Insights on Religious Apparitions

Every so often there is an uproar of public excitement among the Filipino faithful over news from neighbors of a “perspiring” or ”bleeding” statue, or a “dancing” image of the Child Jesus, etc. People then flock to where the reported “apparition” or “vision” had taken place and decide right there and then to believe that it is authentic.

I can’t blame them or their gullibility, somehow. The poorest in our country hang on to the faith which they believe could solve or at least help them deal with their everyday problems and suffering, but elements of superstition often enter in.

I myself admit that I can’t get enough of Marian apparitions – Our Lady of Lourdes, for example, where our Blessed Mother appeared to Bernadette Soubirous; or those of Our Lady of Fatima where she appeared to Lucia dos Santos and Francisco and Jacinta Marto (the latter two canonized in 2017); or the phenomena at Rue du Bac in Paris where Our Lady appeared as the Lady of Miraculous Medal to St. Catherine Labouré.

Stay Calm, Pay Close Attention

However, whenever I think about news of extraordinary visions as claimed by a lot of people in the Philippines, I can’t help remembering some thought-provoking and witty insights from Fr. Nonette Legaspi, a parish priest and Chief Exorcist of the Diocese of Novaliches, Quezon City. Several years ago, I sent him questions about extraordinary visions and apparitions because I was developing material for a story, and his answers eventually formed the basis of it. (He was then head of the Manila Archdiocese Office and Resource Center for Visions and Phenomena.)

His advice: stay calm and pay close attention; genuine apparitions will not resort to blackmail. And to those who have seen on television, or who experience any religious “vision”, “communication”, or allegations attributing miraculous healings to these visions, he said, genuine visions will not threaten anyone with punishments from heaven even if a genuine vision is rejected.

What to Avoid

In any reported visions and phenomena, Fr. Legaspi said two extremes should be avoided: 1) to see only the supernatural or miraculous and 2) to refuse to recognize anything but the natural.

“The miseries of life coupled with many subjective factors such as weaknesses of faith, difficulties with regard to faith, one’s innate inclination to immediately ‘believe’ what is ‘seen’ and what I may call a spirituality propensity to ‘materialize’ or ‘physicalize’ divine responses to our prayers, have driven the Filipino Catholic to excessive credulity. The danger or error is greater in credulity than in skepticism,” Legaspi cautioned.

Fr. Legaspi cited as an example the weeping image of the Sacred Heart in San Isidro Church, Pasay City, which had been reported as “miraculous”. He said those who have a penchant for anything unusual and a desire for a material cause for conversion or blessing, find themselves flocking to the Church. “Doing so might ‘change’ them or give them a more personal faith experience than their ordinary Sunday church attendance,” he said.

A closer examination, however, revealed that the same image had been used as St. Joseph in an outdoor Nativity scene the previous year thus exposing it to the elements. Legaspi related that the image was not “weeping” – at least no one witnessed it “weeping”. Rather, it exhibited the marks of dried liquid droplets from the outer corner of the left eye down the middle of the left cheek, he said.

It’s not that the purported vision was a hoax or fraud. It was just misinterpreted and then sentimentalized into a spiritual phenomenon, which it was not.

Intelligible Questions

Legaspi also said everyone should learn to ask the right questions whenever they learn about extraordinary phenomena of any sort. One question, he said, would be: “How could the sun possibly ‘dance’?” Or: “How was it possible that the visionary was getting all these messages which later proved to be culled from English translations of other apparition messages from all over the world?”

I think his most important insight focused on how the public has always attached the label “miraculous” to images more than directly attributing miracles to the Blessed Mother herself. “With or without ‘images’ or ‘miracles’, our prayers are constantly towards God in adoration and the Blessed Mother in veneration,” he said.

The late Bishop Manuel Sobrevinas, former chairman of the archdiocesan commission, also said that even without an official pronouncement about the authenticity of any particular apparition, the faithful should find it necessary to pray, do penance, be converted, and work for peace.

Such an insightful analysis of the ways Filipinos approach their faith. A lot of enlightenment and discernment among the faithful is in order.