“Mary, make us more like your Son.”
Bishop Niall Coll of Raphoe, in his homily at KnockOn the last Sunday of September the Legion of Mary made its annual pilgrimage to Knock, and the shrine in County Mayo filled with legionaries. The banners of curiae from all over the country were carried across the grounds, Our Lady’s statue was borne in procession ahead of the clergy, and the Basilica of Our Lady, Queen of Ireland, was full for Mass at three o’clock. Bishop Niall Coll of Raphoe preached.
It was at the gable wall of the old parish church, on a wet August evening in 1879, that fifteen people of the village saw Our Lady, with St Joseph and St John the Evangelist, and a lamb on an altar before a cross. They watched for two hours in the rain, and Our Lady said nothing. The Bishop came back to that silence in his homily: Mary “does not draw attention to herself. She points beyond herself to Christ.”
Between the Mass and the journey home there was time for the quiet of the Apparition Chapel and the Adoration Chapel, and for the shrine’s treasures: the Golden Rose that Pope St John Paul II brought for the centenary in 1979, and the rosary Pope Francis gave when he prayed there in 2018. Our thanks to everyone who organised the day, and to every legionary who made the journey.
