I'm only starting on the article, but TIA have had a lot of fine article on the Knock apparitions. Knock was different. The vision was of the Bless Virgin Mary, St Joseph and St John. Moreover the vision was silent and was witnessed by a larger number than usual, in this case fifteen people.
Knock was certainly different. A friend of mine loaned me an account that tried to explain its message. I will post some here for those interested.
Knock and Associated MattersIn 1879, on a miserable wet night, in a meadow field outside the gable-end of the church of St John the Baptist, there occurred an active but silent (i.e., the figures were speaking but could not be heard) apparition at Knock (from the Gaelic word Cnoc, a hill), a small town in Connaught in the west of Ireland. The apparition, which lit the immediate area with a brilliant light, included magnificent images of the Virgin Mary, St Joseph, St John the Evangelist, the Lamb on an empty altar, it of course representing Christ and the Sacrifice, and some angels in attendance. This vision, mounted on an invisible platform on top of the tall grass, showed the Blessed Virgin, with her hands held up looking and praying to heaven. It showed a vested St John, superimposed between Mary and the Lamb, holding a book (the Roman missal - now redundant in the post Vatican II era, or perhaps his book of Revelation) in one hand while gesturing in a preaching stance with the other. St Joseph, with his head bowed and glancing sideways, was isolated, separated by a mysterious black line, noticed only by a few of the selected observers and seldom mentioned in books on the apparition.
"Though the Knock witnesses experienced various emotions – happiness, wonder, devotion, exaltation of spirit, one being moved to tears – not one of them was rapt in ecstasy. None of them heard a word; neither did they receive any interior message or sign. That the Mother of God, who bade Bernadette pray for sinners, who had pleaded for conversion of life at La Salette, for prayers and penance at Fatima, should have remained silent to her devoted Irish children was, and still is, a stumbling block to many. There was no message, they say, so the Apparition is devoid of meaning." --- Mary Purcell, Our Lady of Knock, p.18.
Of course there was a message. Heaven does not indulge in meaningless pictures, but few, if any, could/can interpret it. The main reason for this is because Knock was not a ‘Marian’ message but a Johannine one, and, like his Apocalypse, has to be read in an allegorical sense (A form of exegesis thrown out by Martin Luther and one that is hardly ever found among modern Catholics). Thus a considerable amount of research on the place and its history is needed to begin to try to interpret the message or warning. So, we can ask: (1) Why Knock: (2) To whom was it addressed: (3) Why was it silent: (4) What was it trying to tell us?
Before one can possibly try to understand such ‘messages’ from heaven, one must fully accept and comprehend the war declared by God in Genesis 3:15 between the Christ and the antichrist, and how this battle of ‘Principalities and Powers’ is carried out on a temporal and spiritual plane. The message of Knock, we suspect, was, like the Book of Revelation, a warning to the flock of the current state of this war as it was in 1879 and into the future. Here is why we interpret it so:
Why Knock?It is a fact that the only place where the word
allegory is mentioned in Scripture is in St Paul’s Letter to the Galatians: ‘
things are said by an allegory’ (Gal. 4:24). We also know that it was the Galatians who were advised that if an angel from heaven should preach a different gospel to that which they had been taught, to reject it. (Gal 1:8)
Scholars on the origin of European peoples tell us that a fair number of the old and true Galatians (Celts) had migrated to Ireland and settled here. Then along came Oliver Cromwell with his infamous reform in the sixteenth century, and ordered all Catholics of Ireland to decide their destiny: ‘To hell or to Connaught’. Choosing Connaught to hell, the Galatians Catholics moved into this desolate, infertile and barren west of Ireland where they continued to be persecuted in any event. It was their descendants that occupied Knock in 1879.
These then were the same flock that St Paul had advised that ‘
things are said by allegory’, a people worthy to convey to the world a message wrapped in allegory.
A PatternCromwell, that docuмented Satanist who conquered in the name of God, was the first to deliberately usurp the divine right of kings by purging his own in England and replacing him with the beginnings of freemasonic ‘democracy’, where men and not kings subservient to God would rule the world according to their own laws. Cromwell, who committed untold atrocities against the Catholic Irish, was a champion of what he called ‘religious liberty,’ but this liberty did not include traditional Catholicism and certainly not the traditional Latin Mass which he hated, a policy identical with that pertaining within the Modernist Churchmen of post Vatican II.
The Parish Priest of Knock at the time was Archdeacon Cavanagh, a saintly man, full of devotion to Our Lady and her Immaculate Conception. Knock, a barren place, poor in earthly goods, but rich in grace and good works, was a fitting place for a message from heaven. In May of 1879, Fr Cavanagh began a novena of 100 Masses for the souls in Purgatory, the final Mass being said on the morning of the day that the vision appeared. Not known to many and hardly ever broached is the fact that in Mayo at the time, Fɾҽҽmαsσɳɾყ was active. It has been written that a group of Freemasons from Foxford had planned to ambush Fr Cavanagh and cut off his ears on the day he finished his century of Masses.
Fascinating and wonderful as the actual events of the sighting were, space does not permit a complete account. We can say the sensational events of the day saved Fr Cavanagh ears, but as divine Providence would have it this saintly priest was not to witness the vision. A reason for this could be to save the vision from accusations of being conjured up by a priest so pious and spiritual that the world may not have believed it. Instead it was to be witnessed by a group of people, of all agers, the likes of which could be found anywhere. Such a group could not be said to have had illusions, nor could a motive for any conspiracy be levelled at them. Great miracles later gave final witness to its authenticity.
To whom was it Addressed?St John the Baptist Church had an inscription on the west wall that read:
‘My house shall be called the house of prayer to all nations. This is the gate of the Lord: the just shall enter into it.’
Knock then was a link ‘to all nations.’ There was also something unique as regards those that witnessed it. Unlike the Marion apparitions of the times, messages confined to one, two or three persons, usually children, eighteen people were granted the sight at Knock, aged between six and seventy-five. Here is a second sign that the vision was meant for the special attention of all those that would heed it.
Delving back into history we find that in response to Cromwell’s campaign to destroy the Christian Kingdom of Ireland, the Catholic Ecclesiastical Congregation of the Kingdom of Ireland met at Clonmacnoise on the 4th of December 1649, and issued a Motu Proprio, warning Catholics not to be deceived by those supposedly acting in the name of God. Given the universal nature of a proprio motu, i.e., a message for ‘all nations’, we feel there is a continuity and connection between the three elements mentioned here.
If there is an interest in more I will post it.