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Father Seán Connolly pictured above at the Knock Shrine while on a Pilgrimage with 206 Tours. |
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For the past several years, Father Seán Connolly has been a Spiritual Director on a number of 206 Tours Pilgrimages,
guiding pilgrims to experience their faith in new ways in Catholic sites like the
Holy Land, Fatima, Spain, Lourdes, Mexico, and Ireland.
Fr. Connolly is the currently the Parochial Vicar at Immaculate Conception and Assumption of Our Lady Parish in Tuckahoe, New York. He recently authored
an essay which was just featured on Catholic World Report’s, “The Dispatch”, about
the 1879 apparitions in Knock, Ireland.
As the World Meeting of Families begins
this week in Ireland, we’re excited to share his inspiring message and insights
with you below.
The Unspoken Message of Heaven at Knock
Published August 21, 2018 originally
featured on Catholic World Report “The Dispatch”, seen here.
Written by Father Seán Connolly
139 year ago this very day, an unspoken message
from heaven came to our world at the rural wayside village of Knock, Ireland.
The little hamlet was a forgotten corner of the earth in 1879. It consisted of
a dozen houses or so, along with the little parish church, the rectory, a
school-house, a post office and a few small shops. The village and the social
condition of its people at the time, was in many respects like that of the
little village of Nazareth in the days of our Lord Jesus. It was poor, peaceful
and unknown. Both were under the oppression of a foreign occupier—for Nazareth
two thousand years ago it was the Romans, and for Knock a century and a half
ago it was the English. The Penal Laws were imposed upon the Irish in attempt
to stamp out their Catholic faith; those laws were as degrading as they were
oppressive.
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Painting at the Knock Shrine captured by Fr. Connolly |
Just as they began to be relaxed though not
repealed, more misery struck the people of western Ireland. The Great Famine
which was proximately caused by potato blight but worsened on account of the
repression imposed by the occupying government, resulted in the deaths of one
million while another million were to emigrate, reducing the island’s
population dramatically. The Great Famine took place between 1845 and 1849, but
its last waves continued up until the time of the astonishing event that took
place in Knock. Further potato blight was always the great fear. And in that
year of 1879, that fear was realized when the crop was found to be a complete
failure. The only prospect in the time ahead was further hunger and misery. It
was in the midst of this struggle and sorrow that the miraculous message
appeared before the villagers of Knock in front of the gable wall of their
parish church.
The whole day
of August 21, 1879 was marked by a dismal downpour of rain from dawn until
dusk. The dreariness was an apt metaphor for a nation plagued by poverty,
hunger and oppression. At about 7:30 in the evening, a young woman of the
village named Mary Byrne was accompanying Mary McLoughlin, the priest’s
housekeeper, to her home. As they came in sight of the gable wall of the little
parish church, Mary Byrne remarked to the priest’s housekeeper, “O, look at the
statues. Why didn’t you tell me the priest had got new statues for the chapel?”
But Mary McLoughlin said she’d heard nothing about them. On coming nearer,
however, Mary Byrne said: “But they’re not statues, they’re moving. It’s the
Blessed Virgin!” She ran home to tell her widowed mother as well as her
brothers and sister and soon others had gathered.
There were fifteen primary
witnesses who gave documented testimony of what they saw, but as many as 25 to
30 were reported to have seen the vision. They ranged in age from five to 74.
Together in the pouring rain they beheld the beautiful spectacle. The Blessed
Virgin Mary was in the center of the apparition. She was wearing a large
brilliant gold crown and was clothed in white garments. Her hands were raised
in prayer and her eyes gazed toward heaven. To her right was her spouse, St.
Joseph, whose head was inclined toward her. To her left was St. John the
Evangelist, who was attired as a bishop wearing a miter and was holding a book,
perhaps the Gospel he wrote, in his left hand. His right hand was raised as if
he was preaching. To the left of St. John was an altar on which stood a cross
and a lamb surrounded by angels.
The eldest of the visionaries, the
74-year-old Bridget Trench, in an act of natural and humble piety, approached
the vision to kiss the Virgin’s feet. She was, however, unable to do so. She
could not touch what she saw with her eyes and only passed through the image to
feel the gable wall of the church in her attempt. The vision lasted for a full
two hours. Though it was raining, the ground beneath the vision was dry. A
light emanating from the heavenly figures was witnessed by a farmer about half
a mile away from the scene.
The enigma of the apparition at
Knock was its silence. We can only speculate as to why this is. Surely the
reason goes deeper than the fact that at least two of the visionaries did not
speak the same language. The oldest among them, Bridget Trench, knew only Irish
while the youngest, John Curry, knew only English. No message was imparted to
the visionaries as there was by our Lady at Lourdes or Fatima. In those two
famous apparitions the Mother of God requested more acts of penance, but such
was not the case at Knock. The Irish people had suffered and done penance
enough; no suffering or pain should ever be wasted. Those devout Catholic souls
knew well that they must in prayer and place themselves in union with Christ’s
own suffering. And this offering was answered by the celestial vision at Knock,
whose unspoken message was one of love and solidarity with the perseveringly
faithful Irish in their time of suffering and sorrow.
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Picture of the Altar at the Knock Shrine taken by Father Connolly |
Reports of “strange occurrences in
a small Irish village” were featured almost immediately in the press, notably
by The Times of
London. Many miracles were reported, which were methodically recorded in the
diary of the parish priest. For example, ten days after the apparition a mother
brought her little girl to the gable wall of the church. The young Delia
Gordon, had always been deaf in her left ear; her mother placed a small amount
of cement or grout from the gable wall into her ear and said a prayer for
healing. A little later during Mass, Delia felt an excruciating pain in her ear
follow by immediate relief. Her ear had been healed and hearing restored. The
apparition wall soon being torn apart by pilgrims chipping out the cement,
mortar, and stones to have as relics and to use for prayer.
Two inquiries
were held to study the reported apparition and to determine its authenticity.
Unlike at Lourdes, no medical commission was ever established at Knock to
verify whether claimed cures are unexplainable according to the medical
sciences. The first commission of inquiry was established by the Archbishop of
Tuam in October of 1879. Fifteen of the witnesses were formerly deposed and the
commission’s members deemed their accounts to be trustworthy. In 1936, a second
commission of inquiry was established to study the matter further, which relied
upon interviews with the last of the surviving witnesses who all confirmed
their prior testimony. Even John Curry, who was only four when he saw the
vision and had since emigrated to America, was called (under threat of
ecclesiastical penalty if he failed to show) to the chancery of the Archdiocese
of New York to testify.
In this same commission, the aged
Mary Byrne poignantly stated: “I am clear about everything I have said and I
make this statement knowing I am going before my God.” She died only six weeks
later. This second commission, like the first, deemed the testimonies given to
be trustworthy.
It is now a commonly accepted pious
belief that heaven favored the parish of Knock in particular because of the
holiness of its parish priest Archdeacon Bartholomew Cavanagh. He was known for
his deep devotion to the Blessed Virgin, the Holy Souls in Purgatory, his
penances (he wore a hair shirt), and for living very simply. He was told about
the vision before the gable wall of his church but chose not to join his
parishioners outside. This has been attributed either to a miscommunication or
his disbelief. He later said that not witnessing the apparition “has been to me
a cause of the deepest mortification. But I console myself with the reflection
that it was the will of God that the Apparition should be shown to the people,
not the priest.” Yet it is believed in Knock today that the Archdeacon was
frequently favored with visits of our Lady in his own little cottage, and so
knew well what was occurring but chose to leave the heavenly vision to be for
the sole benefit of his flock. Indeed, many other miraculous manifestations
surrounding him were reported but he always requested those who observed them
to speak of them to no one.
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Statues outside the Knock Shrine, photo credit Father Connolly. |
Today there is a large shrine built
in honor of the apparition at Knock in County Mayo, Ireland. Over one and a
half million people make a pilgrimage there each year. I was fortunate to be
one of them this past month, a visit which inspired me to write this essay so
more may come to know the unspoken message of heaven given at this holy place.
In just a few days, the Pope
himself will go to Knock as a pilgrim while on his apostolic visit to Ireland.
It will be a daunting trip. The Church in Ireland is devastated. Christopher
Altieri described the current situation well in a recent essay for The
Catholic Herald:
"The once proudly, fiercely Catholic people of Ireland are
reeling and bitterly angry over the years of systematic abuse committed by
priests and religious, and the coverup of that abuse by Church leaders. They’ve
stopped going to Mass. They voted to amend their constitution to allow same-sex
marriage in 2015 – even while marriage itself declines… Just this year, the
Irish people voted to remove a constitutional protection on children in the
womb. It would be hard – but fair – to say that the Irish people are in rebellion
against the Faith – though it is not hard to understand the roots of that
rebellion."
There are no words the Holy Father
can utter to make up for the failures of the Church or to quickly reverse the
tide of secularization. But like the heavenly vision given in Knock, his
presence among the hurting Irish Church can be one of union and solidarity in a
time of trial. This unspoken message will, I think, be the most important one.
And through the intercession of Our Lady of Knock the Queen of Ireland, may it
at least begin the process of healing and the Irish people’s return to their
greatest legacy—the Catholic faith.
To visit Ireland and the Knock Shrine on a Pilgrimage, check out Tour 202 here.