonly feature the Virgin of Guadalupe.

For Equihua, Mary's appeal is partly sentimental.

Of Mexican American heritage, Equihua identifies the Virgin of Guadalupe with home.

But there's something deeper than simple nostalgia going on in her designs.

"Wearing Mary in a fashion piece is unexpected," she explained. "I think what's cool is taking something out of context."

Religious figures are often (if scandalously) appropriated outside sacred settings, but the decontextualization of Mother Mary has been in hyperdrive of late.

Long a fixture on devotional medals worn by Catholics, Mary is so central to Catholic spirituality that Pope Francis earlier this year had to debunk the notion that Jesus' mother would be designated "co-redemptrix": "Mary Saves" tees are not coming to the St Peter's gift shop.

But if Catholics are content with her place as "a Mother, not as a goddess," as the pope put it, Mary has become an icon to a younger generation of all faiths and no faith that has put social justice at the centre of its hopes for a better world.

The Blessed Mother guitar pedal created by Heather Brown.

She's treated as a feminist beacon, her likeness appearing alongside that of Frida Kahlo, Joan of Arc and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Mary lends cred to high-end guitar pedals created by female gear makers and pops up with increasing frequency on Etsy.

Her story is being retold in provocative contemporary art and the theses of up-and-coming scholars.

But for all her trendiness, what makes Mary an appealing figure today is what has made her popular for 2,000 years: For all her connections to divine power, she has a lot in common with people who often get overlooked.

Ben Wildflower is a mail carrier by day and artist in his off-hours.

In 2017, he made a woodcut that showed Mary, her fist raised over her head, feet resting on a skull and a serpent (the former is a motif usually associated with Jesus' disciple Mary Magdalene, while the latter is in keeping with historical representations of Mary, Jesus' mother, triumphing over original sin).

In a circle around Wildflower's image are the words "Fill the hungry. Cast down the mighty. Lift the lowly. Send the rich away."

When he posted it on Instagram, it went viral.

Some critics called the woodcut's message "un-Christian," protesting that "God loves everyone."

The taunting language, however, was pulled directly from the Magnificat, the gospel writer Luke's version of a song attributed to Mary, that from earliest Christian times was seen as so revolutionary public readings of it have been banned in the past.

Wildflower, the child of evangelical Christian missionaries, now attends an Anglican church, is committed to living in solidarity with the poor and has been described as a "Christian anarchist."

He finds himself deeply drawn to the mother of Jesus and said he likes Mary's vision of hierarchies being turned upside down.

Non-Christians, he said, are often interested in his work on Mary as a way of "seeking the divine feminine" via a sort of "DIY spirituality."

Further evidence of this approach can be found on sites such as Etsy, which sells Mother Mary oracle cards and altars for charging "reiki-energized" crystals that feature Mary's likeness.

"Sometimes I'll realize I have an influx of followers on Instagram and I'll try to figure out what happened and it'll be from like, a witchcraft and herbal kind of account," Wildflower added.

But for Wildflower, Mary is a bridge to a Christianity far from his evangelical upbringing.

"For a lot of people who were raised in white evangelical culture, God's representatives throughout most of our lives had not been the best people," Wildflower explained, "but Mary's representatives were just kind of absent.

So it's not hard to relate to her as someone saying, ‘It's our job to bring God into the world.'

There's something relatable there because there's no baggage."

(For a clue to what kind of baggage he's trying to leave behind, look no further than another Wildflower illustration that depicts Mary shooting flames out of her hands at Nazi and Confederate flags, encircled by the words "O Mary, conceived without white supremacy, pray for us trying to dismantle this s_t.")

Catholic author and University of California, Berkeley lecturer Kaya Oakes is not surprised by the new attention paid to Mary, noting that her appeal tends to grow when times are hard.

"Mary represents this side of God that is nurturing and will stay with you when you're in pain," Oakes said.

"We're coming out of this really traumatic phase in world history with the pandemic, and people have needed images of God that were more resonant with that compassionate, rather than judgmental, side of the divine."

A Virgin Mary inspired dress stands on display in the front window of a shop in Rehoboth, Delaware in March 2021.

Mary traditionally shows up whenever she is most needed.

For years, apparitions of the Virgin of Guadalupe have reportedly distracted border guards to help immigrants stranded at the U.S. border slip into the country unnoticed. Similarly, the culture tends to put Mary at the centre of the conflict.

After Mike Brown was shot in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, Mark Doox's " Our Lady of Ferguson" depicted her as a Black woman with her womb in the crosshairs of a gun with a child Christ in the centre.

Kehinde Wiley's "Mary Comforter of the Afflicted," one of the artist's stained glass window images, casts the Pietà as a Black man holding a dead child.

Within the past year, Kelly Latimore's icon memorialized George Floyd by depicting Mary holding a broken Jesus.

Amey Victoria Adkins-Jones, an assistant professor in the theology department of Boston College whose scholarship focuses on Mariology, said these artists are pulling from a long tradition of Black Madonnas.

Though Adkins-Jones was raised Southern Baptist in a setting where Mary got little attention, her experiences with the Black Madonna helped convince her that the mother of Jesus is an underutilized resource for grappling with Black womanist concerns in Christian theology.

"This imagery captures the legacy of grief that comes from injustice," said Adkins-Jones.

"Perhaps Mary is a ready figure to call to memory because Jesus is a person who dies unjustly at the hands of the state. … Questions of justice are always in conversation with artistic representations."

Adkins-Jones also sees Mary inviting theological questions about gender.

As a young, poor woman giving birth in an occupied land, the historical Mary experienced a kind of precarious existence that can't be disconnected from her womanhood, Adkins-Jones said.

Looking to Mary invites both a new kind of intellectual curiosity and spiritual reflection on the role of women in the world.

For all the seemingly renewed interest in Mary, Adkins-Jones notes that some of it aren't so much new as a continuing tradition now aided by platforms such as Instagram that allow for fresh ways to "visually discuss."

Still, according to associate professor of art history at Wheaton College Matthew Milliner, there is a kind of change afoot. When he started teaching classes on Mary at Wheaton shortly after his arrival in 2011, Milliner was surprised to see such consistent interest in the course from the largely Protestant student body.

"Protestant interest in Mary is increasing steadily," he said.

"But thankfully it has been growing in Catholic circles as well." It is easy to forget, Milliner said, that in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, attention to Mary declined dramatically even in Catholic circles, a topic explored in Charlene Spretnak's 2004 book "Missing Mary."

The culture may soon move on from Mary, but Milliner believes Christians should keep her close, without fearing that love for the mother of God could threaten their love of Jesus.

"Love for Mary is a natural outgrowth of love for Christ," he said.

"They are not in competition, any more than love for my in-laws is in competition with love for my wife," he said. "In short, meet the parents!"

• Whitney Bauck is an author at RNS.
• First published in RNS. Republished with permission.

The bishops' National Liturgy Office has begun advertising for an artist who will create a work incorporating Mary for a special commemoration next August 15, the Feast Day of the Assumption of Mary into Heaven.

"The bishops want to commission a piece of artwork for that day, to commemorate Bishop Pompallier dedicating the country to Mary when he celebrated the first Catholic Mass here in 1838, in the Hokianga," Catherine Gibbs the National Liturgy Office administrator said.

"We are advertising for artists to submit expressions of interest for an appropriate artwork. It could be a sculpture, a painting, a carving; any suitable kind of work.

Gibbs said the bishops want an artist who will create a work with for the theme Mary Mother of God and Patroness of Aotearoa New Zealand.

"We are looking for an image that is new and speaks to the reality of life in Aotearoa New Zealand in the 21st Century.

It will be respectful of scripture, theology and Catholic tradition."

The intention is that the artwork will be taken on a hikoi around the country next year to commemorate the dedication to Mary."

Pompallier was consecrated Bishop in 1836.

He had responsibility for whole Western Oceania which covered a large area of Polynesia and Melanesia and encompassed many Pacific Islands including Aotearoa New Zealand.

In France, Pompallier had been was closely associated with the Society of Mary (Marists).

And when heleft from Le Havre on December 24 1836, he was accompanied by four priests and three brothers of the Society of Mary.

He was present for the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 and published some of the first printed Maori prayer books.

When Auckland was set up as a Diocese in 1848, he became its first bishop.

In 1868 Pompallier returned to France.

Source

• catholic.org.nz
• nzhistory.govt.nz
• Image: catholic.org.nz

Or, rather, experience "absence" in a very real way.

The absence that Mary and the first disciples experienced that first Good Friday after the death of Jesus.

They left Golgotha having just witnessed the death of a Son and a dear friend.

As with every death what was left was a vacuum.

They knew nothing of the Easter experience that was to come.

We, on the other hand read the Gospels somewhat like someone reading a novel having checked that the hero, or heroine is still alive at the end.

Now that makes for safe reading.

Mary and the first disciples knew only absence and emptiness.

And what did they do? Self-isolated!

This Holy Week and Easter provides us with a wonderful moment to really experience these events as absence and so journey with Mary and those first disciples' John of the Cross names this absence a "dark night".

As our Scripture says "a darkness came over the whole land (Mk. 15:33).

Or as the poet remarks, "to go into darkness with a light is to know the light; to know the darkness, go dark." (Wendell Berry).

It will not be easy, however, neither is standing under a cross and watching your Son be crucified!

At the conclusion of the Third Week of the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola with its focus on the Passion and Death of Jesus, there is frequently a suggestion that the retreatant take Mary to their home after the events on Golgotha.

I would like to suggest this as a prayer experience for this Easter.

Take Mary home, sit her down at the kitchen table, put the kettle on, and, when the tea is brewed and poured out, talk together about each of your experience of Jesus.

Having both participated in and directed a number of these retreats, such an encounter with Mary the Mother, far surpasses any sung Exultet!

• Gerard Whiteford is Marist priest; retreat facilitator and spiritual companion for 35 years. He writes regularly at www.restawhile.nz

Maybe. Maybe not. She could have been sweeping the floor. Or grinding corn for a meal. Those activities can also be sacred.

We are reminded of times when God has been manifest in simple household tasks.

I imagine myself in Mary's place. I'm at the kitchen sink.

I feel a tap on the shoulder.

I turn and see something out of a 17th-century painting, a tall man with wings as big as feathered tents.

What is my reaction?

I am dreaming! Or I've just lost a few marbles!

It is not surprising that Mary sounded a bit confused.

What is surprising is that her faith went to the heart of Gabriel's extraordinary message, and she said, "Let it be done to me."

At this time of the year, shops are filling up with gifts, glitter and pictures of Santa Claus.

But the angel Gabriel closes a gap in time.

Under the commercial frippery, we see Mary largely pregnant.

We see her taking Joseph's hand and placing it on her swollen belly so that he can feel the baby moving.

Through a wall of flesh, the carpenter's calloused hand touches a tiny foot that will one day lead the way.

Neither Joseph nor Mary know how big this new life will be.

They simply know love and wonder.

They have been called to something far beyond the ordinary.

So now comes the question, how do you and I answer God's call away from the ordinary?

It probably won't be a tap on the shoulder, but rather, a gentle touch to the heart.

I might not notice it, except it comes back.

Again and again.

It's not some idea making words in the head, but a gentle feeling that is asking something of me.

It nudges me in a new direction that may take me out of my comfort zone.

That's when resistance kicks in.

I go further than Mary's "How can this be?"

I find solid reasons why I should not do this.

1. I am too busy,
2. I'm happy the way I am.
3. I am not qualified.
4. People will think I'm mad.
5. I am bound to fail.

But the invitation keeps coming.

Eventually, I weigh my objections against the feeling of call.

There is no life in my excuses. They are heavy and dead.

The gentle movement in the heart, however, has life and love.

You too, will know this. It's how God works in us.

So at this point, we say with Mary, "Let it be done to me."

We should have said, "Yes!"

That's when we hear angel song in the Santa parade.

Christmas trees and decorations become symbols of new life in us and in the world.

All that tinsel appears simply as indicator of Mystery.

The truth is there beyond the plastic holly and the large man in a red suit.

It's with the schoolgirl who plays ‘Good King Wencelas' on her recorder.

Everything about the season is a reminder of the gentle touch we know as call.

Although call comes in many ways, it always has a connection with Mary and the angel Gabriel.

This is what Christmas is about.

Man and woman alike, we are asked to become pregnant with God.

And to give birth to Christ in the world.

• Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator.

In the intimacy of a chamber, Mary is portrayed as a dark haired Jewish peasant girl, seated at the edge of her couch in a striped crumpled attire.

The orderly arrangement of the room, in contrast to her bed, suggests that Mary has suddenly been awakened in the middle of the night.

The blinding form of the angel is the only source of light in the room.

As this infused flood of golden light falls onto Mary's face, it allures us to where fear begins to give way to contemplation and contemplation to acceptance. It arrests our attention and ignites our imagination.

The Virgin wears no halo or celestial attribute. Her hands humbly clasped, her head tilted upwards and her eyes focused.

She is clearly receptive and open to God's will. Domesticity is now no stranger to epiphany. Peeking below her cascading drapery one finds Mary's bare foot.

This is an unusual Marian symbol, rarely found in classical depictions of the Annunciation.

But for Tanner, it signified the humanity and simplicity of the Blessed Virgin.

Tanner employs a variety of other visual mediums in the painting to emphasize upon the transcendence of the event we are witnessing.

Across Mary's room are strewn three undecorated clay vessels. They acknowledge the presence and providence of the Trinity. T

he vessel also serves as a reminder of the Virgin herself who partook in the mystery of the Trinity as a "vessel of honor" to bring the Messiah into the world.

The next feature is equally intriguing. Having no physical appearance or angelic wings, Gabriel is rather depicted as a pillar of light.

However, at a closer glance, one observes that this vertical beam intersects with the horizontal shelf to form a cross.

It thus foreshadows the Crucifixion as it proclaims the Incarnation at the same time.

The colors of the composition further embellish the liturgical and artistic beauty of the painting: red symbolizes love, white signifies purity, blue stands for wisdom, and gold is reminiscent for divinity. Continue reading

Source and Image:

• Aleteia article by Joynel Fernandes, Assistant Director of the Archdiocesan Heritage Museum, Mumbai, India.

The Catholic devotion to Mary has never come easily to me.

I know Mary is, for some people, the way they discovered and really developed a relationship with Jesus.

But for me, it was the opposite. Jesus is the one who introduced his Mother to me.

I knew Jesus for several years before I developed or even saw a reason to develop a relationship with his Mother. My devotion to Jesus informed my relationship with Mary.

In fact, it becomes clearer to me every day that love for the Word who revealed himself to us as a newborn babe is absolutely inseparable from love for Mary.

No human baby can be separated from his or her human parents. Even if a parent never cares for his or her child, every parent passes on their genetic material to their offspring.

The same is true of Jesus. You may have thought of this before but it is something that comes back to my prayer regularly: Jesus is genetically 100 percent from Mary.

As Ignatius of Antioch once put it in his Epistle to the Trallians, "He who forms all men in the womb, was Himself really in the womb, and made for Himself a body of the seed of the Virgin."

Jesus must have really resembled his mother!

Jesus was not just deposited into the womb of his mother; he was her true offspring in his humanity. For this reason, in the 5th century, the Council of Ephesus affirmed that we can call Mary "Theotokos," the Mother of God, because Mary gave birth to Jesus who is one divine person with two natures.

The mystery of salvation can never be separated from Mary, the human mother of Jesus. Continue reading

• Sister Theresa Aletheia Noble, FSP, is the author of The Prodigal You Love: Inviting Loved Ones Back to the Church.

It's interesting how we can become used to the old and soiled. I suspect there is a parable somewhere in that.

If we visit the Sistine chapel today, we'll see a ceiling of vivid scripture as Michelangelo painted it. With hundreds of other visitors, we'll walk with heads upturned in awe.

There is one place where everyone stops. It's under the picture of The Creation of Adam.

God is leaning towards Adam who appears to have fallen backwards, his arm extended as though he's trying to return to God. His finger is almost touching God's, but we get the feeling this won't happen. We notice that both Adam and God are strongly muscled, a reminder that Michelangelo was first and foremost a sculptor.

We stand still, gazing at the painting. There is much in the detail that is alive with expression. It claims our eyes and our hearts.

Why does this particular picture hold our attention? What did Michelangelo intend us to see?

Over the centuries there have been many theories about The Creation of Adam, people interpreting body language and background as they saw it. The cloak-like shape behind God, for example: does it represent an unfolding universe? Is it formed like a uterus to suggest the birthing of creation? Or does that shape resemble a brain and wisdom? All of these have been historical interpretations.

For some of us, though, the potent image is the gap between God's finger and Adam's finger. God is leaning forward as a father reaches for his child, but Adam is helpless and falling away.

We can see much pathos in that gap between the fingers. It is a space of loss and yearning, and we feel it deeply. It belongs to us, and no effort on our part is going to close it.

What then, fills the gap?

I believe Michelangelo tells us in another part of the painting. The answer is beneath God's left arm and hand. There is a young woman there, secure in the crook of God's elbow. Tradition says this is Eve waiting to evolve from Adam's side, but if we look closely, we see the woman has the same face as that of Michelangelo's sculpture of The Pieta. The woman is Mary.

Further along, God's left hand rests on a baby. Both the woman and the baby are in subdued colour, suggesting they have not yet come into incarnation.

The artist is telling us who closes the gap between us and our Creator.

It is the Beloved. It is Christ Jesus.

• Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator.

Poor old Christmas: attacked on one side by rabid secularism, and on the other by demented consumerism. Never stood a chance.

Those of us who like our Christmases to be strictly religious are really in for a tough time. Of course, if you loathe it altogether, you are really quite lucky, as you can go to one of the several countries that have in fact made Christmas celebrations illegal, such as Saudi Arabia or North Korea.

If you want to have a purely religious celebration, one needs to make a different journey, an interior one, into one's own soul, as well as into one's parish church.

At present, we are well placed for this spiritual journey, as we do not only have the season of Advent to help us should we choose to observe it properly, and keep Christmas at the appropriate time, that is, not before the evening of December 24; we also have two great Marian feasts approaching: the Immaculate Conception, and Our Lady of Guadalupe.

The first of these underlines the perfect co-operation that exists between the Divine and the human as seen in the figure of Our Blessed Lady filled with grace from the moment of her conception, anticipating as she does the grace won for us by Christ her Son. As Mary is, so all Christians should aspire to be; as Mary is, all Christians can be, thanks to the grace of Christ.

Mary reminds us that God does not have low expectations of humanity, and we should not have low expectations of ourselves either. The Immaculate Conception is the feast of humanity, being the feast of the greatest and most spotless of human beings, the sole boast of our fallen nature.

In this it resembles Christmas, that other feast of, among other things, humanity and human warmth, being the birth of the blessed child of Bethlehem. Continue reading

• Alexander Lucie-Smith is a Catholic priest, doctor of moral theology and consulting editor of The Catholic Herald.

All three will take participants on a spiritual journey with Our Lady when she finds herself chosen by God.

World Youth Day (WYD) sees young people from all over the world work to build and strengthen the bonds of faith, friendship and hope.

Their work symbolises the union between people of different cultures and countries.

In 2017 and 2018 WYD involves diocesan-level events. The next international gathering is set for 2019 in Panama.

The international gatherings are held each three years. This year's was in Poland.

The WYDs are themed, with three years study culminating in the international event which the Pope attends.

Where WYD for the past three years looked at the Beatitudes, the next three will focus on Chapter 1 of Luke's Gospel.

This Chapter is about the Annunciation and includes the Magnificat.

This is Mary's response to Elizabeth who said "Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of they womb".

When they start the new three-year cycle next year, participants will consider Mary's words where she says: "The Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name".

In 2018, participants will contemplate the Archangel Gabriel's opening words to Mary at the Annunciation "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found great favour with God".

Then, in 2019 they will reflect on Mary's reply to Gabriel: "I am the servant of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word".

Source

• Catholic Online
• National Catholic Register
• Image: Louvre

The middle-aged woman in the black dress behind the counter inspected me. My stomach sank. How could she know that I needed a ticket so that I could fulfill a sacred promise my mother had made 22 years earlier? Traveling in communist Cuba was a bureaucratic nightmare, tickets taking weeks or months to obtain, if one could get them at all. What's more, I had no ID and was suspiciously dressed. I felt certain she had heard every sob story ever concocted.

It all came flooding out: How a childhood condition had required me to have leg surgery, and my worried mother had sworn that we would visit Cuba's patron saint—Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre—upon my recovery. But we never got to the shrine outside Santiago that houses the figurine.

Shortly before my illness, the communist revolution had erupted, sending many of my high school friends to jail. My mother knew I would be next, so she arranged asylum for me in America, where I would attend Catholic University, go on to a career in international banking, and become a collector of Cuban memorabilia.

On this trip I had only a few precious days in Cuba. How could I explain how much this simple trip meant, how I had clung to the idea of seeing Our Lady of Charity for more than two decades?

I don't know how much the woman behind the counter heard, but she understood. "I have a son in Milwaukee," was all she murmured. She appreciated the pain of exile and dislocation, the importance of faith. She knew! In a moment a ticket miraculously appeared. I will never forget her smile and kindness. Continue reading

Sources

• Emilio Cueto, as told to John F. Ross in Smithsonian Journeys Quarterly
• Image: Vatican Radio

On September 4, 1781, Spanish governor Felipe de Neve, with the assistance of two Franciscan priests, gave the village its official name, El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles del Río de Porciúncula

In English: "The Village of Our Lady, the Queen of the Angels of the Porziuncola River." Continue reading

"There is one clear reason for the thousands of devotees who flock to Baclaran: the special Marian piety of the Filipino people," Fr. Joseph Echano, CSsR, rector of the National Shrine of Our Mother of Perpetual Help, told CNA.

"What Baclaran is today is because of the Filipinos' deep devotion to Mary" he added. "Indeed, if Filipinos are sent on mission throughout the world, our special gift in mission will be our love of our blessed Mother Mary… the devotion to Mother Mary is deeply embedded in Filipino culture."

There is a phrase in Spanish about the Filipinos. They are "pueblo amante de Maria," people in love with Mary.

For Fr. Echano, Baclaran is "the quintessential expression of this."

The shrine's rector estimates as many as 100,000 devotees flock to the shrine every Wednesday and there are 80,000 visitors a day every Sunday.

The centuries-old miraculous icon of Our Mother of Perpetual Help is enshrined in the National Shrine of Baclaran in Parañaque, part of Metro Manila.

Behind the icon is a special purpose.

"The icon of Our Mother of Perpetual Help is not to show a beautiful scene or person but to convey a beautiful spiritual message - the perpetual help and love of God through the intercession of Our Mother of Perpetual Help," Fr. Echano said.

In the year 1866, Blessed Pius IX entrusted the icon of Our Mother of Perpetual Help to the Redemptorist congregation, giving them the mission to make her known throughout the world.

Redemptorist missionaries arrived in the Philippines in 1906, bringing a copy of the icon. They gathered a small group of 70 people for the first novena at a humble wooden church in a fishing village. Continue reading

Sources

• Article by Antonio Anup Gonsalves in Catholic News Agency
• Image: xplorra

Several months ago I wrote about the exciting and encouraging developments that are taking place at our own national shrine at Walsingham.

It seems that Walsingham is not being renewed in isolation. Shrines of Our Lady around the world are experiencing new growth and interest from a fresh generation of pilgrims who are seeking our Lady's intercession. Here are some of the lesser known shrines where the future looks very hopeful.

The Basilica and Shrine of Our Lady of Good Help, south India

Often referred to as the Lourdes of the East, devotion to Our Lady at Velankanni can be traced back to the mid-16th century. The foundation of the shrine is attributed to three miracles and apparitions of Our Lady and the Child Jesus.

The accounts of the apparitions have been handed down by oral tradition and have not received approval of The Holy See.

The original chapel was a simple thatched building which was built by Portuguese sailors as a thanksgiving. The present main church building has a strikingly gothic exterior and is painted brilliant white which ensures that it stands prominently within its surroundings.

The Church was granted the status of a minor basilica by Pope John XIII in 1962.

One unique focus of devotion is Our Lady's pool. Some time during the 16th century, Our Lady with her infant son was reported to have appeared to a Hindu boy carrying milk to a customer's home.

Our Lady asked for milk for her Son. On reaching the customer's home, the boy apologised for his lateness and explained why he had less milk than when he set off. Continue reading

Sources

• Catholic Herald, from an article by Fr Matthew Pittam, a priest of the Archdiocese of Birmingham.
• Image: Window into Heaven