Shrines around the World: Our Lady of the Pillar, Zaragoza

Where’s that: Zaragoza (or Saragossa) is located in northeastern Spain’s Aragon region.

Our Lady’s connection: The very first Marian apparition — to an Apostle!

Following Christ’s command to evangelise the nations, the Apostles set out on their missions throughout the known world. James the Greater, brother of John, went to Roman-occupied Iberia — today’s Spain and Portugal — to bring the Good News to that region. St James (in Spanish, Santiago) found unfertile ground in his mission, so he and his companions were dispirited.

Then, on the second day of the year 40 AD, as James stood on the banks of the Ebro river in Caesaraugusta (as the Romans called Zaragoza), the Blessed Virgin appeared to him upon a pillar of jasper and instructed him to use it to build a chapel: “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.” He did as he was told, and the Good News soon spread throughout Iberia. At the spot on which St James built that first chapel now stands the basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar.

The reputed column is still venerated in the 17th-century church. It is topped by a 15th-century statue of Mary, whose vestments, donated by Hispanic Catholics from around the world, are changed every day. Pilgrims can touch a small section of the pillar through the back of the chapel in which it is kept.

Devotees of Nuestra Senora del Pilar hold that this is not only the very first Marian apparition, but the only one during her lifetime. This idea is based on an investigation by the Holy See in 1723.

But Mary might have been assumed unto heaven by the time she is said to have appeared to St James. The ancient Transitus Mariae suggests that Mary was no older than 50 when she closed her eyes for the last time.

By that calculation, if one presumes that Mary was about 13 when she gave birth to Jesus, and that Jesus was born around 4 BC, then the Blessed Virgin was born around 17 BC. If she was indeed 50 years old when she passed on, then that might have been in the year 33, soon after the crucifixion of her Son.

We know that St James was executed in Jerusalem, as the city’s bishop, within four years of the apparition (Acts 12:2). But the absence of St James from the Acts of the Apostles might be due to his missionary absence in a remote territory, such as Iberia.

Whatever the integrity of the story of the first Marian apparition, it has left us with a magnificent church, decorated with paintings by Goya, on the banks of the Ebro.

Nuestra Señora del Pilar, or Our Lady of the Pillar, is the patroness of Spain and all Hispanic peoples. Her feast is on October 12.