Explaining the Faith - The Very First Marian Apparition!

well thank you everybody for joining us here at the national shrine of the divine mercy i'm father chris aylar one of the marian priests of the immaculate conception and we are here live and uh we're excited because it's a first saturday so we are going to ask you to stay with us for the next hour so we're going to lead you for a brief talk about a little over half an hour and it's going to be i'm excited we're starting our new series on all the apparitions of mary all the marian apparitions and then we'll take a quick break five minutes or so i'll go down invest then we'll start a new live stream so if you're at home joining us you can then tap into the new live stream where we'll lead you through this first saturday devotions and everything you need to know to get that grace we'll walk you through the act of contrition the spiritual communion we're going to pray the rosary together and i'm going to lead you in a 15-minute meditation so that'll come up but first let us begin with our talk on the very first ever marian apparition and it goes all the way back almost 2 000 years so let us begin with a prayer in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit amen heavenly father we ask you send your holy spirit down upon us to open our minds and hearts to receive the grace you wish to bestow and especially the gift of the guidance of mother mary and you've brought her to the world to prepare your second coming and we ask that we be ready when you bring this salvation to your people and we ask all this through christ our lord in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit's amen okay so you saw on your screen we're going to start today i'm hoping to get through three apparitions the very first three ever that is a generally accepted in the church so looking at that we're going to cover over the next several months in these first saturdays now not in a row in terms of every saturday but first saturdays i'm going to be talking about mirroring apparitions and we're going to start as i've been saying from the very beginning now there are five categories of apparitions the first category is way before the church ever began the process of verifying apparitions and studying them and investigating them way back before that the first thousand years of the church apparitions were based on the priest the bishops and just generally accepted the community of the church generally accepting those apparitions that's where we fall into today that's the category we're going to talk about today now after that after the first millennium the church began to do investigation and following procedures on how to determine if an apparition was authentic and if it was the vatican would approve it so you have the category of vatican-approved apparitions then you have another category called bishop-approved apparitions i'm going to do all of those and then finally we have the ones that are still in process and then ones that are rejected i'll talk about some of those so let's look at our slide brother mark if you can put up on the slide these are the categories so you see accepted tradition is a category we'll talk about today vatican approved there's 16 of those bishop approved there's nine of those unconfirmed meaning they're in process and rejected mean the church has said this is not authentic now hopefully what we have now is what i call the big three and we're going to be talking about this now since trent the council of trent the church has established that the local bishop is the first authority in approving apparitions it's usually up to the bishop but then in the 1700s the first commissions began to examine marian apparition so it became a process now this doesn't mean it's all political this doesn't mean that it's all you know depending who you know what you know no it's based on the church determining what's in line with scripture you know we as catholics are told we're not scripture miriam apparitions are 100 based on scripture and the words of jesus and what her message is and then it matches jesus's words and so last month i showed you these two maps let's have brother mark show the map take a look at this first map this is amazing because in it we see the apparitions of mary over the centuries we have ones that are deemed supernatural ones that are just expressions of the faith ones that are local tradition on other ones that are unconfirmed now if you look at the world there look at all those dots those are all the places mary has appeared but i want to blow up the dot in europe let's go to the next slide look at what is going on with mary look at all those places mary is appeared and not all of them not all of them are fully approved by the church but this shows you mary's active now legend says that the very first apparition this is what we're going to talk about today of our lady was to saint james in sara goosa spain before she died it was actually by location we're going to talk about this so no official means of investigation had yet existed it was early apparitions were always evaluated by the local priest in the community maybe the bishop but typically the most tangible sign you want to know how the church really determined that an approval should be given for an apparition is if a church was built there you know all this investigation all this study that we do now on marine apparitions back then thousand years ago it was easy it was if they built a church and that determined it now later if the bishops and the popes visited the shrines that affirmed that it was authentic that was what the church used now some apparitions have occurred during times before there was church approval and we still accept some of them we still accept some of them so this is very important but sometimes even after the church had their process of approval we have things like lavang in vietnam that are generally accepted but have not gone through the approval process of the church so we don't want to reject everything now here's where it gets good the first thousand years of christianity our lady appeared and generally as i said a shrine would be built often the sites associated with these apparitions had statues or images of our lady not we don't worship them i do whole talks please go online you can see i do whole talks that we don't worship these statues they are in honor of our blessed mother now the first thousand years of our history many saints reported mirroring apparitions who are the saints that reported marian apparitions let's start with john from the bible john from the bible reported a mirroring apparition well father where's that in the bible revelation 12. she was the lady in the sky with the crown of 12 stars and gave birth to him who will rule the nations it's got to be mary who else is going to rule the nations jesus and it says this is the mother who gave birth to that man it's got to be mary and so we also have other great saints that reported many many apparitions so these are great things to look to let's start now with the very first one ever called our lady of the pillar this story it's really by location because mary wasn't dead yet predates the bible predates the bible let's take a look at the slide this is our lady of the pillar this is her feast day is october 12th okay now her story predates the bible long before the bible was written and tradition tells us that seven years after the death of jesus the year 40 a.d mary appeared to the apostle james tradition has mary died when she was 54 years old so tradition says according to a lot of the saints that mary was between 14 and 15 years old when she gave birth to jesus and tradition holds that she died at 54 years old or us was assumed into heaven we don't say the church never says she actually died or didn't die but she her time on earth ended at 54. now tradition says seven years after the birth or a resurrection of jesus so he resurrected in 30 a.d seven years later 40 a.d now think of this all the apostles have been sent out you've got st thomas and india you've got a lot of the apostles spread out over the known world saint james was in spain and he was getting really frustrated sounds like our priest today he was getting really frustrated because nobody was listening they were not being people were not accepting the word of god he was frustrated and jesus according to saint catherine emmerich and others and catherine emmerich and others mary of agretta brother mark reads a lot of mary of agretta she's blessed i believe they write they write in detail about the apostles and supposedly saint james was getting frustrated nobody was listening was trying to evangelize and jesus commanded mary to appear to him mary was being obedient and here's what happened here's the story so the apostle james sat tired and disappointed on the bank of the ebro river in what is now ziragusa spain now the people of the roman province of hispania you know hispanics we talk about hispanics having spanish background it actually doesn't come from mexico it actually is hispania is the spain the iberian peninsula and there they were not open to receiving god's message sound familiar to today right so the good news of jesus was not being received and saint giant james was ready to give up imagine an apostle ready to quit and so saint james was not evangelizing so on january 2nd 40 a.d the blessed virgin mary who was still living in palestine jerusalem appeared to saint james on top of a pillar you know what a pillar is we see a pillar we have him here in the church this is a form of pillar so mary appeared on the top of a pillar and so it was made of stone and she assured him that the people of hispania would become christians and that their faith would be as strong and durable as the pillar which she stood on made a stone hence our lady of the pillar this is 40 a.d remember the visit she said to remember the visit and the promise i am making you she said she basically this was the building of the first marian shrine it was built around the pillar and james began instantly to convert the pagans of early spain now the shrine church let's take a look at this next photo wow have you ever seen anything more beautiful that's incredible now that shrine is the first church built in mary's honor this is in spain the present basilica church was built between 1681 and actually 1961 believe it or not because the previous original church was burned by fire in 1434. so this is the one that stands there today now let's take a look at the next slide the statue that sits atop the pillar is made of stone and has the blessed virgin mary with the infant jesus holding him you know what if you look at that picture it's very similar to many of mary you'll see the next apparition we do plus mary is holding a baby child like our lady of mount carmel so this is important because she's holding the original statue was also destroyed in that same fire so this is a replica near exact though so many miracles many miracles in fact during the spanish civil war in the 1930s two bombs think about this two bombs were dropped on the shrine church two bombs were dropped on the shrine church and miraculously neither exploded so you know what they did with those bombs they're now hanging in the shrine they're now hanging in the shrine so anyway she is the patronus of spain and the patroness of all hispanic people we love the hispanic people the culture that comes here to the shrine but i like to ask him are you praying to our lady of the pillar it's a great tradition that came from john paul ii in 1984. he entrusted the hispanic people to our lady of the pillar so if you have hispanic friends or relatives or you are yourself bam there's a good one so the message of her could be seen as mary's assistance what was her message okay in every mirroring app apparition mary gives a message what was the message evangelize spread the word of my son she appeared while still on earth but she is now going to be helping us even more in heaven if she could help saint james as much as she did while still on earth how much more she can she help us in heaven and so the feast of our lady of pillar as i said is october the 12th that's coming up the very first ever marian apparition now nothing has ever been found about this to be uncredible as much as they've looked at this nothing has disputed science or history or scripture and as we said blessed and catherine emmerich she has this in chapter 14 of her book the life of our lord and savior jesus christ and mary agretta who brother mark is a big fan of reads her and i had a whole section i'm running behind time i can't read it but she writes about this in the mystical city of god it's amazing so anyway it shows mary as not only the mother of jesus and the church but of us and so in spain and latin america guess what the name pillar p-i-l-a-r with one l is commonly given to little girls at baptism and at one time in spain pray for spain at one time almost everyone wore the medal of our lady of the pillar the new straw sonora del pilar now maybe not so much so let's wrap up with this one this image of our lady of um the pillar is a forceful reminder to walk in the footsteps of james and the other catholics who fought to preserve our faith and so perhaps you know um i i'm looking at you know a famous quote that i think fits here people say father this is all make believe we have no definite proof well who was it um franz wereful in the song of bernadette said for those who do not believe no explanation is possible for those who believe no explanation is necessary and so with that let's watch a quick video on our lady a pillar it's only about a minute long he walked along the riverbank to rest and pray in silence during the prayer one of those nights he heard voices of angels singing ave maria grazia plena when he heard them he fell on his knees and saw on the marble pillar the virgin who said behold james the place where you build a temple in my memory look carefully at this pillar in which i am which my son and master for you brought down from above by the hand of the angels around which you will make the altar of the chapel in this place the virtue of the most high will work potent and wonders by my intercession for those who in their needs implore my patronage this pillar will remain in this place until the end of the world and true christians will never be lacking in this city comforted by this presence of mary he built a temple it is the first church in the world dedicated to the virgin mary [Music] okay our lady is the beautiful gift from god and now we're gonna go to the next apparition we're gonna do two more we're done for today but a very critical important one it depends on how you pronounce it i've seen it pronounced many different ways is our lady a pui in france p-u-y but you've not heard of this one before but it's the second great miriam apparition let's look at our slide this is a statue of her that's an impressive statue look at her again holding the child jesus and this is something very very great story now you've probably all heard in france of la salette and lourdes but few people have heard of our lady appui now this is where the devotion of mary in france was born and for 1800 years it has thrived what's the story you ever hear of france called the first daughter of the church it's because of this this is considered the very first apparition anywhere in the world of mary after she assumed into heaven it was around the year 46 when saint peter sent some missionaries to a place called gaul which is now france now sait frantonius was the bishop there sent by peter we're talking about directly sent by saint peter to gaul and he chose saint george to succeed him you ever want to hear a great saint read about him so now it's the year 70. so we're in the first century here and one of saint george's converts was a widow named villa and she became seriously ill so saint george told her to ask the blessed virgin mary for help so vila did and as he directed he prayed to mary for intercession and our lady appeared to her and listened to this and told her to climb mount ini a nice now some people say aenesius some other people pronunciation so please i apologize if i'm not getting this pronunciation right i've looked everywhere i looked five different sources and got five different pronunciations so mount ani a n i s a knee in french is a place that she wanted a church built in her honor this is the blessed mother now the hill on it was named pui so on top of it was a large flat rock and i'm going to show you a picture in a minute and on this large flat rock this whole pillar looking like our lady loves pillars was made of lava ancient hill and so villa went up with her servant who actually carried her because she was sick to the top of this mountain and laid her on the rock she fell asleep and when she awoke she was completely cured now it goes deeper villa had dreamed that a heavenly woman was standing near her surrounded by angels now when she asked who the lady was they all told her singing in unison mother of god now it seems that this is factual because on july 11th in the year 250 the oldest sanctuary in the world dedicated to mary was built the local bishop also at the same time vila had her dream the local bishop received a message and a dream from mary to build a church on the hill now the story goes that when the bishop climbed the hill guess what he found on the ground something i'm going to tell you about in our third apparition snow in the middle of july so the next two apparitions have to do with snow and so the ground was covered with snow in july so picture this they go up there they're looking at the snow here comes a deer and a deer looks at them turns around and starts tracing a pattern in the snow so these people are looking at this deer now vila had the dream she's up there all these towns people come up there this is on top of a mountain that's shaped like this with a flat top and all sudden they're looking at the snow it snows in july they all go up there to look at it there's a deer walking in this pattern to build this shrine and now all of a sudden in the middle of this they call it the throne of mary the news spread everywhere people started coming and all of a sudden here comes the bishop leading a procession because he had a dream so they're all coming up to the top of the hill so anyway the news spread everywhere and the landmark which was called the pew or the pui became so well known that they named the town after the mountain pui so this thing became a very serious location for the church and guess who started coming there by the 6th century you ever hear of charlemagne he came there many french kings made pilgrimages there many miracles it's considered one of the most famous and beautiful pilgrimage shrines in the world that you've never heard of and so today it's a church known as the cathedral of our lady of the annunciation and i want to show you i passed over the picture let's have brother mark show the picture um of that rock if you have your cell phones with you or you're at home you see the very middle top of the picture the highest point that's the statue now look down to your left on that mountain that's shaped like a pillar is the church they built this church on the top of a mountain shaped like a cigar and that's the church right on the top of it and that whole area is pui again one of the most incredible places we've never heard of and the second apparition of mary accepted by the church going all the way back to 70 a.d with the roots of peter when he sent people over there into gaul this is amazing and so the church now is our lady of the annunciation it's been a place of pilgrimage since charlemagne of the 6th century both listen to this the crusaders used to go there on their way to the holy land and today this is fascinating something else i didn't know you ever hear of the pilgrimage in europe called the way they made a movie about it st james to compostela or the camino el camino i wonder if that's what they named the car after in the 70s el camino right the camino de santiago basically this is a pilgrimage it's called the way of saint james and it ends at saint james de compostela this big church you may have seen with the giant thurible where they they swing it and has incense coming out of it will that pilgrimage across europe takes weeks months you know where it begins one of the main beginning points is pui so if you're gonna do the way as for pui because that's a beautiful place to begin it so in 1051 pope leo the ninth wrote in this sanctuary on mount ani more than anywhere the blessed virgin mary has received veneration honor and the love of a great many believers in france amazing so in 1254 one of my favorite saints saint louis ix gave the cathedral an image of the blessed mother clothed in gold and according to tradition during the crusades st louis was captured by the moors in africa the muslims and instead of killing him they actually gave him as a sign of esteem they gave him a wood figure of our lady holding the child that was venerated by the muslims the muslims venerated this picture of mary and so this legend i mean there's another legend that says even jeremiah the prophet carved it but anyway since then the site has been known as the home of the black virgin the black virgin la puy in valley and let's take a look at this picture here is our next slide our lady of pui and believe it or not this image of the black madonna not the same one as our lady chester hova different but the black madonna of pui today is there you can see it it's almost the exact replica of the ancient one that burned in the fire that one you know what happened to the uh original image there was one burn in the fire but you know what happened and this is so sad because to me i i just can't believe how many times mankind has been so stupid the image and i made a mistake i said it was burning a fire my mistake i was wrong the original image was dragged out not down sound like our cancer culture today it went through a mock trial during the french revolution and they guillotined the statue of mary they chopped her head off just like marie antoinette then they burned her at the stake is that not insane the present statue the one i just showed is made of black marble and has mary seated on a stool holding jesus the baby jesus and so we pray that this type of stuff stops stops so lapui claims to be the most ancient shrine of our lady in the world very important last page we're almost done and with the exception of some italian sanctuaries no shrine has received so many visits from the popes as this one you know 18 kings of france have been there seven popes have been there they all come to see her you know who also has been there saint dominic saint anthony of padua st hugh many more they used to have as many in 1502 they had confessors there they had confessors there for the pilgrims you know how many confessors they had at this shrine what would you think would be a big number of confessors 100 300 that'd be a lot of confessors they had 3 000 confessors and it wasn't enough can you imagine 3 000 confessors so the revolution ruined all this the french revolution we call it enlightenment it's anything else it's darkness what they call the dark ages was really enlightenment when we had thomas aquinas and st bonaventure they call that the dark ages and what we call the enlightenment of the french revolution that's true darkness you know what they did three thousand confessors in the fifteen hundreds there at pui then what happens they ruined it all the french revolution came and they took the statue of mary and put her in a manure car and then they burned her at the stake unreal so none of the more recent events here in pui has taken away from lourdes or la salette has not taken away from them it's added to him in fact the blessed virgin mary chose this part of france to be venerated as our lady of france and so as with others we have great marian shrine built over the top of that hill that used to be a pagan worship site people say oh you catholics are pagan no mary trumps the pagans we build a shrine to marry over the site where the pagans used to worship it doesn't mean we become pagan it means we're trumping over what used to be pagan territory and now bringing god to it this is a sign of the triumph of our lady and jesus over the pagan gods of the world and so here we have another french marian site associated not just lords but we and so i'm going to skip this video i'm running out of time so brother mark can skip this next video i i had a video on pui but i'm gonna have to skip it was a little bit longer let's finish now with the last one one of my favorites our lady of the snows and i used to love her when i was a kid in michigan when we got snow days because my priest taught us that our lady of the snows was a great devotion i had no idea what happened all i knew was mary bring snow so the snow would close the schools so here we have a picture of our lady of the snows and i want to finish with this because it's the most important church in all of rome dedicated to our lady of all the churches in rome dedicated to our lady the basilica of saint mary major is the most important now why don't they just call it the basilica of saint mary why we call it saint mary major because there's many saint mary's saint mary major is our lady just like we have james the lesser and james the greater james the major there's many little saint mary's but there's only one mary major that's our lady so in rome if you ever heard of the basilica saint mary major this is dedicated to our lady the most important it was erected in the year 352 during the reign of pope liberius now according to the legend a member of the aristocratic family that was there in rome named john and his wife were childless so they prayed to the blessed mother for a child sound familiar and they had a dream which our lady appeared to them just like our lady of pui she requested that they build a church just like our lady of pui just like our lady of the pillar so they see her she requests they build a church in her honor up on the esquiline hill and the sign to be given of its exact location would be in the snow so during a hot summer evening in august it began to snow but only over the spot where the basilica would be built it snowed tracing the form of the basilica on the hill our lady then appeared to pope liberius in a dream sound just like the ones we described identical and he believed all of it and so the people gathered to see the unusual snow same as what we just described in the other apparitions john and his wife rushed to the site and there was pope liberius who arrived in a procession just like the others so realizing that the snow marked the exact location of the church the people then staked it off the area and the basilica was completed within two years by the pope now unlike the other one i can't find any story about the deer running through it but that's okay the people marked it off so then at the council of ephesus where we define mary as the theotokos you ever hear that theotokos mary was called the theotokos which means god bear pope sixtus the third rebuilt the basilica now from the seventh century onward we call it saint mary the great or saint mary major and the basilica is also often called our lady of the snows you know there's a shrine in illinois is it you guys can correct me it's called our lady of the snows i think it's illinois so let's take a look at the picture of this among the great treasures is a painting of the madonna child known as the salus popoli romani which means she's the patroness of the people of rome that's her her photograph or the painting that was attributed to saint luke beautiful they believe that he painted it on the wood of the table of the last supper amazing so the image had been brought back from the holy land by saint helena who is she the mother of constantine who found the true cross and throughout the centuries there's been a special devotion to this figure of our lady so with the two minutes i got left i want to say that during the pontificate of pope saint gregory the great back in the fifth five hundred sixth century guess what happened a plague attacked the people of rome some like us today with kovid the pope carried the image through rome in a procession and asked for mary to be the protectus protectress of the people at an end and it did it ended this is why i feel motivated to maybe write the holy father that we need to take an image of our lady and process it through every diocese in the united states in the world to end this this is what they did and it ended the plague so then another time it happened pope gregory the 16th now we're talking in the 1800s 1837. same thing a plague hit and he carried the image in procession throughout rome to ask our lady for an end of the epidemic of cholera and guess what happened it completely ended do we not see the answer here the answer to what we are struggling with now with this pandemic precess the image of our lady please holy father ask for that have our bishops do it in every diocese of the world we would see the end if you believe in history if you believe in your faith you can believe in what has happened in the past it should happen again and so go to saint mary major you know what else is there the manger of the stable in bethlehem where jesus was born in is venerated under the high altar of the basilica if you ever make it there and the dedication of the basilica of saint mary major is celebrated every year on august 5th because on august 4th is when this all began and snow in the middle of august so on that day there's a beautiful custom if you're ever in rome on august the 5th you got to get to st mary major because they go into this beautiful church and let's take a look at our next picture at the conclusion of mass look very closely at the picture look right at the center on your screen if you have a screen you can blow it up at the end of mass a shower of white rose petals always falls from the dome of the chapel that's incredible a beautiful sight so let's finish this talk with a short video of only one minute that tells you about sexually 40 seconds it tells you about saint mary major our lady of the snows each year on august 5th romans celebrate the feast day of their beloved patroness her iconic figure is found inside the basilica of saint mary major according to tradition back in the 4th century our lady appeared before a wealthy couple and before pope liberius he asked them to build a basilica in her honor and the next day on august 5th they discovered where to build it when it snowed on the esquiline hill and as the story goes it was saint luke who painted the byzantine icon representing the patroness of the roman people on a wooden slab used during the last supper [Music] okay everybody so we're wrapping up now brother mark's gonna shut down this talk on the live stream but he's gonna ramp back up with the new live stream we invite you all to log in because we're gonna walk you through in about five minutes all of the marian devotional aspects of the first saturdays that mary asked for but you know what before i go i'm going to say a couple quick things join us next first saturday we're going to continue with more marion apparitions more great stories and i want to invite you to get let's show mark on our brother mark on our next slide i've never seen this before look on your screen a good friend of our community anna nozo who's a professional international recording artist actually recorded a cd of marian apparitions i've never seen this she's got a beautiful voice you can get this so we picked it up she's a good friend of our community she's got a beautiful voice and you can get it on shopmercy.org saturday so that you'll get it and you can go right there or call us at 1-800-462-7426 marian apparition songs and hymns by anna you can get it so last couple slides you can also get my book on shopmercy.org at the same phone number that book is understanding divine mercy and finally would love you if you join us as a marian helper if you're not a mirroring helper yet please join us at micprayers.org and join up it takes less than 10 seconds doesn't cost anything but you can share in some great graces and then you know what finally i hope you're keeping up i've invited you for the last few weeks to do a daily act of mercy do a daily act of mercy in word deed or prayer and we can change the world and every friday an act of penance and we can change the world so if you'd like a free pamphlet on how to get that look at our final and last slide visit marion.org live mercy i'll send it to you for free i won't even charge your shipping i'll pay the shipping and all you got to do is call and we'll send it out to you but it shows you how to live divine mercy and we have a new show coming on ewtn starting next wednesday called living divine mercy so god bless all of you do not forget to ask your mother as jesus gave us to uh gave her to us on the cross take her into your home and when jesus his last words on the cross were to take mary into our home we better listen what's the home your heart and so with that we hope you'll stay with us in five minutes as i keep saying we'll join you as we do the first saturday devotions if you've been doing it with us god bless you if you haven't that's okay start today five consecutive saturdays of this devotion will change the world how do we know that that's what mary told us at fatima god bless you brother mark will shut down now and we'll see you on the next live stream in about five minutes god bless you

Channel: Divine Mercy

Views: 68,346

Rating: 4.9428039 out of 5

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, Faustina, Conversion, Prayer, Saints, Scripture, Our Lady, Pillar, Puy, Snows, Marian Apparition, Saint James, St. James, Mother of God, St. Mary Major, Basilica St. Mary Major

Id: keZOJVTUzdo

Length: 44min 15sec (2655 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 04 2021