Today is the Feast of Our Lady of Knock. Mayo may not have Sam, but they have Mary, the Blessed Mother, in a rather unique way.
On the 21st of August 1879, thirty years after the famine in a small rural village the she appeared in silence, accompanied by St. Joseph and St. John. Unlike other apparitions across Europe and indeed the world no words were spoken. It was if this vision paid attention to what lay beyond as Mary’s eyes were focused heaven-ward in the two hour period that the vision lasted. Fifteen villagers claimed to have witnessed the event, the eldest was 74 years of age the youngest was five and his name was John Curry. He had to be lifted up by his 11 year old cousin to see what he referred to as the ‘grand babies’. At the first inquiry he said he had to stand on the wall to see ‘the grand things and the lights’.
Even though there was a priest in the nearby house yet again Mary seems to preserve a space for ordinary people in her apparitions. It’s as one theologian who studied the phenomenon at Knock said, ‘A moment of solidarity, of accompaniment. The Irish people have suffered, and we’re going to be out here in the rain with you for a while’.
Like many in Mayo John had to leave Ireland for work and he settled in New York. He was a hospital attendant in City Hospital in what is now called Roosevelt Island. He never married and those who met him said he was ‘a good respectable man’. Like all the witnesses who emigrated, they were neglected when further investigations were done. At fifty eight years of age, according to his nephew recollections, he retired to a home run by the Little Sisters of the Poor for those who had little resources. It was on 70th Street in Long Island where he helped clean the dining room every evening and assisted at the daily mass.
The second major investigation went in search of the witnesses and one day after a few years, one of the sisters asked if he was from Co Mayo and, if so, had he ever heard of a John Curry from Knock? In a letter he wrote afterwards he said that he said ‘yes, he is the John Curry that serves mass for you in the Home every morning.’
He was summoned before the investigation where he said that ‘I seen the Blessed Virgin, St. Joseph and St. John the Evangelist on the gable of the church’. Curry went into much deeper detail than he had when questioned as a boy a half-century earlier. He said he had seen an altar and a lamb, although he could not recall whether the lamb had been on the altar or in St. Joseph’s arms. St. Joseph had whiskers, he said, and St. John held a book. He also acknowledged having read the statements of two other witnesses just before coming into the hearing, but said: ‘What I gave you here was out of my head and not out of any book.’ When asked whether he had anything else to add, Curry said: “I have never been sick a day in my life. I have a great memory. Sister can tell you that. The only time I paid a doctor was to have a tooth pulled.”
John died in 1943 at the age of 68. He was the last official visionary of Knock and he was buried in a communal grave owned by the Sisters – he had no headstone.
In 2015 Cardinal Dolan of New York visited Knock with 180 pilgrims and the present parish priest told him that one of the visionaries of Knock was buried in an unmarked grave in Long Island. Less than two years later, John was reinterned in the Old Saint Patrick’s Cemetery in Manhattan, not the Fifth Avenue Saint Patrick’s the one that preceeded it – in the Italian Quarter.
Maybe this is not the news we want to hear. Maybe we think that someone who saw the Blessed Virgin should have come good on the lotto or even have helped Mayo win Sam again. In the eyes of the world he maybe didn’t come to much – but he didn’t need too because as he said himself ‘I seen the Blessed Virgin, St. Joseph and St. John the Evangelist on the gable of the church’. What more do you need to see in life – we only hope to see something like this when we go to God.
Our first reading today puts it quite beautifully:
‘Come and eat my bread, the wine I have prepared! Leave your folly and you will live, walk in the ways of perception.’
John Curry got a glimpse – he never spoke about it, never made anything of it but he lived the message of ‘This is the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Happy are we who are called to His supper’.
I’ve visited his grave in New York – it’s a beautiful place – it beats Times Square any day.