Visions of Jesus and Mary

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 the Virgin 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 Resurrection and prior to His Ascension were recorded by the apostles in the Bible. One of the most widely recalled Resurrection appearances 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.

The Incredulity of Saint Thomas by Caravaggio.

Acceptance of visions

Despite the expected controversies (and the somewhat regularly appearing imposters), 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, the Holy Face of Jesus and the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Key elements of modern Roman Catholic Mariology are indeed based on visions reported by young children on remote hilltops such as Lourdes and Fatima.

Some visions have helped maintain the strength of the Catholic Church through the centuries before being accepted by the Vatican. For instance, Saint Juan Diego's reported vision of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico in 1531 was instrumental in adding almost 8 million people to the ranks of Catholics between 1532 and 1538, right in the midst of the Protestant Reformation of 1521 to 1579 which saw a large number of people leave the Catholic Church in Europe. The fact that Juan Diego was declared venerable only in 1987 is an example of how some visions strengthen the Church long before the Vatican takes a position on their authenticity.

After some time and detailed examinations, some visions are clearly accepted by the Vatican. For example, in his 1928 encyclical Miserentissimus Redemptor Pope Pius XI stated that Jesus Christ had "manifested Himself" to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque in the 17th Century. The encyclical refers to the conversation between Jesus and Saint Margaret several times.

As a historical pattern, Vatican approval seems to have followed general acceptance of a vision by well over a century in most cases. For instance, the reported visions of Jesus and Mary by Benoite Rencurel in Saint-Étienne-le-Laus in France from 1664 to 1718 were only recognized by the Holy See in May 2008, making them the first Marian apparitions and visions of Jesus to be approved in the 21st century. According to Father Salvatore M. Perrella of the Mariunum Pontifical Institute in Rome, this is the 12th apparition approved by the Holy See from a total of 295 that have been studied through the centuries.

Controversies

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.

Predictions

Some of the reported visions of Jesus simply fade away by virtue of predictions that fail to materialize. On the other hand, some predictions based on visions continue to gather interest decades after they were made.

Messages from Jesus reported by John Leary in Rochester New York in 1999 had predicted that Pope John Paul II would be forced out of Rome and sent into exile amid chaos. Bishop Mathew Clark of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester disallowed these messages at the time, but with the election of Pope Benedict XVI the debate about the validity of these messages seems to have simply ended.

The visions of Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, written by Klemens Brentano in 1852, led a French priest Abbé Julien Gouyet to discover a house near Ephesus in Turkey in 1881. This house is assumed by some Catholics and some Muslims to be the House of the Virgin Mary. Since Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich had never been to Ephesus some people view this discovery as a prediction. The Holy See has taken no official position on the authenticity of the discovery yet, but in 1896 Pope Leo XIII visited it and in 1951 Pope Pius XII initially declared the house a Holy Place. Pope John XXIII later made the declaration permanent. Pope Paul VI in 1967, Pope John Paul II in 1979 and Pope Benedict XVI in 2006 visited the house and treated it as a shrine.

On August 19, 1982, some teenagers in Kibeho, Rwanda reported visions of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ, as Our Lady of Kibeho. The teenagers reported truly gruesome sights such as rivers of blood and the visions were accompanied by intense reactions: crying, tremors, and comas. Some today regard the visions as an ominous prediction of the Rwandan Genocide of 1994, and particularly in that specific location in 1995 in which some of the teenagers died a decade after their vision. The apparitions were accepted by the local Roman Catholic bishop (accused by many of complicity in the genocide himself), but have not been given final approval by the Holy Office.

On September 11 1991, ten years to the day before the famous event, the visionary Vassula Ryden wrote in her notebook a message that she attributed to Jesus: "the earth will shiver and shake - and every evil built into Towers will collapse into a heap of rubble and be buried in the dust of sin! above, the Heavens will shake and the foundations of the earth will rock!" Some of Vassula's followers view this sentence as a prediction. Her notebooks were published as a series of books “True Life in God” in the 1990's and have a strong following worldwide.

Vatican guidelines

The Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the Vatican has a published and detailed set of steps for “Judging Alleged Apparitions and Revelations" that claim supernatural origin. These criteria may be used to declare a vision as invalid, or they may declare that the vision does not, for the moment, seem contrary to the doctrines of the Church, allowing Catholics to follow a devotion to the vision, without providing an official endorsement from the Vatican.

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 Faustina Kowalska goes further in that it not only refers to her conversations with Jesus, but quotes some of these conversations.

Visions by the early saints

Our Lady of Guadalupe.

The Bible includes primarily pre-Ascension visions of Jesus, except for the road to Damascus voice heard by Saint Paul and the conversation between Jesus and Saint Ananias in Damascus in which Saint Ananias is ordered to heal Saint Paul. The Damasucus appearance is the last reported vision of Jesus in the Bible until the Book of Revelation was written. However, in the following centuries, many saints reported visions of both Jesus and the Blessed Virgin Mary.

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.

19th Century visions

Secondo Pia's negative of the image on the Shroud of Turin, used in the devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus.

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 Sister 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). The devotion was further spread from Tours partly by the efforts of the Venerable Leo Dupont and influenced Saint Therese of Lisieux.

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 as the Sanctuary of Our Lady of 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.

20th Century visions

File:Padre Pio during Mass.jpg

Padre Pio celebrating Mass.

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Saint Faustina's Divine Mercy vision (as painted by Adolf Hyla). The Polish text at the bottom reads: "Jesus I trust in you".

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. However, four popes, i.e. Pope Pius XII, Pope John XXIII, Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II have supported the Fatima messages as supernatural. Pope John Paul II was particularly attached to Fatima and credited Our Lady of Fatima with saving his life after he was shot in Rome on the Feast Day of Our Lady of Fatima in May 1981. He donated the bullet that wounded him on that day to the Roman Catholic sanctuary at Fátima Portugal.

The Holy See has, at times, reversed its position on some visions. In 1931 Saint Faustina 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.

During the 1930s Sister Consolata Betrone a Capuchin nun in Italy reported some mystical experiences and conversations with Jesus. In her reported religious experiences, she would listen to Jesus and then repeat all her messages to her confessor, the missionary priest Father Lorenzo Sales. She is known for her prayer: "Jesus, Mary, I love you: Save souls". After Sister Consolata's death, Father Lorenzo Sales wrote the book "Jesus Appeals to the World" based on her reported messages. In 1995 Cardinal Giovanni Saldarini started the canonical process of beatification for Sister Consolata Betrone.

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Maria Valtorta in Viareggio.

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.

Living visionaries

Among recent visions, the reported apparitions of The Virgin Mary to six children in Međugorje in 1981 have received the widest amount of attention. These messages are published and distributed worldwide and often emphasize five key elements: Daily prayer of the Holy Rosary, Fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays, Daily reading of the Bible, Monthly Confessions and Holy Communion. The Međugorje messages have a very strong following among Catholics worldwide. The Holy See has never officially either approved or disapproved of the messages of Međugorje, although both critical and supportive documents about the messages have been published by various Catholic figures.

Some people who are said to have received interior locutions or messages from Jesus prefer not to discuss them in detail. For instance, while the Vatican biography of Mother Teresa of Calcutta refers to her interior locutions and messages from Jesus, she often referred to them in terms of a “call within a call” and seemed to wish to remain private about them.

As recently as 1985 other people such as Vassula Ryden have recorded their conversations with Jesus in their books, resulting in interest, discussion and controversy. Ryden’s reported conversations with Jesus are published in a series of books called “True Life in God” and have been translated to over 40 languages by volunteers worldwide. The discussion on Vassula Ryden within the Holy See seems to be oscillating back and forth. Ryden’s notebooks were initially criticized by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in a 1995 notification. In July 2004 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) wrote a letter that effectively reversed that situation. Yet a new letter written on January 25, 2007 by Cardinal William Levada advised against her prayer groups and stated that the writings of Ryden were neither private revelation, nor of divine origin but only personal reflections of Ryden. Ryden’s supporters and detractors seem to selectively read the Vatican letter that suits them best.

In some cases, the Holy See may decide not to get involved in a discussion on the authenticity of some reported messages or visions and leaves matters at a local level. The messages that Gianna Talone attributed to Jesus and the Virgin Mary from 1995 to 1999 were published as a six volume series of books called I am your Jesus of Mercy. To date, the Holy See has let the matter rest at the local level of the archdiocese in Baltimore, Maryland and has not directly commented on her messages.

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.

Categories of visions

Visions of Jesus and Mary may be categorized based on their similarities and differences with respect to specific criteria.

Visions vs dictations

Some visionaries merely report conversations and images while others also produce large amounts of handwritten notes that seem like dictations. Maria Valtorta and Vassula Ryden each produced thousand of pages of text that they directly attribute to Jesus. Maria Valtorta and Vassula Ryden both reported their writings as the dictations of Jesus, and not their own words. On the other hand, while Saint Julian of Norwich wrote a book based on her reported visions, the book was written twenty years after her first vision and she did not declare it to be a dictation. At the other end of the spectrum is the case of Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich who narrated her messages to Klemens Brentano, and Brentano later used his words to write them.

Visions should also be differentiated from interior locutions in which inner voices are reported, but no visual or physical contact is claimed. For instance, the messages written by Father Stefano Gobbi for the Marian Movement of Priests are reported as interior locutions rather than visions.

There have been other mystics who have produced large volumes of text, but considered them meditations rather than visions or interior locutions. For instance, the Venerable Concepcion Cabrera de Armida's over 60,000 pages of text were never represented as visions, but as her own meditations, often in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, during Eucharistic Adoration.

Physical marks

Some visionaries report receiving physical signs on their bodies as they experience visions. Saint Francis of Assisi was one of the first reported cases of stigmata, but the best known recent example is another Franciscan (in fact a Capuchin) Saint Padre Pio. Interestingly, among the many Catholic orders, Franciscans have reported proportionally higher ratios of stigmata [3].

Padre Pio's stigmata persisted for over fifty years and he was examined by numerous physicians in the 20th century, who confirmed the existence of the wounds, but none of whom could produce a medical explanation for the fact that his bleeding wounds would never get infected. His wounds healed once, but reappeared [4]. The wounds were examined by Luigi Romanelli, chief physician of the City Hospital of Barletta, for about one year. Dr. Giorgio Festa, a private practitioner also examined them in 1920 and 1925. Professor Giuseppe Bastianelli, physician to Pope Benedict XV agreed that the wounds existed but made no other comment. Pathologist Dr. Amico Bignami of the University of Rome also observed the wounds, but could make no diagnosis [5].

Physical contact

Some visionaries have reported physical contact with Jesus. The Bible suggests that post- Resurrection (yet pre-Ascension) physical contact with Jesus is possible, for in John 21:17 Jesus told Saint Mary Magdalene: ”Don’t touch Me for I have not yet ascended to the Father”. In John 21:27 Jesus ordered Saint Thomas the Apostle: “Put your hand into My side”. But the Bible does not mention if Saint Thomas followed that command. Interestingly, in a reported “vision of a vision” on August 9th 1944 the Italian mystic Maria Valtorta wrote in her notebook that Saint Thomas did obey Jesus that day and that in her reported vision of that incident physical contact took place. Saint Marguerite Marie Alacoque reported putting her head on the heart of Jesus, while Maria Valtorta wrote that she had put her head on His shoulder.

Physical artifacts

Some visionaries produce artifacts based on their reported visions, although this is rare. A well known example is the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe which is reported to have been miraculously imprinted on the cloak of Saint Juan Diego.

Similar and interlinked visions

The case of Saint Juan Diego's vision in 1531 is somewhat similar to the case of Saint Bernadette Soubirous's vision in 1858. Both saints reported a miraculous Lady on a hill who asked them to request that the local priests build a chapel at the site of the vision. Both visions included a reference to roses and led to large churches being built at the sites. Like Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico, Our Lady of Lourdes is a major Catholic symbol in France.

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. Hence if and when the Holy See selects a position on Medjugorje, it may also be viewed as having selected a position on the work of Maria Valtorta.

Sources and External links

• Franciscan Archives on St. Francis of Assisi
• Vatican Biography of St. Teresa of Avila
• St. Julian of Norwich at the Julian Site
• Poem by St. Julian of Norwich at the Vatican
• Vatican Biography of St. Juan Diego
• Vatican Biography of Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich
• Vatican Biography of St. Faustyna Kowalska
• St. Faustyna Kowalska’s Diary
• Vatican Biography of Mother Teresa of Calcutta
• Oxford University Press: Visions of Jesus.
• True Life in God Association
• A critical view of Vassula Ryden's writings
• Maria Valtorta Official Site
• The Maria Valtorta Web-Ring
• Valtorta Medjugorje confirmation
• Marian Movement of Priests
• Divine Mercy Organization
• Saint Juan Diego
• Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich
• Saint Gemma Galgani
• Saint Marguerite Marie Alacoque
• Blessed Consolata Betrone
• Saint Bernadette Soubirous
• Padre Pio Devotions
• Mother Teresa
• Međugorje Official Website
• Giga Catholic Information