Tradition has it that St James the Greater, brother of St John the Evangelist, travelled to Spain, to evangelise the local tribes. He not only faced great difficulties getting there, but he saw very little apostolic fruits of conversion.
When he was at his lowest point of discouragement, in AD 40, he was sitting by the banks of the River Ebro with some of his disciples, Mary appeared to him accompanied by thousands of angels, to console and encourage him.
The Virgin Mary, with the Child Jesus in her arms, asked Saint James and his disciples to build a church on the site, promising that “it will stand from that moment until the end of time in order that God may work miracles and wonders through my intercession for all those who place themselves under my patronage.”
Our Lady is also said to have given a small wooden statue to St James, and left behind a jasper pillar to mark the spot where she appeared. The wooden statue is a relatively simple image 12.7cms in height, the jasper pillar is 1.7526 metres tall.
The Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar in Zaragoza, is the first church dedicated to Mary in history and it remains standing to this day, having survived invasions and wars.
During the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) the communists dropped three bombs from an airplane, the bombs tore through the roof, hit the floor, but none of them exploded. The three now deactivated bombs are currently on display in one of the Basilica’s walls.
Our Lady of the Pillar is recognised as the first Marian apparition in the history of Christianity and is the only one that happened while the Virgin Mary was still alive. It was technically a bilocation of Our Lady, because she was living at that time with St John in Jerusalem.