Anecdotes about the Virgin Mary

"The coming in mortal flesh of the Virgin of Pilar"

Zaragoza (Spain) (40 AD)

According to tradition, the Pilarists recount that on the night of January 2nd in the year 40, the Apostle James the Greater was discouraged on the banks of the Ebro River, in the Roman city of Caesaraugusta, present-day Zaragoza, due to the meager results of his preaching in Hispania. Suddenly, he heard angels singing "Hail Mary."

Then, according to the account, he saw the Virgin Mary, still alive in Palestine, appearing to him "in mortal flesh" standing on a jasper column. She asked him to build a church there, with the altar around that pillar, and promised her protection over the place and all who invoked her. When the vision disappeared, the jasper pillar remained, becoming the heart of the city's first Christian community.

To be honest, there is no document from the first century that recounts this apparition. The tradition has been attested since the Middle Ages (there are 13th-century manuscripts that already mention it), and the Church accepts it and promotes devotion, without defining it as dogma or as a historical fact of obligatory faith. What is documented, however, is the ancient Marian devotion in that place on the banks of the Ebro River.

Even today, on the 2nd of each month, the image is displayed without its cloak, revealing the jasper column that the faithful kiss at the back of the shrine; and on the night of January 1st to 2nd, a special ceremony is held to commemorate that Coming.