APPARITION. – A supernatural and sensible manifestation by which a spiritual or corporeal object becomes present to the external or internal senses. The apparition is correlative to the vision (v.), and the two terms are often used interchangeably. St Augustine (Contra Adimantum, final chapter: PL 42, 171; De Genesi ad Litteram, XII, 6 ff.; PL 34, 458 ff.) distinguishes visions as corporeal, imaginative, and intellectual: strictly speaking, only visions of the first two categories correspond to an apparition. A phenomenon belonging to the sensible order, the apparition is predominantly a manifestation of a visual order. Touch too is involved in an apparition, insofar as it serves to verify and reinforce the objectivity of the manifestations reported by sight. And since sight and touch are the two senses that most directly convey objective reality, in an apparition there arises what modern writers call the “sense of presence.” Whoever experiences an apparition, that is, is convinced of being in immediate contact with the object that has manifested itself to him, and not of merely undergoing its more or less distant influence or of finding himself only before an image or representation of II. According to what is reported by the great mystics who have experienced them, for example St Teresa (Vita, 28), this sense of presence is also proper to
imaginative apparitions and precisely constitutes their difference from the mere representations of the imagination.
Because of the differing authority by which they are attested, and therefore because of the differing faith they merit, apparitions are distinguished as biblical and extra-biblical. The former are guaranteed by the very authority of God, the principal author of Sacred Scripture, and therefore must be believed with full and certain faith. The latter, on the other hand, rest upon documents or ordinary testimony; and consequently they are to be accorded the degree of faith merited by the documents or testimonies.
The biblical apparitions are effected by God (v. ANGELO DI JAMNIEH; TROFANIA) or by the angels; the angel Raphael appears to Tobiah and accompanies him on his journey (Tob. 5, 5-12, 22); Gabriel appears to Zechariah (Lc. 1, 8-22), and to Mary (Lc. 1, 26-38); an angel appears several times to St Joseph (Mt. 1, 20; 2, 13); the angels announce the birth of Jesus to the shepherds (Lc. 2, 8-15); an angel comforts Jesus in the agony of Gethsemane (Lc. 22, 43); an angel announces the resurrection of Jesus to the devout women (Mt. 28, 2-5); an angel appears to the centurion Cornelius (Act. 10, 3), etc. Others are effected by the dead, whether risen or not: Oniah and Jeremiah appeared to Judas Maccabeus (II Mach. 15, 11-16); Moses appeared to the apostles on Tabor (Mt. 17, 3); after the resurrection of Jesus, many of the dead came out of their tombs and appeared to many people in Jerusalem (Mt. 27, 53); the risen Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene (Mc. 16, 9), then to St Peter (Lc. 24, 33), to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus (Lc. 24, 15), to the apostles gathered in the upper room (Mc. 16, 14; Mt. 28, 17; Io. 20, 19), to Saul on the road to Damascus (Act. 9, 3-7), etc.
Most biblical apparitions are narrated as perceived by the external senses; there are, however, also apparitions to the internal senses, or imaginative apparitions, to which are connected the dreams in which the divine will is revealed (II Mach. 15, 11; Mt. 1, 20; 2, 13).
After revelation had been closed with the end of the apostolic age, the Lord or the Virgin, angels or demons or saints often appeared, as ancient and recent history and hagiography attest. The apparitions of Paray-le-Monial, Lourdes, La Salette, and Fatima are known to all. The lives of the saints, moreover—for example, those of St Teresa, St Margaret Mary, the saintly Curé d’Ars, and St Gemma Galgani—report at length the many apparitions experienced by these privileged souls. In the Middle Ages there was a whole flowering of Eucharistic apparitions, within the framework of many other miracles centered on the Eucharist (cf. P. Browe, Die eucharistischen Wunder des Mittelalters, Breslavia 1938).
The Catholic liturgy has consecrated the memory of some of these apparitions by instituting special feasts: thus, on 11 February, it celebrates the apparition of Our Lady of Lourdes; on 8 May, the apparition of St Michael on Mount Gargano. The origin of other feasts, too, is connected with an apparition, as, for example, the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes (11 February), of Our Lady of Mercy (24 September), of the Sacred Heart, etc. With the recognition granted by the Church, such apparitions impose themselves in a particular way upon the belief of the faithful: not as articles of faith, but as historical facts whose authenticity, given the extreme prudence of the Church in admitting them, cannot reasonably be doubted.
With regard to apparitions on which the Church has expressed no judgment, every assessment must be subordinated to certain criteria: a historical criterion (whether, through the study of the documents and testimonies, the alleged apparition can be shown actually to have taken place), a psychological criterion (whether, through examination of the subject’s intellectual, moral, and psychic condition, hallucination is or is not excluded [v.]), and a theological criterion (whether the alleged apparition is due to divine intervention or to occult forces of nature or demonic forces [V. SPIRITISMO]).
One who experiences apparitions is convinced of being in direct contact with the person who appears to him. But is the reality manifested to the seer the objective reality of the person himself, who becomes present in the apparition, or is it something different, although sensible and therefore real?
The question is, in certain respects, a matter of debate among theologians. It is agreed that in theophanies it is not the essence of God that comes into relation with man’s senses; this is impossible because of God’s absolute spirituality, and he therefore manifests himself through some instrument. Analogously, the same is thought to apply to apparitions of angels and to those of saints or the dead, until the latter have taken up their bodies again. The discussion is therefore limited to the humanity of Jesus, as to whether, in the apparitions after his ascension into heaven, it was manifested in its corporeal reality; and to the Most Blessed Virgin, whose body is already glorified in heaven.
It is agreed that Jesus appeared to the Apostle Paul with his real body (I Cor. 9, 1), «corporaliter praesente» and not merely «aliqualiter apparente» (St Thomas, Sum. Theol., 3ª, 9, 57, a. 6 ad 3). Otherwise the apostle could not, on the basis of such apparitions, have proved the truth of the resurrection (I Cor. 15, 4-13).
With regard to the other apparitions, opinions differ. Theologians commonly admit that Jesus can leave heaven in order to make himself visible on earth in the reality of his body. Thus the Angelic Doctor writes: «Dignitati mansionis caelestis non derogat si ex aliqua dispensatione Christus quandoque corporaliter ad terram descendat» (ibid.). Beyond this possibility, certain theologians, such as Scotus and the Scotists, Suárez, and others, proceeding from the premise that the multilocation of bodies (v. BILOCAZIONE) is not repugnant, hold that, while remaining in heaven, the Lord can at the same time be locally present on earth with his body and thus make himself visible. For St Thomas and the Thomists, on the other hand, the hypothesis of the multilocation of a body entails intrinsic contradiction: «Ponere quod aliquod corpus sit localiter in hoc loco et tamen sit in alio loco, est ponere contradictoria simul» (Quodlib. 3, a. 2). They therefore explain the apparitions of the Lord either through the intervention of some physical element which, in a sensible and real form, represents the body of the Savior, or through an actual modification, produced by divine action, in the seer’s visual organ. Accordingly, when treating of Eucharistic apparitions—that is, when in the sacrament «apparet miraculose caro vel puer»—the Angelic Doctor does not hesitate to write that in them «non videtur propria species Christi, sed species miraculosa formata vel in oculis intuentium vel etiam in ipsis sacramentalibus dimensionibus». And the reason is evident: «Corpus Christi non potest in propria specie videri nisi in uno loco» (Sum. Theol., 3ª, q. 76, a. 8, ad 2).
Analogously to those of the Lord, the apparitions of the Virgin are also explained. However, the fact that in the various apparitions Our Lady appears now in one form and now in another seems to confirm that it is not her true body that manifests itself, but only a sensible form representing II.