Latest / The Catholic Current / Marian Apparitions–Yes or No? (Steve Ray) 10/8/26

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Marian Apparitions–Yes or No? (Steve Ray) 10/8/26 · The Catholic Current

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This is The Catholic Current with Father Robert
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Matague. I will say this, it sounds like an enormous cataclysm,
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and I suppose in one sense it is, but in another sense, being converted is
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not that bad. It's kind of fun, as a matter of fact. I'll give testimony
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to that. Really, the nature of our faith is that all of us
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have to be converted every day. Every morning you get up
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and you become a convert again. Well, you know, the great Renaissance Saint Philip Neri,
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he started every morning with, Lord, watch out for Philip, he may betray you today.
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Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTeague of the Society
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of Jesus, your daily host for The Catholic Current, where we bring Christ to the
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world and the world to Christ. You're listening to us from the Station of the
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Cross Studios, your local radio station, the iCatholic Radio mobile app,
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where we proclaim the fullness of truth with clarity and charity. As always,
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let's start with prayer. In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.
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Almighty God, through the intercession of Saint Ignatius Loyola, we ask that you pour forth
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your Holy Spirit upon us, a spirit of discernment that might hear your voice
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and obey your command. In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.
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Hey friends, you know, I was traveling last week and I was having dinner with
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some friends and the issue of Marian apparitions came
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up and it was yes or no. Do you have to? What does
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that mean? And I know that Protestants have had a
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long-term misunderstanding, shall we say, regarding Our Lady,
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and there is some confusion among Catholics as well.
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And in God's providence, and I'd like to think through Our Lady's intercession,
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we have a returning guest who is very knowledgeable,
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not only of Marian apparitions and Marian sites. He also really
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believes and he prays as well. He's a convert and he's also an expert
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Holy Land tour guide and a best-selling author. Steve Ray, welcome back to The Catholic
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Current. Well, thank you very much, Father McTague. I'm happy to be here.
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I love talking about all these things with an intelligent interviewer.
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Oh, you're very kind. Well, I do my best. Well,
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Steve, you know, when you were Protestant, you were
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really Protestant, and most Protestants, they just don't know
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what to do with Our Lady other than insist that she was a sinner.
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What was your attitude towards Our Lady? In what way was she
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a stumbling block or a help to you coming into the Church?
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Well, for a lot of people, Mary's a stumbling block because when
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we start with Bible alone, let's face it, there's not in
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the Bible alone about Mary. And prayers
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are addressed to God through Christ by the Holy Spirit.
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And Mary is referred to as the mother of
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Jesus, but it talks about the brothers of our Lord.
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And so Catholics say, you know, we always thought the Catholics
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added all this Mary stuff, you know, they added all
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this stuff to it. But the reality is
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that when you take a look at the whole Bible
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and the whole economy of salvation, there's a whole
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lot about Mary in there. And just What would be the relationship
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of a woman to her son who happens to be the Son
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of God, God in the flesh? What other woman has
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a relationship with the Trinity that Mary has? None of them
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do. Mary is the chosen daughter of the Father, the chosen mother of
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the Son, and the spouse of the Holy Spirit. So, we had— I have to—
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in my conversion process, it was easier for my wife to
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come to grips with Mary. But, once I understood the authority
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of the Church, then Mary and all the other things fell into place. Okay,
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all right, so, you know, I, I'm gonna get up on, on my soapbox for
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a moment. I nearly had a stroke a few years ago. I was visiting with
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my family and it was around Christmas time, and during Mass
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they started singing Mary Did You Know, and I ended up publishing a controversial
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article called The Song That Canceled Christmas. Mary, did you
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know that the baby you delivered would soon deliver you? Well, that means
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there's no Immaculate Conception, and if there's no Immaculate
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Conception, there can't be an incarnation because human flesh is
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in rebellion against its Creator, you can't have the
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Divine Son take on rebellious flesh,
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can you? Can you talk a little bit about the necessity of the Immaculate Conception
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as the precursor to the Incarnation? Yes, I think Thomas Aquinas
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said it wasn't an absolute necessity, but it was a grace
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given to her because of the great calling and
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project that she was to do. And to me, it comes
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right out when the angel first greets Mary. We pray the Rosary,
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Hail Mary, full of grace, but it doesn't say Mary. There. We've added
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that to the prayer. It says, hael kahare tomine. That's a
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very— it's an intense Greek word, very detailed,
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and it means one who has— it's in the passive sense— one
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who's had something done to them. They didn't do it, it's done to them.
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And it has a past and a present component. One who has
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been made full of grace in the past and who remains in that
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state today. What is the grace of God? It's the life of God himself.
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She's full of that life, which means there could be nothing else in there like
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sin to contaminated. So the very name, Hail, Kahare Tomenae,
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already lays the whole foundation for the Immaculate Conception right there.
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And John Paul II said that that is Mary's name in the
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eyes of God. He looks down, he doesn't see Mary, he says,
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Kahare Tomenae, the one that I made full of grace.
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Oh, see, that's, that's really powerful. And, and I think that sort of
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thing needs to, to be better well known. I mean, not to mention, we,
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we have such a rich tradition of Marian
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hymnody. We don't need to go to a secular, non-Catholic source
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in order to sing about Our Lady. So now, you know,
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you say you're Catholic, and what has the
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role of Our Lady been in your life since you came to the faith?
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Well, I now I understand her with all of the clarity of
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Catholic teaching and the Catechism. There's no better explanation,
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and the beauty of the prose there and the biblical foundation
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of it is just glorious to read that. I made a movie on
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Mary. We filmed it in all the countries that she appeared in. Even I did
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it in Greece on the island of Patmos where John said, I looked and I
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saw the woman clothed with the sun. And I even went out to the
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island of Patmos to film that part.
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And in there I said that as a Protestant, I rejected
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all of these things about Mary. She was simply the mother of Jesus,
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and the angel could have chosen any girl in Nazareth.
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In fact, we had a guide one time, a Jewish guide,
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the first time I went to Israel with a group, and I never used him
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But, he said the angel came to the girls in Nazareth and they all said,
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no, not really, not really. And then, he came to Mary, she said, okay,
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I guess I'll do it. That's how he described the meeting
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with Mary. So, I mean, this would be a very Protestant view
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too that Mary was just a conduit to bring
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God's Son into the world. She herself was insignificant,
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she was just a pipeline. But, to then become
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Catholic and to understand and realize that the Old Testament,
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I learned more about Mary from the Old Testament than I did from the New
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Testament because of the typology. She's the Ark of the Covenant. She is the
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burning bush. She's the daughter of Eve. She's the
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first Eve, a second Eve. All of these things in the Old Testament, all of
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a sudden they just bring the whole Marian idea to Technicolor once you
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understand the Bible in its fuller context.
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And so now we come to apparitions. You know, we— how
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would I have accepted apparitions or viewed apparitions Mary
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appearing to children in Fatima. And by the way, my wife and
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I in the last 2 months have just come back from Our Lady of Knock,
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Our Lady of Lourdes, Our Lady of Fatima, and taking groups to
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all those places and giving talks about them while
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we're there. Now, how would I— how did I come to accept that?
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When I was a Protestant, I would have said, those silly Catholics,
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they make up all of these stories. Why do they make up these
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stories? My fundamentalist past, we would have said that
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they did it, that these are tricks of the devil to
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keep the Catholics enslaved to the system of
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Rome. In other words, in 2 Corinthians 11:14,
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it says even Satan disguises himself as an angel of
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light to deceive, right? Well, we would have said this is exactly an example of
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that, that Satan is giving these visions up to people of Mary and
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these other things, adding to the Bible, adding to what you need for salvation,
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and he's doing it to trick and to keep them captive to Rome.
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Oh, oh, that, that sounds really dark and ugly, Steve.
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It is dark and ugly. It's very nefarious. Uh,
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gosh, well, you know, I, I mean, I was, I was never Protestant,
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so I was never exposed to that. I understand why some Protestants have, uh,
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have, have a hurdle, uh, that way.
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Uh, I'm conscious of the fact that I, I think there are, there are people
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who, who just see Our Lady as kind of, you know, pious wallpaper
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Or she's just kind of a pious mascot and you
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have your icon, you have your picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe bumper sticker.
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We got about just 2 minutes left in this segment. Can you say a little
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something about if you basically, if you're not into Our Lady, you're not doing Catholic
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right? Is that fair? That's very fair. And see, I like to go even
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a step further than the devotional aspect and the kind
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of syrupy sentimentalism that often comes into it.
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I've been to Israel over 200 times, so what
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I like to do is walk on in the paths of Nazareth and imagine what
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it was like for Mary to be there before there were toilets and the
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running water and everything else that we view today in a city that
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lived in caves. And they didn't— she had to walk 15 minutes every
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day to get the water and bring it back to the cave for her family.
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And she didn't wear blue because back in those days, blue and
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purple and red were only for royalty. They were very
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expensive. They didn't have dyes. She wore what would be the color of burlap,
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and she was a hard girl. So I, I like to go back
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and think of her that way, the way she really was. That's, that's Mary
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to me. Now, when we— another song I don't like,
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Father, is this one that says Gentle Woman.
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This, this whole syrupy song. I hate that song.
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And I say, Gentle Woman? Are you kidding? That song should say
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Tough Jewish Mother. She was a tough Jewish
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mother. I mean, I could go through the passages of scripture
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and show you that she's no gentle woman.
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Like, of course, Mary is gentle with people.
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There's a gentleness to her. Like, all of the idea that you can
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blow her over like a feather is not consistent with Scripture,
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and it's not consistent with tradition. Friends, we come back and continue our
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conversation with Steve Ray about Our Lady. We're going to get into the question
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of apparitions and what's the difference between public revelation
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and private revelation, and what is it that you have to believe.
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After the broadcast today, go to thestationofthecross.com, get our resources,
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Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTeague of the Society of Jesus,
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you help fund programs that defend our Catholic faith. We're talking
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about Our Lady and Marian apparitions. My returning guest today is Steve Ray.
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Steve, Last Sunday I was having dinner with, with some friends. We're talking
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about apparitions of Our Lady and the distinction
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between public revelation, private revelation, what makes claims
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on our conscience. I mean, some things that we say about Our Lady are dogmatically
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true, like the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption, etc.,
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and some things are not. They're called private revelation.
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Help us, help us sort that out, please. Yeah, that applies not
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just to Mary, but all aspects of our Catholic life.
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The Church teaches that there's public revelation that
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is incumbent upon all of us to believe.
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We are required to believe it for our salvation.
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There is also something, like you mentioned, called private revelation,
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which is not necessary to believe
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or hold to and is not required for our salvation. So the difference is this:
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at the death of the last apostle, the public revelation ended.
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The public revelation is the deposit of faith. God,
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God sent his Son. His Son called 12 men.
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He gave them what the church calls the deposit of faith. And in
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my movie, I make— I talk about how I even rented an armored vehicle
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and I had a big bag of coins. So I carried those
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coins and I had right on there deposit of faith. And I took them
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out of the armored truck into the bank and I put them in the vault
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and I slammed the door shut. But this is what the apostles gave the church.
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They gave us a treasure, the deposit of faith.
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It's— it was revealed in scripture and in what they
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taught, how they practiced, in the liturgy they celebrated.
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That was the public revelation, the deposit of faith.
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At the death of the last apostles, that ceased.
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Probably John in the '90s when he died,
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that would have stopped. So there's no addition to the public revelation.
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So when the Mormons and the Muslims and others come along and say we have
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an addition now which is going to perfect what was given before, we know
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immediately that that is a heresy and it's wrong because they're trying to say that
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there is a new addition to the deposit of faith.
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Private revelation are those things afterwards,
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like if there's a vision of Jesus appearing or
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a vision of Mary appearing, that's not part of the original deposit
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of faith, nor does it say that it's going to be added to it or
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perfected. The public
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deposit of faith is already perfect. It's what God wants us to have for our
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salvation. Things that come along later, like if I write a good
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book or you write a good book, we can't add that to the public
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revelation because Scripture's already been written and the sacred tradition has
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already been set. Right. And public revelation binds
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our conscience and requires of us the religious assent
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of intellect and will. What's the status
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of private revelation then? I like this. The Catechism
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says that there is— since the public
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revelation will never pass away and no new public revelation
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is to be expected before the glorious return of Jesus Christ.
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Right. So, there could be a lot of different manifestations of private
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revelation. I can have a— God can reveal something
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to me in my personal life. That doesn't mean I can impose it on you.
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God may say to me, Steve, you know, this and that in your life
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and in your family, and I want you to do this. Well, then I say,
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hey, Father McTague, Jesus just told me this, so it applies to you
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too. No, these things that are beyond the
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public revelation are not incumbent upon anyone for
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salvation. They can be— take the rosary, for example. That's not part
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of public revelation. So, you can take or leave the rosary. I know that sounds
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terrible to Catholics, like Steve's a heretic. No, it's part of the public—
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that came along around the 1200s. It's a great devotion,
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but it's not required for salvation, nor is anyone required to pray
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it. So this is the big difference. Apparitions fall in that
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category. Mary appears in a certain time
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and place in a historical situation to certain people,
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like the children in Fatima or Bernadette in Lourdes,
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and gives a message. And that message then is
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applied to the Church, but it's not incumbent on anybody to believe.
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That friend of yours who you had dinner with, if he says, I don't accept
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the apparitions, that's fine. The Church doesn't require him to.
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Right. I think, yeah, we do have to be clear about that, about what the
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Church requires and what the Church respects. There's also some
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people have kind of a caricature that if absolutely anybody claims to
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have had a vision, then suddenly we set up a tourist office and
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we put the claim on the calendar. On the other hand,
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someone said, you know, the 2 worst things that can happen in the life of
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a bishop is a papal visit
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visit and also the claim of a Marian apparition. The Church is actually very,
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very cautious and skeptical when it comes to
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claims of Our Lady's apparitions. Can you talk about that, please?
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Yeah, I think there probably have been hundreds, if not
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thousands, of claimed apparitions. I mean, people see
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the vision of Mary in a Ritz cracker, you know, these. And so you have—
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you were saying about the bishop, the worst thing that happened is having the Pope
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come to make a visit to your diocese because it just changes everything.
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I happened to be in Israel one time when Pope Benedict came,
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and we— it changed everything. We had to move our hotels,
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we had to move our itinerary. It was, it was, it was not a fun
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thing. Or to have an apparition or a Eucharistic miracle
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is probably equally a tough thing, right? Because then,
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then you have the whole question, is this authentic? Now,
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we all know it's not incumbent upon everyone to believe, but is it authentic?
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Is it a real vision of Mary? Is it a real apparition?
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Did she really appear? Then people start asking questions,
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and it's the bishop's job with the Vatican to decide that.
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So there are hundreds, if not thousands, of people claiming to
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have these visions, just like at Lourdes there were
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hundreds of thousands of people claiming to be healed,
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but only 72 of those healings have been authenticated.
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I know the doctor, by the way. We just met with him at the that
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2 weeks ago, and he told us how those miracles
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are authenticated. We— he agrees that there are probably thousands of healings,
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but these take over 10 years each one to scientifically
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prove. And it's the same with, with the apparitions.
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The church feels the responsibility to say yes
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or no or maybe. There's no obligation of the church to say
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that every time somebody says they see a vision of Mary that it— that they
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need to go and spend a lot of time and energy and money to authenticate
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it. But have been about 14 or so that have been
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authenticated that we acknowledge. For example,
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Lourdes, Fatima, and what a beauty, we have
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one right here in Wisconsin in the United States. It's the only approved apparition
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in Champion, Wisconsin. Then you have, uh,
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Knock of Guadalupe, which converted
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8 million Aztec Indians who practiced human
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sacrifice, and you— and has 20 million
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people a year visit at that site. Can you imagine? Pontmain,
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Our Lady of Pillar in Spain, Miraculous Medal in Paris, La Salette
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in France, Altöttingen in Germany. We visited— my wife and I visited
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all of these. They're all marvelous sites, but they're private
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revelation and they're not incumbent on anyone to believe. But if you look at
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them, they are judged. The Church has a basic view
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of how they're judged is the kind of life that
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the people lived who are seeing these things or proclaiming them,
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the message that's given, the fruit that comes
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out of the apparition. And if you look,
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you see pretty much they all have their own specialty.
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For example, Lourdes has to do with healing.
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Fatima has to do with praying the rosary and penance. The one
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in Champion has to do with catechesis and teaching children
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the faith. But all of them have penance and
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prayer for sinners. Repentance of our own lives,
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and a listening to Jesus. Mary is always pointing
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to her Son. Obey him, listen to him, pray. That's a consistent
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message of all of them. I'm going to ask you about Our Lady of Champion
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in Wisconsin, because I will admit with embarrassment,
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I'm not really familiar with that. We got about 3 minutes left in this section.
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Can you give us a quick summary of that, please? Well, yeah,
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it was in 1859, there was a community
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that was from Belgium, and the lady's name
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is Adele Brise, B-R-I-S-E. She was
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a young Belgian immigrant. She was standing— was outside,
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and on October 8th, 1859, saw a beautiful
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woman dressed in white standing between 2 trees on
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October. And the lady disappeared when Adele approached her on
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October. Now, Mary does different things at different times when they come to
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her. Sometimes she talks, and the At Lourdes, she talks,
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but in Knock, she doesn't talk. So it's different.
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Each one has similarities and differences. So, right after
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attending Mass on October 9th, Adele saw the woman again walking
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with her sister and a friend. When Adele asked her who she was,
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she said she was the Queen of Heaven, and also she referred to herself
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as the Immaculate Conception. Okay. And what the woman
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instructed her to do was to teach the catechism
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to poor sinners, especially children. That's what she
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did. She was a catechist. So she had to bring those poor children in
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from the countryside that are uneducated out on the farms and
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teach them, bring conversion of sinners, teach the children
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the catechism. So that's kind of the emphasis
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of that apparition. Okay, I— because I, I wasn't, uh,
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I wasn't aware of that, and I, I think it deserves to be, to be
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better known. So Steve, we got about a minute left here. Give us
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a quick pitch about— please don't make this just one other thing
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to think about, that people need to really be
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attentive to Our Lady. Can you talk about that, please?
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Yes, I think we need to be attentive to Our Lady, what the Church
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teaches about Our Lady, and these Church-approved apparitions.
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I think we should study them and learn what we can as
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devotional, as devotional teachings of Mary.
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We can learn a lot from those. I do have a problem,
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though. Know, Father, when we have sitting
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on our coffee table a book there called the Bible
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which is collecting dust, and Catholics tend to ignore what we
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know is the word of God, and they go chasing
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after other experiences hoping to hear God today. Well,
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you've got his word. You know it's the absolute inspired,
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infallible, inerrant word of God sitting there. That's what you should study
24:16
and learn to know. You know you hear God's word there. Why run around the
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world for speculative speculation and maybe or maybe not.
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We have the word of God, and we hear it at Mass, we hear it
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in the scriptures. That's what I think Catholics should emphasize. The other things
24:30
are just frosting on the cake, right? I, I think that there can
24:35
be a temptation towards novelty or
24:39
curiosity or looking at things that haven't yet
24:43
been approved by the church. And I said, but, but are you spending
24:46
time with the Gospels. You know, you're reading messages,
24:50
but you don't know any of the parables. So yes,
24:54
absolutely love Our Lady. Get to know her, especially as
24:57
we find her in Scripture. Friends, we come back and continue our conversation
25:02
with Steve Ray. We're talking about Marian apparitions. You want to stay with us for
25:06
the rest of the hour? We're going to be talking about a Marian apparition at
25:10
a shrine that I myself have, have visited.
25:13
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25:17
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25:33
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26:00
This is the Catholic Current from the Station of the Cross Catholic Media Network.
26:04
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Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTeague of the Society of Jesus,
26:22
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26:26
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26:29
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26:41
Here on The Catholic Current, we engage issues seriously and faithfully,
26:45
and that intellectual freedom exists because we are listener-funded.
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Support us at thestationofthecross.com. My returning
26:52
guest today is a well-known tour guide and author Steve
26:55
Ray, great apologist for the faith, a convert. We're talking about Marian apparitions.
27:00
Steve, I wanted to let you know that about 58%
27:03
of my genetic content comes from the west of Ireland,
27:08
in particular in County Mayo. My father's maternal grandmother
27:12
was from Ballyhaunis, which was right next to Knock.
27:16
And so my great-grandmother left Ireland, I think, about a
27:19
year before Our Lady appeared at Knock. Then about
27:23
30 years ago, I was studying in London and I was able to
27:27
go over to Knock and spend the day there. One of
27:31
the things that really impressed me was how many confessors
27:35
they had. I said, if you're keeping 20 confessors busy, then you're
27:39
doing something good. Walk us through that. What makes
27:43
Knock distinctive? And you were there recently, so please take your time,
27:46
fill us in. Okay. My wife and I have taken groups there many
27:50
times, and the first time we went on our own,
27:53
because before I take a group somewhere, I always like to go scout it
27:57
out and be familiar with everything in advance. Yeah, so this is a, um,
28:01
this is an apparition that is unique
28:04
in the sense that Mary's not alone. In fact,
28:07
in my article that I wrote for Catholic Answers magazine, I said Our Lady
28:11
of Knock, but she was not alone, and she has an entourage
28:16
with her. The other thing that's unique about it is that she doesn't
28:20
speak. In many of the other ones, she speaks and she talks and she gives
28:24
instructions. Here she doesn't. It's a silent apparition.
28:27
So that also makes it unique. So if the— I'm going to give
28:31
you the setting, and then I'm going to explain why, why I thought this might
28:35
be something deeper than what I read in books and articles.
28:39
Because what I'm going to tell you, I've never found in a book anywhere.
28:42
I came up with this on my own while I sat there with my wife.
28:45
So if you look at the image, on the far left you have Joseph,
28:50
the father, Mary's husband, father of Jesus. But he's
28:54
in a prayer stature. He's holding his hands
28:58
in prayer and he's looking down very devotionally. The next image you have
29:01
to the right of him is Mary. She has a golden crown on her
29:06
head. She has her hands raised in an attitude of prayer.
29:09
She's looking up and her feet are not touching the ground.
29:12
Joseph and the others, their feet are touching, hers are not. You can see her
29:16
little toes pointing down as though— but this is an image
29:20
of the Assumption of Mary, that she was taken up into heaven,
29:24
body and soul. Sole with a crown. And the whole image in the church is
29:27
white except for the gold crown on Mary's head. To the right
29:31
of Mary is John the Apostle, and he
29:34
has a miter's bishop— uh, bishop's miter on his head.
29:38
He is a bishop. He's a teacher. He's, he's pointing with
29:42
his, uh, left hand— as a right hand, I'm sorry— as though he's preaching.
29:45
And in his left hand, he has a book. We'll get to that in a
29:48
moment. You go from Joseph to Mary to John, and now you get
29:52
to the center of this. This is I, I always
29:56
said that it was a Eucharistic apparition,
29:59
not a Marian apparition. I now correct that a little bit. It's a
30:03
Marian apparition, as Benedict said, with a, a strong
30:07
Eucharistic motif. Pope Francis said when
30:10
he went there, he made it an international shrine,
30:13
not just a local but an international shrine, and he said it is a shrine
30:18
of the Eucharist and a Marian shrine.
30:22
So when you get past Joseph and Mary
30:26
and John, you see an altar, and this altar
30:30
is suspended. On the altar is this cute little vulnerable lamb.
30:35
Behind the lamb is a cross above and behind
30:38
him. And, around that, not around Mary and Joseph and John,
30:42
but around the altar, the lamb, the cross is a host of angels
30:46
swirling and worshiping and bowing. And,
30:50
those who saw it said that they looked real,
30:53
the real angels, and they were in movement, constant movement over the
30:57
altar, the Lamb on the cross. That's what you see in
31:01
the image. Now, the first time we went there, I sat with
31:05
my wife and I said, there's something very deep about this.
31:09
There's something that I haven't read anywhere before. Why would
31:13
all of these things be there? And then, it was
31:16
the Lamb that triggered it off. In Revelation
31:21
5:5-8, it said,
31:24
John says, I looked and I saw— and it's on an altar before the throne
31:28
of God— he said, I saw a lamb standing,
31:31
yet though slain. This is the Passover lamb. It's Jesus
31:36
who is forever in the presence of God. When God wakes up
31:40
in the morning, what does he see the first thing? He sees the sacrifice of
31:43
his Son. When— before he even has his first cup of coffee, he sees the
31:47
sacrifice of his Son, which is why we put the crucifix in our churches,
31:50
so we see the same thing God sees every day. So, we have
31:54
the Lamb, and I said to myself, my goodness, this is all about
31:59
the Book of Revelation. This is— the whole thing is the Book of Revelation.
32:02
There's the Lamb that's on the altar and the
32:06
angels all around. The Book of Revelation 99
32:09
times mentions angels, cherubim, creatures,
32:13
seraphim all around the throne and all in heaven surrounding all
32:17
that's going on. So, this is the angels that's talked about 100 times in
32:21
the Book of Revelation. John wrote Revelation.
32:26
Yes, he is standing there with a book in his hand,
32:29
and I zoomed in with my camera on the words in
32:33
that book in the shrine, and there they are, 2 phrases:
32:37
the Lamb shall conquer, right out of the Book of Revelation,
32:41
and a woman clothed with the sun, right out of Revelation.
32:44
So if I needed more confirmation than that, there it was in the 2 passages
32:49
of scripture that John is preaching from as he holds
32:52
the scriptures. And there's Mary as the queen Revelation 12:1,
32:56
I looked into heaven and I saw the woman clothed with the sun, with the
33:00
moon under her feet, a crown of 12 stars on her head, which is
33:03
Mary the Queen of Heaven. So I, I realized this whole
33:07
thing is— it— what it is, it's pulling
33:10
back the curtain and we're stepping into the drama of
33:15
heaven. Or you could say that Mary came and brought the entourage
33:19
down with her so that she could reveal to us what's going on
33:23
in Wow. Well, you see, I, like I said, I certainly didn't do
33:27
as deep a study as you did, but I just didn't
33:31
make that connection to the, to the Book of Revelation. That is,
33:35
that is absolutely thrilling. So I imagine you've looked into the historical
33:39
context. Why Ireland and why then?
33:43
Well, although every apparition— I'm not as up on that as
33:47
I could be. I was so interested in just what's going on
33:50
there. But in every apparition, it comes at certain peak important
33:55
times. Like Fatima came in 1917. What's going on? The Russian
33:59
Revolution. The world's in turmoil. Same thing was going on in France
34:03
at Lourdes. And I know that this one also, there were political and
34:07
religious things going on in Ireland which made this
34:10
very significant. But I'm going to have to pass on that because I'll always tell
34:14
you what I know and I'll always be honest with what I don't know.
34:16
No, no, I respect that. And I want to just mention a
34:20
few more things about this. Let's first talk about Joseph. He's there
34:24
folding his hands. He's reverently in prayer. There are saints,
34:28
Saint Francis de Sales specifically, John XXIII,
34:32
who say that Joseph was assumed into heaven also. That is a
34:36
pious— it's not doctrinal, it's not part of church teaching,
34:41
but that— and that would be very, very applicable
34:44
here, that he is also assumed into heaven, came back down and married in that
34:48
sense. But I see a family, 3 family reunions
34:51
going on here, Father. This is what I really like about this, 3 family
34:55
reunions because Mary and Jesus and Joseph,
34:59
there they are right there, the Lamb. And the Lamb is looking over
35:03
at them as though to say, Mom and Dad, thanks for
35:07
taking good care of me and thanks for obeying the Gospel. It's that the
35:11
little vulnerable Lamb just— I can't help but him look— seeing him
35:15
looking over at them, admiring them in a sense and thanking them
35:18
for what they did. So there's the family reunion of the Holy Family
35:22
again, but there's another family reunion going on here.
35:25
We've got at the foot of the cross— oh, and there's the cross right there.
35:29
You can see the cross right in this image. At the foot of the cross,
35:33
Mary and John were there in the presence of the Lamb,
35:36
and the Lamb said, Mother, this is now your son, and John, this is
35:40
now your mother. So this became another family. So we're
35:44
having a family reunion of Mary and John and the
35:48
Lamb. And then there's another family reunion. This is
35:52
the curtains pulled back on the great banquet of heaven,
35:56
the great family reunion in Heaven. Mary just brought a
36:00
few of them down to make this present to us, but what she is really
36:03
doing is saying there is another family reunion here going on. The angels
36:07
are surrounding, it is all around the Lamb, and here is the Mother
36:11
of God, and here is Jesus' Father, and John who proclaimed it.
36:15
What did John say? John is the one that wrote the words,
36:18
Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
36:22
There is John preaching about that Lamb. And the church that this
36:26
took place at was called the Church of Saint John the Baptist, who is He's
36:30
the one that saw Jesus and said, behold the Lamb of God who takes away
36:33
the sins of the world. And so this big family reunion, you could even bring
36:36
John the Baptist in if you wanted to, is all this big family reunion.
36:40
We've been invited to come into heaven, so to speak, in this drama and
36:44
be a part of this big family feast together. And so
36:48
this is my favorite apparition for all those reasons and a whole lot more.
36:52
Oh, sure. And you see, I think it gets— I think Knock gets
36:56
overshadowed. I mean, I think it's really indispensable for
37:00
a Catholic living today. To be familiar
37:04
with Fatima, for example. And I think if you're doing pro-life work seriously,
37:08
you know, you've got to turn to Our Lady of Guadalupe, and the healing of
37:12
Lourdes has an attraction on its own. And I think
37:16
Knock has— like I said, it just gets overshadowed, and I
37:20
want to see it better known. We do talk about the fruits of
37:24
the apparitions, you know, we think of the healings
37:28
associated with Lourdes. The conversions associated with Guadalupe.
37:31
Talk some about the fruits of Our Lady appearing in Knock. Well, I think here
37:35
she is, she's bringing this family
37:39
gathering, this entourage is the way I like to view it. She's showing
37:43
the importance of Joseph. And in the last decade or
37:47
two, we've really, the Church has really kind of opened that door where we have
37:51
again acknowledged the importance of Joseph. But here it's already being
37:54
done here 100 years earlier, the importance of Joseph
37:58
in the whole story of salvation. He's the silent one, and yet he's the strong
38:02
one. He— when you look at Joseph, you see Jesus. Not,
38:06
not appearance-wise, but I bet you Jesus learned a lot
38:10
of those parables from his father, his mannerisms.
38:14
I have the mannerisms— my brothers and I, we joke around because
38:17
we say, oh, Dad, what is— that's Dad saying, he always said that, right?
38:21
We, we do things our dad did. So when you looked at Jesus, you saw
38:25
Joseph, right? And when you looked at Jesus, you saw Mary. Even there,
38:28
genetically, he had probably the same facial features as Mary,
38:32
and because he genetically— he's her son.
38:36
So here's the fruits of this, is the bringing
38:39
Joseph back into the picture. I think it's telling the importance
38:43
of the Book of Revelation. It's saying the centrality of the Eucharist,
38:47
the Lamb of God, that even the angels are all swirling around it.
38:50
And when we go to Mass, when you celebrate Mass,
38:53
Father, and you hold up the bread and the wine and it becomes the body
38:57
and blood of Christ, we can't see it, but the mystics have told us that
39:01
the church is full of angels. They're bowing down and they're worshiping
39:05
the Lamb, and they're looking out at the people sitting there and saying,
39:08
don't these people understand? Don't they understand what's going
39:12
on here? They're not even paying attention. That's— many of them sitting there in sin.
39:15
They've never gone to confession until Don't they understand what's going
39:19
on here with this whole Lamb and the angels and the cross?
39:22
And also the whole apparition is telling us that the altar, which in
39:27
Hebrew comes from the root word slaughter, the word altar,
39:31
the root word is slaughter, from the altar and the cross
39:35
right there behind it, those 2 are inseparable.
39:38
The Lamb is what connects them. You cannot, if you have the
39:42
altar, that's what the cross is. The cross is an altar. Every time you celebrate
39:46
Mass, you are at the foot of the cross. You are, you are taking part
39:50
of that one eternal sacrifice. You're taken right back to that cross.
39:54
And if you're at the cross— we're coming up on a break, but we can
39:58
take up this thread in the next, the next segment. Friends, when we come back,
40:01
we're going to continue our conversation with Steve Ray. We're talking about Marian apparitions.
40:05
We're going to be looking at the Book of Revelation, and we're going to be
40:08
looking at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which is so different from
40:11
a liturgical Happy Meal where we celebrate us in all of our usness.
40:16
After the broadcast today, go to thestationofthecross.com, get our resources
40:19
list, download our audio podcast, part of the conversation.
40:23
Follow what we're following by following us on Gab.
40:26
That's gab.com. The channel is The Catholic Current,
40:30
and you can influence the conversation. Contact us at stationofthecross.com/askfather.
40:36
What's your preferred Marian apparition? We want to know.
40:40
Back in just 2 minutes. Please do stay with us.
41:01
Have a question or feedback about today's episode?
41:04
Want to suggest a guest? Or a future topic, go to thestationofthecross.com/askfather
41:12
and help influence the conversation.
41:19
Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTaggart of the Society of Jesus,
41:22
your daily host for The Catholic Current, where we bring Christ to the world and
41:26
the world to Christ. You're listening to us from the Station of the Cross studios,
41:28
your local radio station, the Catholic Radio Mobile app. We proclaim the fullness of
41:32
truth with clarity and charity. My returning guest today is Steve Ray.
41:36
We're talking about Marian apparitions. Steve, I'm going to have to
41:40
go back and review the things that you've sent me about Knock because
41:44
there's a lot of things that I had just never heard before, and I'm really
41:47
grateful for that. I thought we'd be remiss if we didn't talk about Our Lady
41:50
of Guadalupe. It's got this special place in the heart of Catholics
41:55
throughout the Americas, and she is a very significant
41:59
icon icon for the pro-life movement as well.
42:02
Run out the clock, please. Tell us about Our Lady of Guadalupe. Can I do
42:05
one more thing about Knock? Sure, absolutely. And then I'll
42:09
switch right over to that. Yeah, yeah. When you see the altar, the lamb,
42:12
and the cross there, when I was a Protestant, I would have said to you,
42:16
Father, Jesus, 4 times in the Bible it says Jesus
42:19
was crucified once and for all. So why do you sacrifice him again over and
42:24
over and over on your Catholic altars? The reason, Father, is because you don't
42:27
know your Bible. That's what I would said. See, but this, this here gives
42:31
the answer to that. When you can— when you confect the
42:35
Eucharist, when you celebrate Mass, you are not sacrificing Christ again.
42:39
What happens is that Lamb is ever before the eyes of
42:43
God. It's an eternal event to him. He's not inside space
42:47
and time. That's an eternal event. So every time you celebrate Mass, that eternal
42:51
event comes boom right back down into space and time on the altar,
42:55
and we're partaking We're not crucifying him again.
42:58
We are partaking of that one eternal sacrifice
43:02
that is made present again for us. Just like the sun rises,
43:05
the sun doesn't die when it goes down. The sun is always there,
43:09
but it represents itself again the next day. Every day Jesus
43:14
represents himself as a sacrifice because that's what we need. So there you see,
43:17
the cross is always there, but how is it presented to us? On the altar.
43:21
The altar and the cross are the same thing. That to me, that's why
43:25
this Eucharistic miracle is so stunning. Okay, now to Guadalupe.
43:30
Yeah, this is— 20 million people a year
43:33
visit Guadalupe, and my wife and I have taken groups down there,
43:37
and it is a stunning place to go. And it all happened
43:41
just like the other ones. Mary does not appear to bishops.
43:45
She doesn't appear to politicians.
43:48
She appears to simple people. She appears to
43:52
Juan Diego, who's a simple illiterate Aztec Indian.
43:55
He appears to little Bernadette, who's illiterate. She appears
43:58
to the shepherds, little shepherd children who— and, and in the same,
44:02
um, Adele Brees in Wisconsin,
44:06
she's just a simple woman that's an immigrant there. She does that
44:10
because I think Mary's comfortable with simple people. She herself was only 15
44:14
years old when the angel came to her, an apparition came
44:18
to her. And we know that unless you're like little children, you'll never see
44:22
the kingdom of God. Mary, I think, goes to them. You never hear Mary having
44:25
an apparition going and talking to the bishop. She goes to the little child and
44:28
says, you go talk to the bishop. Guadalupe is that way.
44:31
Mary appeared to a culture that had human
44:36
sacrifice. When we were there, I go to where the cathedral
44:40
is, right next to us where the pyramids of the Aztecs were.
44:44
And, even according to their own records, when they dedicated their
44:48
temple to the Aztec god who was known as the drinker of blood
44:52
and the lover of hearts. It's— they slaughtered,
44:55
according to their own number, 80,600 human
44:59
beings to dedicate that altar. The blood was running down the side
45:03
of the pyramids, and they were eating the hearts of these people and drinking their
45:07
blood. And this is what— and they said the statistics are
45:10
probably 1 out of 5 newborn babies was used as a sacrifice.
45:15
So this is where Mary came. She came as a pregnant Mexican
45:21
girl. They— when they look at her, they see themselves. She's pregnant. The sash around
45:24
her is a sash, a sign of pregnancy, this new baby. And what I always
45:29
say there is that, that she is— they came to with the message that human
45:32
sacrifice is necessary. You've got that part right.
45:36
But God himself came down as a human and died. And because
45:39
he's infinite, that one sacrifice appeases everything.
45:43
It solves everything. It's the end. You don't have to keep killing babies and
45:47
people over and over again because we've had one sacrifice of God
45:51
himself who died for your sins. And therefore, you won't— stop all
45:55
this other sacrifice, they're unnecessary. Just look to this one Jesus Christ who died
45:59
for you. And that's how they converted these people. So while in Europe
46:03
you had 8 million Catholics leave during the
46:06
Protestant deformation— I refuse to call it Reformation— you
46:10
had 8 million people leave the Catholic Church. At the same time over
46:14
here, Mary the great evangelist
46:18
brings 8 million people into the church, and they became Catholics.
46:22
This is Our Lady of Guadalupe. That's why she's the Queen
46:25
of the Americas, because she came over here before hardly
46:29
anybody even knew about what was over here, and she converted
46:33
the whole Aztec nation to become Christians. You know, I also
46:37
want to talk— I know it's a vast topic— the images of
46:41
the tilma itself. I mean, the making of it,
46:44
its endurance, but science has been studying
46:48
it closely, there's a lot of there there, isn't there? There's a lot
46:52
of there there. That is made out of cactus pulp.
46:55
Cactus pulp was what the very, very poor people— they didn't have money
46:59
to buy wool and flax and all this, and they made cloth out
47:03
of cactus. They pounded it and they made cloth out of it. It never lasts
47:07
more than 50 years. It falls apart. It just disintegrates. But, here we've had
47:11
this cactus tilma for 500 years
47:15
for 2 things about it is number one, it hasn't decayed and
47:18
it should have. It's never been kept in refrigerated,
47:21
air-controlled, vacuum-sealed. It's just been exposed
47:25
to everything for hundreds of years, and it's still without any
47:28
decay or corruption at all. Second of all, the image
47:32
on there, like the Shroud of Turin and the Face Cloth of Montepello,
47:36
there's no scientific explanation for how the image got on
47:40
that tilma. There's no ink, there's no paint, there's no way that
47:43
anybody could have done that. It's a miraculous image.
47:47
So you have those 2 things that are just stunning.
47:51
And, when you're in Guadalupe, they have— when you
47:54
go at the airport and you want to get to that end faster, you go
47:58
on the walkway that's moving and you can get— it's
48:02
a moving walkway. Anyway, they have the same thing in front of the tilma
48:06
because people will stop and then— because the line can be a mile
48:10
long. And, if you don't have that moving walkway,
48:14
people will stop and take pictures and nobody will ever get get through. So it
48:17
moves you along. But there you, you go by and you look, and there it
48:21
is. It's, it's right there to your left as you're going
48:24
down that walkway. You could see the tilma. It's still bright colored, and it's there.
48:27
And when you have Mass, they have set up where Masses can be all done
48:31
on this big second floor, all of them facing the tilma. So you can have
48:34
like 5 or 6 Masses at a time going on, all facing the tilma.
48:37
And they've done more research. Not only are the
48:41
stars on that tilma the stars that would have been in the sky at the
48:45
time, but the Indians can read all of these things. There's books written about all
48:49
the details, but they have now discovered that in the eyeball of
48:53
Mary, when they zoomed in on it, they can see the reflection of Juan Diego,
48:58
and they can see the reflection— they wouldn't have known that about human anatomy at
49:02
that time, right? Nope. But now when they zoom in, they can actually see in
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the, in the image, in the eyeballs, they can see the reflection
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of the people who were there looking. Gosh, Steve, I'm, I'm sorry
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to say that, that we are out of time. I feel like we're just warming
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up. Uh, we're gonna have to do this, uh, again before long.
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Real quick, where can people find your work? Well, at catholicconvert.com.
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And I'll just mention quickly, um, in February we're heading back to
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Israel. We went in January of this year, it was very successful.
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It'll be safe and going back. We're going to start in Jordan. There's 5
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stops that Pope John Paul II turned into official pilgrimage sites.
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We're going to visit all of those plus Petra. And if you read
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realize 2030 is coming up. The year 2030 will be the 2,000th
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anniversary of Jesus's baptism in the Jordan River. That took place on the
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Jordan side, not the Israel side. So we're going to start in Jordan 5 days,
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and we're going to cross over into Israel for 8 days and follow the road.
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We're going to have to leave it there. We're out of time. God bless your
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good work. And friends, we're going to load up our resources with, with lots of
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links to Steve and his very good work. Through the intercession of our Lady of
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Mount Carmel. May Almighty God bless you, keep you from all harm and every evil,
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to reach the happiness of heaven. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy
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Spirit. Go in peace, and please do pray for me, for I am a sinner.