Strict Standards: Declaration of McalendarControllerMCalendar::display() should be compatible with McalendarController::display($cachable = false, $urlparams = false) in /home/nrnvguvu78sn/public_html/components/com_mcalendar/controllers/mcalendar.php on line 86
Strict Standards: Only variables should be passed by reference in /home/nrnvguvu78sn/public_html/components/com_mcalendar/controllers/mcalendar.php on line 22
Strict Standards: Only variables should be passed by reference in /home/nrnvguvu78sn/public_html/components/com_mcalendar/controllers/mcalendar.php on line 23
Strict Standards: Only variables should be passed by reference in /home/nrnvguvu78sn/public_html/components/com_mcalendar/controllers/mcalendar.php on line 24
Strict Standards: Only variables should be passed by reference in /home/nrnvguvu78sn/public_html/components/com_mcalendar/controllers/mcalendar.php on line 25
Strict Standards: Only variables should be passed by reference in /home/nrnvguvu78sn/public_html/components/com_mcalendar/controllers/mcalendar.php on line 26
Notice: Undefined property: stdClass::$name in /home/nrnvguvu78sn/public_html/components/com_mcalendar/models/shrines.php on line 17
Notice: Trying to get property of non-object in /home/nrnvguvu78sn/public_html/components/com_mcalendar/views/detail/tmpl/default.php on line 21
Related Books
Our Lady of Knock, Knock, Mayo, Ireland
Commemorated on August 21
During a pouring rain, the figures of Mary, Joseph, John the Evangelist and a lamb on a plain altar appeared over the gable of the village chapel, enveloped in a bright light. None of them spoke. 15 people, between the ages of 5 and 75, saw the apparition. History
Timeline
Aug 21, 1879
15 witnesses experienced the silent apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. Joseph, and St. John the Evangelist. Those who witnessed the apparition stood in the pouring rain for up to two hours reciting the Rosary. When the occurence began there was good light, but although it then became very dark, witnesses could still see the figures very clearly - they appeared to be the color of a bright whitish light. The apparition did not flicker or move in any way. The witnesses reported that the ground around the figures remained completely dry during the apparition although the wind was blowing from the south. Afterwards, however the ground at the gable became wet and the gable dark.
October 8, 1879
Archbishop of Tuam, Most Rev. Dr. John MacHale, appoints an investigative commission to study the phenomenon. The Commission consisted of Irish scholar and historian, Canon Ulick Bourke, Canon James Waldron, as well as the parish priest of Ballyhaunis and Archdeacon Bartholomew Aloyisius Kavanagh. Depositions of witnesses were taken in the ensuing months. The evidence which was the Commission's duty to record, satisfied all the members and was deemed trustworthy. Among the considerations were whether the apparition emanated from natural causes, and whether there was any positive fraud. In the first cited particular, it was reported that no solution as from natural causes could be offered; and in the second consideration, that such a suggestion had never, even remotely, been entertained.
1936
Archbishop of Tuam, Dr. Gilmartin, institutes a new investigative commission which returned with a positive verdict.
Dec 18, 1954
In 1954, a Marian year for the whole Catholic world, courtesy of the Vatican Chapter, Our Lady of Knock was crowned with the rites followed by Pius XII in the crowning of the painting of Our Lady Salus Populi Romani, in Rome, on November first.
Sept 30, 1979
Pope John Paul II visits the shrine for the 100th anniversary of the apparitions. Over 450,000 people came to Knock on that day. On this occasion he presented a Golden Rose, a seldom-bestowed token of papal honour and recognition.
In the western Ireland village of Knock, on the rainy evening of August 21, 1879, fourteen people saw three figures bathed in light against the rear exterior wall of St. John the Baptist Catholic Church. It was an oddly casual apparition: the first passersby who noticed the radiant figures were surprised, but walked on without telling anyone. Witnesses came and went for some two hours, all leaving before the silent vision was over. The priest's housekeeper, Mary McLoughlin, aged 45, was on her way to visit the Byrne family shortly after 7:00 pm when she saw "one like the blessed Virgin Mary, and one like St. Joseph; another a bishop" with "a white light about them." After a short visit, the housekeeper walked back toward the rectory along with Mary Byrne, 21, who was much more excited by the sight at the church: "I beheld, all at once, standing out from the gable, and rather to the west of it, three figures which, on more attentive inspection, appeared to be that of the Blessed Virgin, St. Joseph and St. John. That of the Blessed Virgin was life-size, the others apparently either not so big or not so high as her figure. They stood a little distance out from the gable wall, and, as well as I could judge a foot and a half or two feet from the ground." The Virgin held her hands uplifted in prayer. Beside the suspended figures a lamb stood on an altar. Mary Byrne identified the bishop figure, who was holding an open book, as St. John the Evangelist because of his similarity to a statue of that saint she had seen in another church. Subsequent witnesses, many of whom she gathered, accepted her interpretation. Miss McLoughlin returned to the rectory around 8:30. She encouraged the pastor, Bartholomew Cavanagh, to go see the "beautiful things" at the chapel, but he did not, and they both retired. Around 9:30, Mary Byrne was one of the last to leave the apparition site. When her brother Dominick returned there at 10:15 after visiting a dying parishioner, the figures were gone.
The Knock visions occurred at the beginning of the Land War of tenant resistance to evictions following the Great Famine in Ireland. The Land League founded in 1879 was active in rehousing evicted farmers in the area near Knock. Poor Catholics there took the apparition as a sign of divine support against wealthy landholders who had British government backing.
In October that year, a diocesan Commission of Inquiry recorded witness testimonies and found them "trustworthy," without issuing any official decision as to the supernatural nature of the events at Knock or the merit of devotions based on them. Indeed, in over a century since, the Catholic Church has remained nearly as silent on the subject as the figures themselves did that damp night in 1879. In the absence of an official decision, the Church has given tacit approval by its actions: in 1971, the Vatican's Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship granted the Knock Shrine the right to conduct anointing of the sick, as at Lourdes; and in 1979 Pope John Paul II paid a visit to the Shrine, rebuilt in 1975 to accommodate its thousands of pilgrims.
Sources include:
The Shrine's site, Marian Shrine | Knock Shrine | Ireland’s National Marian Shrine | Shrine Mayo, www.knock-shrine.ie (witness accounts)
Catholic Tradition, www.catholictradition.org/Mary/knock5.htm (photo of the Virgin's statue)
Mark Daniel Kirby, "Blessed Virgin Mary: August 2011 Archives," Vultus Christi, vultus.stblogs.org (photo of statuary group)
Catherine M. Odell, Those who Saw Her: Apparitions of Mary, Our Sunday Visitor Publishing, Huntington, Indiana, 1995
Description
According to visionary Mary Beirne:
"The Virgin stood erect, with eyes raised to heaven , her hands elevated to the shoulders or a little higher. the palms inclined slightly toward her shoulders or bosom; she wore a large cloak of a white color, hanging in full folds and somewhat loosely around her shoulders and fastened to the neck; she wore a crown on the head- a rather large crown- and it appeared to be somewhat yellower than the dress or robes worn by Our Blessed Lady."
According to visionary Bridget Trench:
Mary was described as "deep in prayer", with her eyes raised to heaven, her hands raised to the shoulders or a little higher, the palms inclined slightly to the shoulders. Bridget Trench "went in immediately to kiss, as I thought, the feet of the Blessed Virgin; but I felt nothing in the embrace but the wall, and I wondered why I could not feel with my hands the figures which I had so plainly and so distinctly seen".
Approval
Two commissions of enquiry (1879 and 1936) were established. A Commission was set up within six weeks of the Apparition by Most Rev. Dr. John MacHale, Archbishop. Fifteen witnesses were examined and the Commission reported that their evidence was 'trustworthy and satisfactory'. The Report was published in the newspapers and immediately pilgrims began to flock from all parts of the country and overseas. The sick and disabled were taken along in great numbers and hundreds of cures were reported in the public press of that time.
In 1936 All three surviving witnesses confirmed their original statements of 1879. They confirmed the evidence they had given in 1879. One of the witnesses was Mary O'Connell (nee Mary Byrne). She confirmed her evidence, on her death-bed, under oath and added, 'I am perfectly clear about everything I have said and I make this statement knowing I am about to go before my God'. She died six weeks later. The verdict of the Commission determined that the "testimony of each of the fifteen official witnesses to the apparition was trustworthy and satisfactory"
Click here to read Patrick Hill's statement to the 1879 Commission of Enquiry.
In 1954, a Marian year for the whole Catholic world, courtesy of the Vatican Chapter, on December 18th, Our Lady of Knock was crowned with the rites followed by Pius XII in the crowning of the painting of Our Lady Salus Populi Romani, in Rome, on November first.
Pope John Paul II visits the shrine for the 100th anniversary of the apparitions on September 30, 1979. Over 450,000 people came to Knock on that day. On this occasion he presented a Golden Rose, a seldom-bestowed token of papal honour and recognition.
The Feast Day of Our Lady of Knock is celebrated on August 21st.