The Great apparitions -- starting with Guadeloupe in 1531 -- occur with a steady and increasing drumbeat across the decades and centuries. The places and the principals involved change, but the messages calling people to turn from lives of violence and sin and to seek repentance are remarkably similar. By focusing on the most widely known and documented appearances and presenting them in chronological order, the events and the messages emerge in a powerful way. Swann shows how advances in science have placed the apparitions in a more intriguing light. One of the historic challenges concerning them was how could something which was not there be there in a way that registered on the eye mechanisms. The discovery of holography, where images that appear to be three-dimensional having bulk, shape and mass, images that can even be photographed, has provided an analogy that enlarges our perception of the physical laws and challenges the skeptics' verdict of hallucination. Catholic or not, religious or not, believer or not, this fascinating and compelling account of the appearances of Mary challenges readers to reflect on the messages and their possible consequences for our civilization and for our future.

"Who is she?" St. Juan Diego wonders. "Can this really be the Blessed Mother?" Sister Catherine Laboure gasps. Ordinary people encounter Mary in extraordinary ways in the nine separate apparition stories told here. Common to all is Mary's deep wish that w

An overview of the major apparitions of Mary throughout the course of history.

The Virgin Mary inspires intense religious devotion throughout the Roman Catholic world. This book explains the multi-faceted Mary, as represented through her appearances to humankind throughout the world.

Through the centuries and across the world, the Virgin Mary has appeared to ordinary people of every race and culture, from scholars to illiterates, from the devout to the unbelieving, from young children to the dying. In this exquisite and inspiring volume, Janice T. Connell chronicles authenticated Marian apparitions and messages Mary has brought from God--as mother, comforter, Queen of Angels, and Prophet of the Apocalypse. Drawn from scripture, legend, and never-before-published eyewitness accounts, these are personal stories--the author's own, and her interviews with other visionaries--filled with beauty, wonder, and joy. Meetings with Mary ranges from Elijah's vision of Mary eight hundred years before her birth to the world-famous children of Medjugorje in Bosnia, whose encounters with her began in 1981 and continue daily. Here also are lesser-known, deeply touching encounters with the Mother, from an office worker in Holland to a Japanese nun, from a Jewish banker in Rome to an awestruck crowd of visionaries, few of them Christians or of any other faith, in Egypt. Meetings with Mary asks also: as the millennium draws near, shadowed by disasters, disease, and brutal civil warfare, are Mary's frequent appearances a signal to the faithful? Perhaps she is calling us all to join her now on a voyage toward the eternal shores of peace, joy, and abiding love. . . . "[Connell is] passionate about prayer and sharing her love of Jesus' mother. . . . She has a way of simplifying complex theology." --Rocky Mountain News