Deepertruth: Journey With Mary as we Travel back with her to 40 A.D. Spain

Our Lady of the Pillar (officially in Spanish, Nuestra Señora del Pilar de Zaragoza,) is recognized as the first Marian apparition in the history of Christianity and is the only one that happened while the Virgin Mary was still alive.

Although it was technically a bilocation of Our Lady, because she was living with John the Apostle in Jerusalem, it is still regarded as an apparition by the tradition of the Church.

According to tradition, James the Greater, brother of Saint John the Evangelist, traveled with great effort to Roman Hispania (modern-day Spain) to evangelize the local tribes.  

He not only confronted great difficulties but he also saw very little apostolic fruits of conversion. Tradition says that when he was at his lowest point of discouragement, in A.D. 40, while he was sitting by the banks of the Ebro river in Zaragoza (back then known as Caesaraugusta) Mary appeared to him accompanied by thousands of angels, to console and encourage him.