Josephology Appendix 1: Apparitions & Visitations

While not nearly as popular as the Blessed Virgin, St. Joseph or someone pretending to be him has indeed appeared to many Christians over the centuries. What follows is a brief overview of his many manifestations to the faithful.

Fairly Reputable

Mt. Bessillon – 1660

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St. Joseph is said to have appeared to a young man named Gaspard Ricard on June 7, 1660. Ricard was herding his sheep on the eastern side of Mt. Bessillon in Cotignac, France. In the heat of the day, the young shepherd grew thirsty and rested on the rocky terrain. A tall, old man appeared, pointed to a large rock nearby and said, “I am Joseph. Lift the rock and you will drink.” Thinking the rock too heavy for even seven men to lift, Ricard tried it anyway, succeeded, and found a spring of fresh water underneath. When he looked up, the old man had vanished.

On this very day, Maria Theresa of Spain left her native country to marry King Louis XIV of France. Perhaps interpreting the miraculous spring as a sign, the very next year the Sun King decreed March 19 to be celebrated as the Feast of St. Joseph throughout his kingdom.

New Mexico – 1878

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After the chapel for the Sisters of Loretto in Sante Fe was completed in the late 19th century, the Mother Superior was very perturbed that there was no good way to access the choir loft twenty-two feet above the ground floor. The sisters began a novena to St. Joseph to send them a carpenter who could build something better than a ladder, and on the ninth day a grey-haired man appeared with a donkey and a toolbox looking for work.

After three months, and using only a few humble tools, the staircase was finished, and the man disappeared without a trace. The sisters ran an ad in the newspaper asking him to return for his pay, but he never did. The stairs themselves are described as “mysterious” and “miraculous” due to their surprisingly superior construction and durable nature.

The sisters came to the conclusion that St. Joseph himself had come down from Heaven to build them a staircase, although it is not outside the realm of possibility that Joseph sent a local woodworker to do a good deed on his behalf. The chapel has since been deconsecrated and now operates as a private museum.

County Mayo – 1879

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The Virgin Mary appeared silently with St. John the Apostle and St. Joseph on August 21, 1879 to fifteen people in the village of Knock, Ireland. One of the witnesses, Mary Byrne O’Connell, said of Joseph that “he looked old,” and other witnesses described his beard as being colored an “iron grey.” Very little happened during the apparition besides prayer.

Multiple popes have lent their support to the Knock apparition, including Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI, and (especially) John Paul II. The lack of a message being delivered from Heaven probably made the apparition much easier to approve.

Ourém Municipality – 1917

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During the Miracle of the Sun (October 13, 1917) at Fátima, Portugal, Sr. Lúcia de Jesus Rosa Santos says that St. Joseph appeared next to Mary and holding the Child Jesus. This vision is strange in that she says Jesus and Joseph both “seemed to be blessing the world, making the sign of the Cross.” Since Joseph was no priest (Jewish or Christian), it is odd that he would appear to be giving a blessing. He soon vanished and only Mary remained in the sky, appearing now in the Carmelite habit.

Somewhat Less Reputable

Germany – 13th Century

During one of her mystical visions, St. Gertrude the Great (1256-1302) is said to have caught a glimpse of St. Joseph during the readings on the Vigil of the Annunciation. As one later religious of the Order of St. Benedict describes it: “At the name of St. Joseph, all the saints made a profound inclination to him, testifying, by the serenity and sweetness of their looks, that they rejoiced with him for his exalted dignity.”

I have been unable to find any such event described in an original source, but that may simply be because some of her works are not readily available in English.

Belgium – 16th Century

The devotion of the “Seven Sorrows and Joys of St. Joseph” is said to have been requested by the saint himself after rescuing two shipwrecked Franciscan priests off the coast of Flanders. Their ship destroyed, the priests had grabbed onto a large plank to keep from sinking. A radiant man appeared in answer to their prayers, and led them into safe harbor. After revealing himself as St. Joseph, he asked for the “Sorrows and Joys” devotion to be prayed in his honor.

Only a handful of sources claim this story as the origin of that particular devotion. In spite of this, most claimants say that this event is “never omitted by any historian of the saint,” which is clearly untrue.

The German Woods – 19th Century

In one of the folktales collected by the Grimm brothers Jacob and Wilhelm, “St. Joseph in the Forest,” the saint appears as an old man who lives in the forest and looks out for little girls who are lost or turned out of their homes. In this tale, he meets three sisters in succession, and rewards them each according to their virtue or lack thereof.

Another of the brothers’ tales is untitled, having been discovered in 1983 in a letter written by Wilhelm Grimm to a little girl in 1816. Published in 1988 as Dear Mili, this story is of another lost girl who is sent into the woods after her mother fears the approach of war. The elderly St. Joseph gives her shelter in his forest hut, and after three days sends her on her way with a rosebud. She returns to find that thirty years have passed, and she dies after finding her now-aged mother.

The Americas – 20th Century

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The Americas have been home to quite a few visionaries who claim to have seen and heard from St. Joseph. Whereas previous apparitions proved him to be taciturn, the last century has apparently given him much to talk about.

In the late 1950s St. Joseph is reported to have spoken, and eventually appeared, to Sr. Mary Ephrem of the Congregation of the Precious Blood while in Indiana and Ohio, USA. He spoke at length about his sanctification in his mother’s womb “immediately after my conception,” and when he appeared visibly it was as a man “quite youthful.” These mystical experiences were a piece of the larger “Our Lady of America” devotion, so they have gained some purchase in the traddy world thanks in no small part to the approval of Cdl. Raymond Burke.

The 1960s saw the start of purported messages from St. Joseph and other saints given to a certain Frances Marie Klug (1921-2009) in Southern California. Mrs. Klug claimed to be passing on new revelations from God, including the novel idea that Joseph was the physical manifestation of the Holy Spirit. Klug’s visions and cult (St. Joseph’s Hill of Hope) were unambiguously condemned by a joint letter from three bishops—of Los Angeles, Orange, and San Bernardino—in 1981.

Since the mid-1990s Mary and Joseph have supposedly been appearing to Edson Glauber (b. 1972) in Itapiranga, Brazil with various messages. The visionary has some episcopal approval through the current archbishop, but the visions appear to be ongoing. He describes St. Joseph as “very young with an indescribable beauty,” but also as possessing “brilliant green eyes.” The main thrust of the Josephite devotion here is a call to venerate his Most Chaste Heart (also described as “most pure”) along with the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Fatima, Chiliasm, and Russia—“Oh My (Jesus)!”

I have rarely paid much attention to the apparitions in Fatima or in other places, but a recent conversation with a devoted priest and Fatima’s upcoming centennial has gotten me reconsidering some of the things said there by the Blessed Virgin. The transcription of her discourse on war by Sr. Lucia is of particular interest to many Fatima devotees:

If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The [First World] war is going to end; if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the pontificate of Pius XI.... In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.

The “period of peace” has been interpreted many ways, some reaching absurd heights. Even though the context clearly refers to peace in terms of a rest from war and military aggression, many interpret it as a worldwide conversion of men to the True Faith. “So, the period of peace to be given to mankind can only mean the peace of Christ reigning in the hearts of men,” says one commentator.

This borders on the ancient error of Millenarianism or Chiliasm, which posited that Christ would return bodily to earth and reign gloriously but carnally from Jerusalem for one thousand years before the Resurrection and Final Judgment. While the Fatimite Millennials do not say that the Second Coming will come before the “period of peace,” some of them argue for the rise of the Great Catholic Monarch who will rule over this period. This monarch is a French figure predicted by a few saints, but never given much credence by Church authorities.

It is more reasonable to think that the prophesied “period of peace” will be a more worldly kind of peace: a cessation from war but probably without a revival of anything resembling Christendom. Russia will be converted—supposedly to the Catholic Faith, and not to Russian Orthodoxy—which will certainly be a miracle all of its own.

Will this actually happen? Is Fatima only a private revelation that can be ignored? Did the popes heavily edit all of the three shepherd children’s messages so that we don’t really know what all Mary said? Oh, these are all questions far above my paygrade.

I would, however, enjoy having an excuse to be rid of the “Oh my Jesus” prayer at the end of every Rosary decade. The church ladies are unable to pray it aloud without infusing the opening phrase with as much emotion as their mantilla-draped hearts can muster. (The Portuguese original begins with “Ó meu bom Jesus,” but the official Latin text starts with “Domine Iesu,” stripping out some of the latent sentimentality. Let’s fix the English according to the textum Latinum!) However, as long as I accept the longstanding tradition that the Second Eve bestowed the Rosary to the Church by means of a private revelation, I suppose must accept her right to amend it by the same means 700 years later.

St. Dominic, do your thing!

Open Question: Where Do We Stand?

First a note to Marko, who asked for an exposé on the un-Romanized Cistercian Missal. I found a scan of a Missale Cisterciense from 1606, thirty-one years prior to the Romanization. The text is very legible and I could certainly do a series on it after I finish the Gallican rites and a short series of posts I have planned on a few early figures in the emerging traditionalist movement. 

Now, where do we stand with regard to private apparitions? The Rad Trad asks because these apparitions have proliferated in the last two centuries and, with very few exceptions, all seem to follow a particular pattern: the Blessed Virgin Mary comes to someone young, tells him or her that God wants something to happen, there is a word about the Pope, and, sometimes, instructions to institute some sort of devotion on a specific day of the week or month.

A common feature of these apparitions is that people use them as banners for their own political causes or theological opinions. Case in point, Fatima. Everyone who has spent time with traditionalist Roman Catholics knows that a significant portion of them have a strong penchant for Fatima and has realized that the message of Fatima is somewhat fungible. Everyone from the respectable "indult" Mass goer to the FSSPX "hardliner" to the sedevacantist can reasonably lay claim the general points of Fatima, that God is punishing the Church by taking away the Mass for the failure of Popes Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI etc. to compel the bishops of the world to do some sort of consecration regarding Russia. Traditionalists look to Fatima to explain bad bishops and the absence of 1962 Masses, but they are not alone in looking to Fatima. More mainstream Catholics occasionally countenance Fatima for violence in the world and the spread of Communism. Recently I was treated to an apocalyptic sermon by a Ukrainian deacon certain that Russia's theft of Crimea pointed to the immanence of the last days.

Another issue with these apparitions is that they can be coupled together to create new messages. Archbishop Lefebvre was fond of La Salette ("Rome will lose the faith and become the seat of anti-Christ") and his ordinand, Richard Williamson, favors Akita. To a baroque minded Roman Catholic the relationship between Fatima and La Salette would be self-evident: the Pope did not carry out the Russia request, so God has punished the Church by allowing Rome—and hence the Church, because in the baroque perspective there is little distinction on this matter—to lose the faith and the Mass. To a Ukrainian Catholic, or a Melkite, or someone with a medieval mindset this interpretation would not work. And to a mainstream Roman Catholic La Salette would be "approved," but also "far off" or "not happening now."

So which is it? Who is right? Are any of them right? Does it even matter to us? Opinions on the nature of apparitions even varies. The Church calls them "private" revelations because they are not part of the deposit of faith and because Revelation ended with the death of the last Apostle, who according to tradition was St. John the Evangelist. I have heard one priest say that while Fatima is optional, it is not really optional. Another took a middle ground, almost to say "Whatever helps you." Recently I was told of a very medieval priest named Ronald Silk who absolutely refused these sorts of devotional apparitions.

Some readers might be aware of a lesser known approved apparition in Knock, Ireland. It is compelling both in what it is and what it is not. As the story goes, a dozen or so people witnessed several radiant white figures: a lamb on a table-like altar with a cross behind it, and to the left Ss. Mary, Joseph, and John; moved, the seers prayed the Rosary in the rain for hours. No end times messages, no popes, no new devotions. Just prayer. Does the Rad Trad believe it? No idea, but the circumstances and non-message were certainly counter-cultural at the time.

One last time: where do we stand on this?