Explaining the Faith - Marian Apparitions: What You Need to Know!

well welcome everybody and thank you for joining us here at the national shrine of divine mercy i'm father chris aylar one of the miriam priests and we're very excited that you're going to with us for our new format today we're going to be doing a shorter talk and on every first saturday on marion apparitions and i'm going to be walking you through today we're going to do an overview of what is a marian apparition what does the church do but starting next month we're going to actually start walking you through all the approved marian apparitions and so we ask you to join us each saturday here for and explaining the faith talk and each first saturday that same 11 o'clock talk will be on these apparitions so we're excited you're with us then brother mark is going to pause for a couple minutes at the end of this talk i will go vest and come back and we'll actually do the first saturday devotions so we're very grateful that you could be with us and if you have to take a break it'll be right after this talk and about five minute break we'll get ready to do the devotions and that'll be coming up so let us start with the prayer in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit amen heavenly father we ask you send the holy spirit down upon us give us your blessing through the intercession of our blessed mother mary may we listen to your message through her and be open to your mercy and we ask all this through christ our lord amen in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit amen so again we'll do a talk and then we will begin the first saturday devotions now as you saw on your slides today's topic is miriam apparitions now why are they so important okay the approved apparitions of mary are in accord with scripture they are not made up by the church they're not hallucinations they are messages such as lords fatima guadalupe why are they in accord with scripture okay first of all when mary discovered that elizabeth was in need what did she do she went to the hill country of judea she came to her aid she came to share the gift of the baby christ child this is the first chapter of luke now today why should we doubt that mary doesn't do the same thing who loves us as her own offspring as her own children because jesus gave her to us as our mother and that she wouldn't hasten to help us in the same way to bring us to her son that's what she did in scripture that's the purpose of emery and apparition our mother mary leading us back to jesus now let's look at our next slide and those who here are with us if they're able to dial in on on the phone these slides are amazing now you see all those designations on the united states we even have some south america africa europe asia you see all those these are all places of marian apparitions now if you look up at the top these are not all approved some are listed as supernatural some as an expression of faith some are local tradition some are not yet confirmed so this shows them all look at those dots all over the country all over the world now have brother mark go to our next slide here we're going to blow up just europe look at that all over europe those places where mary has appeared so this is amazing this is a blow up of that one section of the map and it has all the places mary appeared now let's go to the third slide this is a little longer one and this is since the beginning of 1500s this is on the bottom of your screen you see all the number of apparitions from the 1500s going all the way to 1750. eh okay there's a fair number of those there's some not a lot now let's go to our fourth slide as brother mark changes the slide now look what happens starting with our lady of the miraculous medal in the 1800s it started picking up and look what happens in the 1900s or the 20th century the number of miriam apparitions explodes we have an explosion of the number of times and places mary is appearing around the world so i wanted to show you those slides so that you could see what we are dealing with here is god communicating with his people through mary now this has messages they could be in either one short appearance they could be in several appearances over several years they could be it depends on the message okay now it's not mandatory that the people who witness it the seers be saints you know a lot of the criticism of some of the apparitions is well gee that person who saw mary isn't living a very holy life okay yeah i think if you saw mary you'd pretty much straighten out your life but it's not a requirement that you be a saint all right they can be normal imperfect people we don't want to judge it so to be worthy of belief and devotion is what the church determines or not it's worthy or it's not worthy this is the whole thing but it must be approved by the local bishop the bishop do you know who the pope is the pope is just the bishop of rome we have bishops all over the world every place on this planet even in the far woods where the highest mountains is under a bishop no matter where you go in the world it's under a bishop and so this bishop has the authority to declare this is authentic or not by the grace of god now the approval process protects us from false false teaching and so what are the guidelines for the church to approve a marian apparition what does the church look at well i saw mary in my toast i get those all the time i get pictures of people's toast on their breakfast table there's mary father don't you see it or i get them in the clouds a lot of them in the clouds i get a nice picture of a bunch of clouds that says don't you see mary she appeared to me there she is in the in the clouds so the church looks at these i always tell them to talk to your local bishop don't talk to me now the bishop has this job the church is very careful in approving these so the vatican has released a set of guidelines to the public on approving apparitions and revelations if you have had a revelation or an apparition of mary i'm not saying you're crazy i'm not saying it's not true what i'm saying is go to the church go to the church the church lays out three steps in determining if it's authentic all right first they question whether or not the apparition is positive or negative what do i mean by that all right if it's positive it has a very high probability of being factual now if mary comes as a space alien on a spaceship and tells you she's going to take you to pluto that's probably not a high pop probability of fact okay so it's got to have a high probability of fact after investigation showing its moral character is good it's not asking you to sin follows church teaching and is commensurate with what we've learned in scripture if it's anything different than that it can't happen like at bayside i got into that base side apparition i found it online one day years ago and i was enthralled with it like everything in there was amazing and then it gets to some part that all people who wear brown shoes will go to hell that can't be of god okay i have brown shoes mostly black but i do have a couple brown shoes so this is very important it's showing moral values that are commensurate now if it's negative it'll show things like errors concerning the nature of the apparition how it came about errors concerning theology god mary or the saints like god's not a trinity or or things like that evidence that being it's directly aimed towards getting a profit like mary appeared to me and she told me to raise money um so that i can buy a bigger house you see some of these uh protestant pastors that are living in 14 million dollar houses i guess i should say probably some catholic bishops too so it's not a good thing if i come to you and say please send me money so that i can live in a 14 million mansion you better get rid of me okay because that's not what mary told me to tell you mary never would say to me ask your beautiful marion helpers to be able to to give you um a you know a trip to the moon on the national space station because you want to have fun that's not what it's about now we do need a place to live and we got 30 guys here on the ground so we do need a house that's not what i'm referring to but we don't need taj mahal we need the basic simplicity and so the presence of grave immoral f acts would also be negative like if mary is saying i want you to marry this person although you're already married in the church you're already married to your spouse even if things aren't going well and mary appears and says you're not to be with him you're to be with this person here leave your spouse um and go get married in the justice of the peace no it doesn't work that way all right so psychological issues could make it negative all right so that's the first thing secondly if it is positive the church will allow devotion publicly will allow the you to worship or to follow that devotional publicly that's why divine mercy is fully approved because we are allowed to teach it and preach it publicly per the church so you can rest assured that everything you hear from us about divine mercy is fully approved by the church but you got to be careful on some of this other stuff you got to be really careful all right so last the church decides the level of authenticity and supernatural character it has so it's going to tell you whether or not it's supernatural meaning of god or not well father how does the church know god gave the church that authority all right so the duty of approving these apparitions first falls on the bishop of where it occurred so if it occurs in chicago it gives to the bishop of chicago if it occurs in moscow it goes to that bishop but sometimes it can be passed up from the local bishop to the vatican while these vatican approved ones are look more known okay their presence are not does it make it authentic or not as long as the local bishop says it is authentic the vatican may or may not even comment on it it doesn't have to if you say father i'm not going to follow because the vatican hasn't approved it well if the local bishop has and the vatican hasn't condemned it you're okay and there's a lot that fell in that category all right why is private revelation important i'm going to go back to my friend father seraphim why is private level revelation important okay paul said that the church is built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets now what's interesting is saint augustine and saint thomas aquinas told us who the prophets are who are the prophets the prophets of the church are those who receive private revelation private revelation is important carl rauner said that the mysteries of the church taken together so think about this the mysteries of the church all of them taken together cannot be emphasized all at once to the same degree it's kind of like the bible is everything you ever read read in the bible no the bible itself says not everything's in the bible the last chapter of john the last gospel says not everything is in the bible so when people say father's not in the bible that doesn't make it false if it's not in the bible we go to the church and the church tells us that's the authority of jesus so from time to time the holy spirit color carl rauner said puts a spotlight on a particular mystery that the world needs to listen to at the given time like nuclear war or something like that that didn't exist in the bible when it was written but the nuclear war is very important all right now catholics aren't required are you required to believe private revelation are you required no you are not required to participate in any devotions from any private revelation even approved but we recommend you look at it because if the church declares it worthy of belief it's probably got a good message in there but it doesn't mean you have to follow it we suggest it and we see in the approved apparitions of of these marian apparitions nothing does it do contradicts the bible or the authority of the church if it does you know it's wrong so our lady often says nothing is to be done without the authority of your local bishop jesus told that to saint faustina one time saint faustina said father i or saint faustina jesus said to saint faustina that i want you to do something and saint faustina said i can't jesus said why she goes my superior said i can't and jesus says well done jesus told saint faustina to follow her superior over him that's the authority given by him to the church that's amazing so if an alleged apparition contradicts the church or the bible even if it bears fruit it can't come from god the authority is with that bishop the apostolic see can get involved or not but the bishop is the key and the congregation of the doctrine of the faith also might get involved but it doesn't have to all right let's look at our next slide our next slide is important because in it these are the type of approved apparitions you have ones way back in the tradition of the church those are called traditional many many many of those exist from the 100s all the way through to the 1500s basically 1400 years they've appeared to many saints but the church didn't really define them back then they were very very much just tradition all right now we also have vatican approved ones ones that are approved by the vatican there's only 16 of those there's only 16. this is amazing and then finally we have the bishop approved ones so this is very important now let's talk about this for a moment the traditionally approved ones all right these have no official means of investigation because they were early in history early apparitions were usually just evaluated by the priest all right and what was the most common approval is if a church was built there y'all ever hear of our lady of the snows anybody here ever hear that you know how that got approved because there was a church built where mary said in the middle of july or august in rome you know how hot it gets in july or august in rome and mary said where it snows is where you will build this basilica and it snowed heavily in a complete perfect square and that's where they built st mary major basilica which still stands in rome this was back in like the fifth or sixth century now the vatican didn't have all this approval process then but they built a basilica where it snowed in the middle of july or august in rome and so they built that big major basilica and therefore they say this has been approved by the church just because of the tradition of it so we have that kind of approval way before the vatican started documenting stuff now this is very important because later bishops and even popes would visit these shrines and that would give credence now sometimes the church then in like the 15th century 16th century started to process this document it now before i get to those though does anybody here know the earliest marian apparition we have in the church and i'm going to start with this next week what's the earliest miriam apparition it actually happened to saint james in the year 40 a.d mary appeared to saint james in spain and we call it our lady of the pillar and margaret of greta talks about it brother mark has been reading her work and we can't wait to explain to you this incredible apparition actually was really by location because mary was still alive and all of a sudden everything changed mary in our lady of the pillar showed her involvement in the church so let's look at this symbol of our lady of the pillar that is now celebrated on october the 12th and you can see that on your screen so basically there's around 2500 apparitions but today they're even more free frequent do you know there's been 500 million apparitions in the 20th century alone way more than any other time in human history and the dictionary of apparitions of the virgin mary lists all these so what i'm teaching you is not made up for me i'm giving you the sources of the church and you know 308 apparitions are attributed to saints and blesseds out of 2500 well father i got to be a saint to see the blessed virgin mary out of 2500 of them 308 are blessed and saints you do the math that means mary talks to the rest of us and so don't think it can't happen it can but follow the church i think that's fascinating do you know how many popes have received marian apparitions that have been approved seven out of the hundreds of popes seven that's it so all of these other 2 500 are simple people very simple many are unofficially not even recognized by the church but you don't want to get caught into that trap to stay with the approved ones now what about ones that are a bishop approved or vatican recognized trent very important council said that the local bishop is the first and main authorities i've been saying and vatican approval is not always required it can be present but after episcopal approval episcopal just means bishop the vatican may or may not do something about it visits establishment of a feast day or the canonization of those who saw mary that lends credence like fatima right the popes visited fatima they canonized jacinta and francisco so that lends credence but it doesn't have to if a marian apparition is recognized by a bishop it means the message is not contrary to faith and morals and it may be venerated by the faithful and you can believe in the supernatural content but belief in a private revolution revelation as i said is not required you can pick if you want to follow it or not what is the most recent one the vatican approved does anybody know the most recently vatican recognized one is one you've probably not heard of low france happened in 1664 but was just approved in 2008. that's the most recently approved vatican apparition we're going to talk about that one what about the most recently occurring one that the vatican approved that one was caballo that one happened ended in 1989. so mary is active so the vatican is still active they just approved one in 2008 even though that was in the 1600s but they also approved cabejo which ended in 1989. so our lady is working what about the united states anybody know how many approved marian apparitions we have in the united states one anybody know where wisconsin champion wisconsin where i spoke a couple years ago in 1859 there's an apparition of mary we'll talk about this one and that one was approved by the bishop as well in 2010 not by the vatican but by the bishop here's what the early churches revealed about private revelation this is important public revelation is different from private public revelation is scripture and sacred tradition that we have in the church capital t private revelation cannot contradict it but it's given to help explain it now private revelation is binding on those who receive it so if you're a seer and it gets approved by the church and mary tells you to do something you're bound to it now the catholic church teaches that public revelation was completed with the death of the last apostle so that's done but it'd be crazy to think that god doesn't still speak to us after the death of the last apostles all right so all god has revealed to us through scripture ended with the death of the last apostle but do we really think god's going to stop talking to us of course not and he's done it through private approved revelation and so this is it this is continued i want to read you catechism number 67 if brother mark can put it on the screen let me read this private revelations do not belong however to the deposit of faith you do not follow a private revelation over going to mass you do not follow a private revelation ahead of the teaching of scripture or tradition of the church it is not their role to improve or complete christ's definitive revelation he's already done that in scripture its role is to help live more fully by by it in a certain period of history god's given you what to do here and now guided by the magisterium the census fidelium this is the collective sense of the faithful knows how to discern and welcome in these revelations what constitutes an authentic call of jesus or his saints of the church to the church christian faith cannot accept revelations that claim to surpass or correct the revelation in which christ is the fulfillment as is the case in certain non-christian religions and also in certain recent sects which base themselves on such revelations so if you're going to leave the church to join a new church called our lady of the bamboo poll okay you're missing the point you can't do that some people go to one extreme or the other i've met so many people that are nothing but private revelation people i'm gonna do every single prayer mary ever gave in every single apparition my prayers last 48 hours a day you can't do it so some people go to that extreme you can't possibly fulfill all the requirements of prayers that mary asked us to do in all these revelations can't do it it's physically impossible some try and then we have other people to the absolute opposite extreme that believe not a single thing through private revelation and if you're neglecting what jesus told saint faustina just because it was private revelation you're missing the context of church teaching because it doesn't contradict it it it explains it and so this is very important our protestant brothers and sisters this is important here they denied all private revelation why they had to you know why because all the miracles and the teachings that occurred in private revelation over the previous 1500 years confirmed catholic teaching every single private revelation that was accepted and approved in the prior 1500 years confirmed catholic teaching so the protestant reformers had to reject it so they said there is no such thing as private revelation they disobeyed god's commandment and the new testament that says in first thessalonians 5 19 do not quench the spirit do not despise prophetic utterances test everything that's what the church does retain what is good that's what the church does now the reformers they eradicated that of all new revelation they said nope and it led people to forget that private and public revelation are different but supportive of each other private revelation helps explain the public and without that church guidance you're losing something important so with no approval process but with the powerful effect of private revelation what happened to the protestants they've splintered off into 40 000 different versions you know why they did because of private revelation if you would have maintained a central church like we have in the catholic church and said okay the church will determine what is true and what is not you wouldn't splint her off into forty thousand pieces once protestantism started because it no longer maintained that authority of the church it splintered into forty thousand pieces that can't be correct all right last page we're almost done the religious organizations that claimed that they were seeing the truth over here well i see the truth over here when you don't have the authority of the church to tell you what is the truth everybody's going to think i have the truth well no the mormons now have the truth no the seventh-day adventists have the truth no the methodists have the truth you can't have forty thousand truths and so christ's church that was established by jesus maintains for us what is truth the religious organizations which claimed these new revelations evolved into things such as tens of thousands of new religions when the pentecostal movement started right in uh in 1900 they asked the founder who said he had private revelation i can't remember a man or a woman and said how do you explain this because this is a place on private revelation which the protestants have denied for centuries and it now is starting again well the answer is private revelation never ended you should stick with it but through the church christ established that's the message the correct answer is it's private revelation never stopped we have to discern it so let's watch a quick video right now actually you know what i think i'm gonna have to do the time i'm gonna have to skip this video i'll show it next week i'll show the video next week but basically in this message we have so many powerful gifts god gives us through his mother but the church has to approve it if somebody's telling you mary said something crazy don't listen so the church has three types of decisions let's put this one up let's skip the uh video we'll show that next week let's show the types of decisions the church has if you look on your screen constant does supernatural la tate what does that mean that means it's established as supernatural so the church looks at it says it is supernatural the second one constant supernatural attate that means what it has been established that this is not supernatural not of god and then third non-constant to supernatural la la tate means not established as supernatural but maybe it's not defined meaning i could say something is not from minnesota but that doesn't mean it's not from possibly texas or florida so the middle one there the second one is basically the church saying it's not from heaven at all the third one says we can't say that it definitely is from heaven but it might be we haven't defined it yet there's not enough evidence to define and if the vision is stopped and there's not enough evidence it's not condemned but it's not approved so those are the three so let's talk about these the first one is basically when an apparition is judged supernatural called worthy of belief it has manifested signs and evidence of being authentic miracles interventions from heaven the judgment is possible when there is evidence of supernatural phenomenon sound doctrine good mental health of the seers piety of the seers not necessarily sainthood and good fruit when that's present the church will say this is supernatural let's go to the second one definitely not supernatural the judgment here is that an alleged apparition has been shown not supernatural either clearly means that it's not miraculous or lacks signs of miraculous nature private revelation for instance which is doctrinally dangerous or manifests hostility towards the church or the authority cannot come from god father i read this apparition online that says i am to reject my bishop you can reject certain teachings if it is well the church is not heretical church will never teach heresy but you don't necessarily regarding non-faith and moral issues like if the holy father says we should not build the wall for immigration and you feel i think we should build a wall from immigration that doesn't make you disobedient that's a differing of opinion but if it's about faith and morals we have to follow that's church teaching it could even be demonic because the devil will persuade but when people say all miriam apparitions are demonic no just the ones that are contrary to the bible or to church teaching now there could be an alleged revelation or may also be a person's good heart that thinks it happened lacking evidence of being anything more than desires of the person no fraud is intended but it's just an act of imagination those will be rejected not meaning that the person is bad simply meaning that it came from their heart not heaven but the third one and that is rejected not because it's evil in this case but because it's not inspired from heaven it's by the person's own heart that can't be approved and then finally the third one is we don't know enough we're not sure it may not be evident whether or not the alleged apparition is authentic and the judgment would seem to be completely open to further development period all right so to finish and then we're going to go into our first saturday's devotion a friend of our community named mark maravale at franciscan university has done a lot on marion apparitions and mary study of mary you know taking you back to seminary here in these classes i should have mentioned the beginning the class we're doing right now is mariology the study of mary the problem with meriology is a lot of times they don't talk enough about approved private revelation i was lucky in seminary we did talk about it a lot of these notes come from that now mark maravali says what is consistent about all approved marian apparitions here you go mary gives messages tailored to a given culture at a particular time he said mothers are great with details men are not even jesus didn't give a lot of detail in the bible what did jesus say about in vitro fertilization nothing what did jesus say about artificial intelligence nothing what did jesus say about nuclear war nothing because these didn't exist then does it make them false or where is that in the bible therefore there can be no teaching on nuclear war no it means our blessed mother will come and help to a teach the unified message he said is mary calls us to return to jesus by living the gospel and living in charity she tells us to do this through prayer and penance that's the whole message of fatima for instance mary reveals herself in hopes that we will receive the fullness of public revelation that she confirms in private revelation public revelation i said comes from scripture and tradition large t private revelation is ongoing and accentuates that all right that god wants us to focus on maybe in a new way or deeper as i said there have been more marian approved apparitions since 1830 than all of history combined this has helped us define marian dogma what are two examples ex cathedra the only times that the pope speaks infallibly from the chair ex cathedral well two of them were mary the assumption and the immaculate conception this is powerful the immaculate conception in 1854 the assumption in 1950 sumerian apparitions had become necessary for our times because we have been living the gospel and we need to know how to apply it even as times change we desperately need to return to this message and mary helps us do that so she comes to tell us she loves us and to be with us she comes to people in need bringing grace teaching devotion teaching love of the gospel repenting accepting jesus being holy and being saved if mary's doing that in an apparition it is approved and it's not demonic this craziness she will always lead you to sin uh her son how could her son please let me reemphasize please don't send letters how could mary be teaching us to sin it would never be approved and i saw this thing online as i was doing some research yesterday and there's this big article online saying all marian apparitions are demonic again if mary is doing all those things i just read you coming to people in need bringing grace teaching devotions teaching the gospel explaining the gospel repenting accepting jesus becoming holy getting saved how could that be of satan bringing you to jesus is not of satan it's of mary and like any good mother she warns her children if you're on the wrong path get on the right path you know i just call mary the ultimate gps what does your gps tell you if you're going the wrong way make a u-turn get off this road i have the one program that's the mean one you are on the wrong road get off get back to where you came from it's hilarious and that's basically what mary does for us get off the wrong road make a u-turn she's the ultimate gps mary comes to call us to prayer especially the rosary faith trust and while she brings us devotion she's always basically leading us to her son the scapular miraculous medal the rosary even her miracles lead us back to god they're not demonic the divine mercy message is an example it's a gift so thank you to you our marian helpers for helping us spread that it's fully approved so basically after fatima a new generation is learning about our faith through our lady she's not standing idly by she uses the fruits of our devotion to deepen our holiness and bring souls to god that can't be of satan you know to finish mary presents the solution to what ails us like her we can say i am the handmaid of the lord be it done unto me according to thy word and it leads us to jesus so how beautiful is this how incredible this gift from here on out every first saturday i will be doing a talk just like i did today and we will lead you in new miriam apparitions every first saturday then we will follow it with doing the devotions so i invite you to stay with us i guess i do have just one minute left i'd like to tell you some of the apparitions that we're going to be talking about she will appear she has appeared and these are some of the ones that are approved by the vatican brother mark can put up on the screen our lady guadalupe la salette the golden heart knock fatima lourdes virgin of the poor our lady of happy meetings i think my staff is asking for that one our lady of the miraculous medal our lady of hope our lady help of christians our lady of gerchvald in poland our lady of lush ice in poland our lady of saluva in lithuania our lady of zion in rome and mother of the word cabejo now we have some bishop-approved ones that we're going to talk about our lady of good help and champion wisconsin the one approved in the u.s our lady of good success oh man if you haven't heard that one you gotta join us our lady of eternal aid the madonna of montana our lady of sorrows reconciler of people and nations our lady of akita our lady of uh kuapa and our lady of the rosary those are just some of the few and then finally we are going to talk about ones that have not been fully approved because they're so important medjagori ghira bindal our lady of all nations and the lay apostle in ireland zyatan on the egypt where she appeared on television we'll even talk about some of the rejected like bayside conyers and others so with that we are going to on this first saturdays come to our lady and say take us to your son jesus so sorry i went a little long stay with us brother mark is going to shut down this talk right now but then you can log back on and to our first saturday devotion which will begin literally in three minutes so god bless you and stay with us because in just a couple minutes we're going to fulfill what our lady asked us to do at fatima in the first saturday's devotion god bless you you

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Keywords: Divine Mercy, Mercy, Jesus, Christ, Marian, priest, grace, pray, prays, praying, chris alar, alar, fr. Chris, fr. alar, Catholic, Church, God, fr. chris alar, blessed virgin, Mary, Immaculate Heart, blessing, worship, Salvation, Divine Mercy Image, St. Gertrude, St. Faustina, Fatima, Marian apparition, Church approved apparitions, Vatican approved, bishop approved, Constat de supernaturalitate private revelation, Marian dogma

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Length: 45min 50sec (2750 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 07 2021