Visions of Jesus and Mary - 19th Century Visions

19th Century Visions

Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich was an Augustinian nun who lived from 1774 to 1824 in Germany. She was bedridden as of 1813 and had visible stigmata which would reopen on Good Friday. She reported that since childhood she had visions in which she talked with Jesus, and the Holy See later came to accept her claims. In 1819 the poet Clemens Brentano was inspired to visit her and began to write her visions in his words, with her approval. In 1833, after her death, the book The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ was released by Brentano and was used in part by Mel Gibson for his movie The Passion of the Christ in 2004. In 1852 the book The Life of The Blessed Virgin Mary was published. Anne Catherine Emmerich's visions allegedly led to the discovery of the house in which the Virgin Mary lived in Ephesus, Turkey, prior to the Assumption of Mary. She also had visions of the future Catholic Church being undermined by political forces and Freemasonry from within the Catholic Church's own hierarchy. The remedies she saw for the protection of the Catholic Church were the Holy Rosary and Eucharistic Adoration.

In 1820, Joseph Smith, Jr., founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, reported that the Father and the Son appeared to him in a vision in the woods near his home in rural New York. This led to a series of other manifestations through which he claimed to receive divine instruction, authority, and power to restore the true Church of Jesus Christ to the world.

In 1843 Sister Marie of St Peter, a Carmelite nun in Tours France reported visions of conversations with Jesus and the Virgin Mary in which she was urged to spread the devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus, in reparation for the many insults Jesus suffered in his Passion. This resulted in the Golden Arrow Prayer. The devotion was further spread from Tours partly by the efforts of the Venerable Leo Dupont (also called the Apostle of the Holy Face) and influenced Saint Therese of Lisieux.

In 1858 Saint Bernadette Soubirous was a 14-year-old shepherd girl who lived near the town of Lourdes in France. One day she reported a vision of a miraculous Lady who identified Herself as the Virgin Mary in subsequent visions. In the first vision she was asked to return again and she had 18 visions overall. According to Saint Bernadette, the Lady held a string of Rosary beads and asked Saint Bernadette to drink water from the spring nearby and to request that the local priests build a chapel at that site of the visions. Eventually, a number of chapels and churches were built at Lourdes as the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes - which is now a major Catholic pilgrimage site. One of these churches, the Basilica of St. Pius X can accommodate 25 thousand people and was dedicated by the future Pope John XXIII when he was the Papal Nuncio to France.

In 1866 Venerable Marie Martha Chambon began to report visions of Jesus telling her to contemplate the Holy Wounds, although it is said that she had received her first vision when only five years old. She was a member of the Monastery of the Visitation Order who lived in Chambéry, France, and is in the process of canonization by the Roman Catholic Church.

In 1899 Saint Gemma Galgani reported a vision of Jesus after which she experienced recurring stigmata. She reported the vision as follows: “At that moment Jesus appeared with all his wounds open, but from these wounds there no longer came forth blood, but flames of fire. In an instant these flames came to touch my hands, my feet and my heart.” Thereafter she reported receiving the stigmata every week from Thursday night to Saturday morning, during which time she also reported further conversations with Jesus. The Congregation of Rites has so far refrained from making a decision on her stigmata.