Courtney McGrailShrine has a special place in pilgrims’ hearts
The Story of Knock began on the evening of Thursday August 21, 1879.
Mary McLoughlin saw an apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary, St Joseph and St John the Evangelist and alerted 15 family members and friends to come and watch.
For two hours, the witnesses stood in the driving rain reciting the rosary as they observed the heavenly apparition. Beside Our Lady, St Joseph and St John and a little to their left the witnesses reported an altar with a cross and the figure of the Lamb of God, around which angels hovered.
Two Church Commissions of Inquiry, in 1879 and 1936, accepted the witnesses’ testimony as trustworthy and satisfactory.
Almost ever since, Knock has played a vital role in the story of Irish Catholicism and has been an important site of pilgrimage attracting some 1.5million visitors every year.
St John Paul II, during his historic visit to the shine in 1979 described Knock as “the goal of my journey to Ireland”.
Reflecting on the story of Knock, John Paul II said that “yours is a long spiritual tradition of devotion to Our Lady. Mary can truly say of Ireland… “So I took root in an honoured people” (Sir 24 :12). Your veneration of Mary is so deeply interwoven in your faith that its origins are lost in the early centuries of the evangelisation of your country”.
Referring to the Irish language, the Pontiff said “I have been told that, in Irish speech, the names of God and Jesus and Mary are linked with one another, and that God is seldom named in prayer or in blessing without Mary’s name being mentioned also.
“I also know that you have an 8th-Century Irish poem that calls Mary ‘Sun of our race’, and that a litany from that same period honours her as ‘Mother of the heavenly and earthly Church’. But better than any literary source, it is the constant and deeply rooted devotion to Mary that testifies to the success of evangelisation by St Patrick, who brought you the Catholic faith in all its fullness.”
Special place
Knock, like other Marian shrines, has always had a special place for those experiencing any kind of suffering. John Paul II captured this when he told pilgrims in 1979 that “from that day of grace, 21 August 1879, until this very day, the sick and suffering, people handicapped in body or mind, troubled in their faith or their conscience, all have been healed, comforted and confirmed in their faith because they trusted that the Mother of God would lead them to her Son, Jesus.
“Every time a pilgrim comes up to what was once an obscure bogside village in Co. Mayo, every time a man, woman or child comes up to the old church with the apparition gable or to the new Shrine of Mary Queen of Ireland, it is to renew his or her faith in the salvation that comes through Jesus, who made us all children of God and heirs of the Kingdom of Heaven,” he said.
St John Paul II’s visit offered a powerful papal affirmation of the special place that Knock has within the Church in Ireland. As the shrine prepares to celebrate 135 years and looks to the next 135 years and beyond, this special issue of The Irish Catholic traces the history of Marian devotion in the Church and charts the unique and living spiritual legacy of Knock.