Rev. Gise J. VanBaren
Recent news reports speak of a reflection said to be of the Virgin Mary on the windows of the Seminole Finance Corp. in Clearwater, Fl. The account brought to mind similar reports made in the past.
I recall being in a campground, years ago, tenting next to a Roman Catholic family. The man joined us at our campfire and promptly began telling of his own encounter with the Virgin Mary. He claimed to have been at a site where the Virgin Mary had repeatedly appeared. While he was there, it had happened. The Virgin Mary came and spoke to certain individuals who were sponsors of this, event. How did he know that the Virgin Mary had in fact appeared? He did not see her – but there was the smell of roses. And the rosaries of those present had turned into gold. Sadly, the man had forgotten his own rosary. It lay in his dresser drawer. But when he returned home, lo, the rosary also had changed into gold!
The old tales are still being repeated – and with increasing frequency. The Denver Post, December 21, 1996, records details of one of the latest incidents:
Some say that when the Virgin Mary comes down, they smell roses. Some say they see the sun wheeling in the sky. When she appears, some see her blue robe shimmer.
Some say she turns the chains of their rosaries to gold.
When the Blessed Virgin comes to Donna Pendleton, the young mother from this rural part of Maryland. says, Mary just slips quietly into her heart.
Nothing “like a lightning bolt,” says Pendleton, whose face is radiant as she stands on the dark sidewalk outside St. Joseph’s Church.
Her visit feels like “a tingle,” says Pendleton, who wears her little boy’s crystal rosary around her neck, inside her ski jacket. Then “everything opens up and becomes clearer.”
Snow may or may not come this night to Emmitsburg, a town with one street light, surrounded by farms. Pendleton thinks not.
But the Virgin Mary will be here, because this is a Thursday and she comes every Thursday night, believers say. Pendleton is one of the many who regularly flock to this gray stucco church to hear her weekly message and feel her mysterious presence.
With incense and candles burning, they gather in the sanctuary and murmur “Hail Mary” after “Hail Mary,” the beads of their rosaries slipping through their fingers as they wait.
In these times of sin and confusion, in these days of approaching millennium, believers say the Mother of God is visiting Earth with increasing regularity.
“Oh yeah,” says David Zappardino, a musician and a regular here at St. Joseph’s Church, “… she is part of the plan.”
… The Bible contains sparse references to the mother of Jesus, but that has not stopped scholars from delving the Scriptures for clues to her character. And it has not stopped generations of devotees from shaping her to their disparate needs.
She’s been portrayed as both virgin and mother, saint and fertility goddess. She’s ridden to battle with the Crusaders and rallied the followers of labor organizer Cesar Chavez. She is Notre Dame, lady of all the cathedrals of France, and La Morenita, the dark little Virgin of Guadalupe, midwife of peasant mothers throughout Latin America.
She is the patroness of legions of unchurched spiritual searchers and she also receives the daily devotions of Pope John Paul II. The pope says that in 1981, Mary saved him from an assassin’s bullet, noting the attempt on his life came on the anniversary of her 1917 appearance to three children in Fatima, Portugal …
What is striking is not so much the increasing number of “appearances” of the Virgin Mary as this millennium comes to its close, but the increasing number of people who believe such things. Many see the “image” of Mary on windows of buildings; they “smell the roses” when Mary shows herself; individuals claim that Mary speaks to them and reveals secrets of future events.
This surely is another of the signs of the end, when people are ready to believe that which is so very contrary to Scripture. The Post itself remarks upon the fact that “the Bible contains sparse references to the mother of Jesus …” Those who know Scripture ought to recall the emphasis of the apostle Paul, who insisted that he “determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified” (I Cor. 2:2). No mention of “roses” or “golden rosaries” or secret messages from the blessed Virgin. Scripture emphasizes not Mary but Christ. It has been the design of the devil to turn people from the cross to some alternative. But even the Virgin Mary is no alternative to the cross. There is but one way to God and that is through His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
Originally published in the Standard Bearer, volume 73, issue 10, 15 February, 1997.
