Bringing Light Into a World of Darkness
How Jesus Honors His Mother—and Why It Matters
Genesis 3:15: The First Promise of Redemption
The First Marian Apparition (40 AD): What Happened?
THOUGHT FOR TODAY
Death is really the mystery which reveals our origin, and life is the scenery which conceals the mystery. Jesus awaits for us in our death, to show us eternal life.”
Jesus tells us we get to choose whether or not we’ll spend eternity with Him: “Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes Him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life”
February 25, 2026, Message to Marija, Medjugorje, Apparition
John 5:24
April 25, 2026 Annual Message to Mirjana, Our Lady of Medjugorje
“Dear children, I am praying for you and encourage you to a new life, a life in joy and prayer. May the Holy Spirit fill you, little children, with joy so that you may be like a spring of pure and drinkable water; that you, little children, may be in God and with God missionaries of love and peace. Your life is short here on earth and that is why I am with you to lead you towards Heaven. Thank you for having responded to my call.” (With ecclesiastical approval)
Our Lady continues to give messages to six people from the village of Medjugorje: Ivan, Jakov, Marija, Mirjana, Vicka, and Ivanka. These six people (referred to as “visionaries”) have received apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary since June 24, 1981. In addition to Her public messages, Our Lady is to give each of the six visionaries a total of ten “secrets” of happenings that will occur on earth in the near future. Some of the secrets pertain to the whole world while others concern the visionaries themselves or the local village. Only one of the secrets has so far been revealed by the visionaries. In the third secret Our Lady has promised to leave a supernatural, indestructible, and visible sign on the mountain where she first appeared. Our Lady said: “This sign will be given for the atheists. You faithful already have signs and you have become the sign for the atheists. You faithful must not wait for the sign before you convert; convert soon. This time is a time of grace for you. You can never thank God enough for His grace. The time is for deepening your faith, and for your conversion. When the sign comes, it will be too late for many.”
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Blessings to All:
Jesus Honor His Mother, Mary- And Why It Matters
In Gospel of Matthew 5:17–19, Jesus teaches that not even the smallest part of the law will pass away until everything is fulfilled. He upholds the moral principles of the Ten Commandments while deepening their meaning—extending them beyond outward actions to include inner attitudes, such as condemning hatred and lust.
One point that is sometimes overlooked is that Jesus honored His mother, Mary. The commandment to “honor your father and mother” is one of the Ten Commandments. As someone who perfectly fulfilled the law, Jesus would have kept this commandment, including honoring His mother.
If Jesus honored His mother, then it is reasonable to ask whether we should also follow His example. This is why Catholics honor Mary. Catholics do not worship her; rather, they give her a unique place of honor within the life and teaching of the Church.
Some non-Catholics object that practices like praying the Rosary are not biblical or may border on idolatry. However, the Rosary is deeply rooted in Scripture and is, at its heart, a prayer asking for Mary’s intercession—her prayers on our behalf. In everyday life, people often ask friends, family members, or pastors to pray for them. Catholics do something similar when they ask for Mary’s prayers.
Mary’s role in salvation history is also significant. She played a unique part by freely saying “yes” to God’s plan to become the Mother of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Thus fulfilling Genisis 3:15. Catholics believe that she received a special grace—being preserved from original sin—so that she could worthily bear the Son of God.
Just as Adam and Eve were created without sin but fell and brought separation from God, Mary and Jesus lived without the stain of sin. Where the disobedience of the first parents contributed to humanity’s fall, Mary’s faithful “yes,” together with Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross, is part of the story through which salvation was brought to the world.
At the same time, it is important to be clear: Mary is not our Savior—only Jesus Christ holds that role. Yet Mary was honored by God the Father and by her Son to be the instrument through which the Savior entered the world.
For this reason, Catholics honor Mary as our spiritual mother and as the Mother of the Church. In honoring her, they seek not to take anything away from Christ, but to more fully appreciate the way God chose to bring salvation into the world—and to follow Christ’s example in honoring His mother.
Genesis 3:15: The First Promise of Redemption
Nowhere in Christian history, do we find a more appropriate response from God to Satan, than in Genisis 3:15. “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; They will strike at your head, while you strike at their heel.
The word “enmity” means intense hostility. This is a hostility expressly established by God, which has a unique importance, due to Our Blessed Mothers Immaculate Holiness. Mary was given the privilege of being conceived without sin in order to be the irreconcilable enemy of the serpent and his offspring. This fits perfectly into the true meaning of Genesis 3:15. She has no sin in her and is therefore Immaculate before God. She is the New Eve, and her offspring is Jesus, the New Adam. From her very conception to her birth and until her Assumption, she was never under Satan’s power.
One of the early Church Fathers picked up on Mary being the New Eve. Around the year 155 A.D. St. Justin Martyr wrote that the Holy Scriptures teaches us concerning Christ: “‘that He became Man by the Virgin so that the course which was taken by disobedience in the beginning through the agency of the serpent, might be also the very course by which it would be put down. For Eve, a virgin and undefiled, conceived the word of the serpent, and bore disobedience and death. But the Virgin Mary received faith and joy when the angel Gabriel announced to her the glad tidings that the Spirit of the Lord would come upon her, and she would conceive a Son. And her son would be called the Son of God. And she replied: ‘Be it done unto me according to thy word.'”
St. Justin Martyr therefore parallels the Virgin Mary with the Virgin Eve. Just as the word of the serpent bore fruit through the Virgin Eve, so the ‘Word’ of God came into the world through the Virgin Mary. Eve believed the word of an evil angel and death was brought into the world, while Mary believed the word of a good angel and Life Himself was brought into the world.
Our Protestant friends grant that Mary was given a special purpose to be the mother of Jesus. but somehow miss the true meaning of Genesis 3:15. God was very direct in his words to the Serpent. Jesus would be born through a sinless woman, Full of Grace, as pronounced by the angel Gabriel. No sin would be found in her. Never under Satan’s power, not even from conception.
This was assured by God’s own words in Genesis 3:15. Jesus would come to the world through the sinless womb of Mary. A perfect New Eve, without sin and obedient to God, from the instant of her conception. Therefore, the Church acknowledges this in her title as the Immaculate Conception.
Many Protestants today are simply unaware that the early Reformers—Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Ulrich Zwingli—honored Mary’s perpetual virginity and saw it as rooted in Scripture. This appreciation has continued among later Protestant voices, including J. B. Lightfoot, Timothy George, Beverly Gaventa, David Yeago, and Max Thurian. Even where they do not practice asking for Mary’s intercession, many of these figures—both the Reformers themselves and those who followed—spoke of her with deep respect, honoring her as a model of faith and recognizing the spiritual value of contemplating her faithful “yes” to God. Amen.
The First Marian Apparition in Church History: Our Lady of the Pillar
Author: Gretchen Filz, Church & Faith
There is a battle going on for souls. Please be a part of God’s plan of asking for His grace, through Jesus Christ, to protect your children, no matter how old they are. Pray every day, even if you don’t see any improvement in your children that may have lost their way. No prayer is wasted. We are all part of the battle that is raging around the world. The only remedy is through prayer. For this battle is a spiritual battle. And the stakes cannot be any higher. For God is reaching out to you to pray and be examples. The devil is present in the world, like no other time in history. You can identify those that follow him, for they have no respect for life in the womb and are found especially in government parties which support division and the killing of babies.
The Story of Our Lady of the Pillar
After Pentecost, the 12 Apostles dispersed to preach the Gospel all over the world. St. James the Greater, on one of his apostolic journeys, preached in the Iberian Peninsula in modern-day Spain.
St. James was discouraged that the pagans of that land were not responding to the Gospel and converting to Christianity. He had only a handful of converts to show for his labors. In the face of what he thought was failure in his mission, he prayed with his disciples by the Ebro river in modern day Zaragoza.
To bring him consolation, while she was still alive and living in Jerusalem, Our Lady appeared to him and his disciples atop a pillar of jasper stone carried by angels, while holding a smaller wooden statue of herself holding the Christ Child. The date was October 12 in the year 40 AD.
According to one account, Our Lady had previously promised St. James that she would come to his aid when he needed it the most. In fact, it was she who sent James into that region of the Roman Empire to tell the people of Hispania about her Son, Jesus. And then, in his most desolate hour, when he was considering leaving his mission field, she comes to his rescue.
The Mother of God told St. James not to worry, that the people to whom he preached would not only be converted, but they would one day have faith as strong as the pillar on which she stood.
She gave the pillar and the statue to St. James and asked that a church be built on the spot in her honor, using the two items for the altar.
“This place is to be my house, and this image and column shall be the title and altar of the temple that you shall build… and the people of this land will honor greatly my Son Jesus.”After asking for her church to be built, she gave another promise that,
“It will stand from that moment until the end of time in order that God may work miracles and wonders through my intercession for all those who place themselves under my patronage.”
St. James built a small chapel as Our Lady requested, by the Ebro river in Zaragoza, Spain, the first known Marian shrine in history. It became known as Our Lady of the Pillar, or Nuestra Señora del Pilar. The chapel was replaced by larger churches over the centuries; the present stunning basilica being erected in the 17th century.
The statue and pillar have been preserved in the basilica just as they were given to St. James almost 2000 years ago (see below photo). Amazing! The pillar is now covered in an embossed metal covering, but behind the altar a portion of the pillar is exposed for veneration.
In the same vision Our Lady also recalled St. James to Jerusalem, where he met his martyrdom in 44 AD. His remains were taken by his followers back to Compostela, Spain, where a chapel was built in his honor. The chapel was later replaced by the famous Santiago de Compostela Cathedral, the most visited Catholic pilgrimage destination outside of Rome and the Holy Land.
Connection to Columbus Day…The Rest of the Story
Christopher Columbus, the Italian Catholic explorer, sailed the Atlantic under the banner of the Catholic King and Queen of Spain on his three ships, the Nina (“Little Girl”), the Pinta (“Painted One”), and the Santa Maria (“Holy Mary”), which in hindsight can be seen as a foreshadowing of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Interestingly, the flagship of Christopher Columbus, the Santa Maria, had a full name of Santa Maria de la Inmaculada Concepcion (Holy Mary of the Immaculate Conception). The U.S. bishops declared Mary under her title of the Immaculate Conception as the patroness of America in 1846.
After going a long time without seeing land, Columbus promised his anxious crewman that if they did not have landfall in their sight by the October 12th, 1492 feast of Our Lady of the Pillar, so dear to the Spanish people, they would turn course and sail back to Spain. On October 12th, 1492 they sighted land, and claimed the New World first for Jesus Christ, and next for the Spanish crown. Yes, America belongs to Our Lady!
Our Lady of the Pillar Fast Facts
Our Lay of the Pillar is the first known apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
It is also the only known apparition of Our Lady prior to her Assumption into heaven.
The Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar in Zaragosa, Spain, is the first church dedicated to the Virgin Mary.
Our Lady of the Pillar is the patroness of Spain and all Hispanic People.
The first known apparition of Our Lady, and her first church, were entrusted to the Spanish people.
The church has remained in the same location after fires, wars, and disasters over the centuries. Three bombs were dropped on the basilica during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939; miraculously, none of them exploded.
A nine-day festival, Fiestas del Pilar, is celebrated in Zaragoza every year in her honor. It is a national holiday in Spain that coincides with the commemoration of the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas in 1492, i.e. Columbus Day.
Christopher Columbus found and claimed the New World for Spain on October 12, 1492, the feast of Our Lady of the Pillar.
