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Knock
Photo: Wikimedia Commons · Knock Shrine

Knock

A silent vision in the rain · Ireland

On a rainy evening in August 1879, in a poor village still marked by famine, fifteen people of all ages saw Mary, Joseph and John the Evangelist standing silently at the gable of their church, beside an altar with a lamb. The vision lasted about two hours, and not a word was spoken. People came to pray, and many reported healings. Today the old gable wall is protected by a glass chapel, beside a large basilica that Pope John Paul II visited in 1979.

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The witnesses later said the ground under the figures stayed dry, even though it was pouring.

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An inspiring story

A vision without words

What if God speaks without a single word?

On a rainy evening in August 1879, in a poor village in the west of Ireland, people saw a silent vision at the gable wall of their small church: Mary, Joseph, John, and an altar with a lamb. Fifteen people, from a six-year-old child to a woman of seventy-five, stood watching in the rain for about two hours. Nobody heard a word; no message was given. Why would that comfort them? Because in years of hunger and poverty they felt that heaven had not forgotten them. Being present was the message.

Knock became a place of pilgrimage. Sometimes the strongest comfort is not explanation, but presence.

Be still, and know that I am God.Psalm 46:10

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