The Silence of Knock

Today is the Feast Day of Our Lady of Knock. Knock is a silent apparition approved by the Church, and only the first apparition of 21 August 1879, has been approved. What strikes me about this apparition is that St. Mary, St. Joseph, and St. John the Apostle appeared with the Lamb of God on the altar, the symbol of Christ in the Eucharist. Christ, the Sacrificial Lamb, who takes away the sins of the world reveals a message to the Church in our time.

This is the Age of Eucharistic Adoration. This is the age of silent love.

This is why I want to have the house of adoration in Walsingham, which has not happened yet.

The silence of Mary and the saints at Knock, with the Lamb of God speaks louder to me than many messages from other apparitions.

Mary, Joseph and John were adoring the Sacrificial Lamb, the Vulnerable God in the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus. As usual, real visions of Mary point to Jesus.

Surely, in times of persecution, the awareness that one can move into the silence of contemplation in prayer, into the love of God, is an important message for us now.

The silence of Knock is the silence of love in a world howling with evil. 

I pray daily to be taken into the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus, to be one with the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sins of the world.

Silent Love.

It is too bad that so many of these modern shrines to Mary have hideous churches. The church at Knock, like the Catholic one at Walsingham, lacks any beauty and both resemble barns. It is too bad the national shrine committees could not get Duncan G. Stroik, or someone like him, to design the shrines.