By George T. Montague, S.M.

The Holy Spirit endows the church with charismatic gifts, among them the gift of prophecy. In the New Testament prophecy includes a wide range of manifestations, not only speaking an inspired word to the community but also voicing an inspired praise of God. Thus Zechariah’s Benedictus is an act of prophecy (Luke 1:67). This would apply with even greater reason to Mary’s Magnificat. Prophecy, like the other charisms, is a permanent endowment of the church, and thus we should expect to see it in our day as much as in the early church.

It can take on many forms, including what has come to be called "private revelations." This classification is made to distinguish them from the public revelation given to the church through the Scriptures and tradition. The lines of distinction between the two are often drawn in terms of obligation: public revelation entails an obligation of saving faith; private revelations, even when approved by the church, bear no such obligation. However valid, I believe this is an unfortunate limitation of the phenomenon of private revelations.

Consider the enormous number of conversions that have happened at Medjugorje, to say nothing of the eight million conversions that followed the apparitions of Mary to Juan Diego. Consider also the fact that most private revelations are simply proclamations of the public revelation, the gospels, in contemporary terms. That it seems, is exactly what Paul means by prophecy in the church—the ongoing, Spirit-inspired proclamation of the here-and-now meaning of the gospel.

The person who appears most frequently in these private revelations, at least for those in this century, is Mary. In the Marian apparitions, part of that prophetic, here-and-now meaning, is the visual inculturation of the messenger, Mary. Her form and facial characteristics appear quite differently according to the time and place of her apparitions. In Tepeyac she appears as a mestiza, in Lourdes as a French woman, in Medjugorje as a Croatian. Surely the historical Mary does not have all these characteristics, and if we think of her as appearing in her actual historical form, we are faced with enormous difficulties.

On the other hand, how to explain that this is indeed Mary, the mother of Jesus? It seems to me that if we understand the Marian apparitions as the work of the Holy Spirit there is no problem. The Holy Spirit wishes to communicate the presence of Mary as mother of the visionaries, or at least as someone close enough to engage a loving identification. Thus the Holy Spirit is an artist, and he does for the visionaries what every artist does in representing Mary according to local ethnicity and culture. Authentic Marian apparitions are an instance of ongoing prophecy in the church, a special charism of the Holy Spirit.

In any case, it is important that prophetic signs and revelations be seen for what they are meant to be, not titillation of taste for the unusual, but a call for ongoing growth and transformation. While not losing the uniqueness of the charismatic experience, the Life in the Spirit manuals needs to develop these dimensions more adequately. The richness of the Catholic faith includes many dimensions, which the Holy Spirit inspires and Mary supports humanly.

Let us resolve or at least mitigate the tensions between the charismatic and the Marian movements. They could learn much from each other. The Life in the Spirit seminars, for example, could be enriched by showing Mary as the model of response to the Holy Spirit. This might make the seminar and the Baptism in the Holy Spirit more palatable to traditional Catholics who fear the charismatic movement is a Protestant thing. Seeking to follow the movements of the Holy Spirit in the company of Mary could temper some of the extremes to which some Charismatics are prone. The Marian movement could be greatly enriched by a better understanding of the role of the Holy Spirit, not only in his relational and sanctifying roles, but also in his charismatic power.

It is hardly newsworthy to observe that in the last quarter of this century the most rapidly spreading renewal movements in the Catholic Church have been the charismatic and the Marian movements. Estimates of the number of Catholic Charismatics alone are now in the 80 million ranges, and while the movement seems to have plateaued in the developed countries, it is continuing to expand with explosive force in the Third World. At the same time no century has seen the explosion of Marian devotion and proliferation of Marian groups as had happened recently. Recent research by the Marian Library indicated that the number of identifiable Medjugorje groups (that is, groups that are known because of their newsletters or other national, public outreach) is over one hundred, and this says nothing of the scores of local, informal Medjugorje groups. Of course, that figure would not include such other groups as the Blue Army, The Fatima Crusade, the Legion of Mary, the Sodalities of Our Lady, whose numbers would easily surpass the more recent Medjugorje groups.

When we turn to reported Marian apparitions, the same phenomenon is occurring. I recall a report that over 200 claims of apparitions have been reported to the Vatican. Some of the more recent ones, such as Betania and Akita, have received at least initial approval of the local bishop. Furthermore, in the past five years, Mary has hit the secular bookstores in several different volumes, and Life Magazine, which devoted an entire issue to Mary, remarked, "Two thousand years after the Nativity, the mother of Jesus is more beloved, powerful and controversial than ever." According to the University of Dayton Quarterly (1997), the Mary page web site on the Internet initiated by the Marian Library, had more than 60,000 "hits" during its first 18 months. (Editor’s note: There are several "charismatic" web pages. San Francisco’s, sfSpirit.com, which has gained international attention, had more than 92,000 hits during its first 8 months!)

Both of these movements, the charismatic and the Marian, are happening within the womb of the Catholic Church. Yet some charismatic groups have been wary of getting on the Marian bandwagon (they see the Marian movement taking the focus off Jesus and the charismatic gifts), and a number of Marian groups have a disdain for the charismatic renewal. The question is particularly acute in Latin America, where Pentecostalism has made rapid inroads in traditionally Catholic communities and many Catholics in response, fearing the Pentecostals' evangelizing success and disdaining the charismatic gifts, have clung to their Marian devotion almost defensively. Fortunately, this is not true universally, either in North or South America, but it raises the question not only of the relationship between these two movements, but more fundamentally of the respective roles of Mary and the Holy Spirit in building up the Body of Christ.

This article was condensed and compiled from "The Holy Spirit and Mary" by George T. Montague, S.M., a paper for the meeting of Diocesan Liaison, October 17-19, 1997, Seattle WA. Fr. Montague is a Marianist priest and professor of biblical theology at St. Mary’s University, San Antonio, Texas. He is the author of numbers of books on scripture, including his latest book Understanding the Bible, A Basic Introduction to Biblical Interpretation, Paulist Press (1997) ISBN 0-8091-3744-5.

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