A Marian Apparition is a reported supernatural appearance by the Blessed Virgin Mary. The figure is often named after the town where it is reported, or on the sobriquet given to Mary on the occasion of the apparition. It manifests or appears without a warning and are often given religious connotations. Marian apparitions are sometimes reported that it reoccured at the same site over an extended period of time. Others say apparition is one which in a seer not only says that they have experienced a vision, but they expect it will reoccur, and people gather to observe. Most reported apparitions happened when an individual was alone, or at least no one else was aware of its occurrence.
An example of this is the Nuestra Señora de Aranzazu of San Mateo, Rizal - the Miraculous Lady on a Torn Tree. In the middle of the night during Typhoon Ondoy, the flood in San Mateo subsided and there was no electricity at that time. In total darkness, a man standing in front of his house saw huge image of Our Lady of Aranzazu. He saw her in a standing position, her crown was clear and her clothes was very bright. He called his wife and other relatives and they all saw the apparition of Our Lady.
Another example was during the construction of the Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage of Antipolo in the 1630s; the image would mysteriously vanish several times from its shrine, only to reappear atop a tipolo (breadfruit tree; Artocarpus incisa). This was taken as a celestial sign, and the church was relocated to where the tipolo tree stood. The image's pedestal is supposedly made from the trunk of that same tipolo tree, which also gave its name to Antipolo itself.
The Nuestra Señora de la Luz, also known as Our Lady of Light, was one of a kind venerated image in the country, for this image was painted by a renowned National Artist, Fernando Amorsolo. It is considered his only masterpiece that is venerated and is miraculous to the people of Cainta. The apparition story of the Our Lady of Light dates back from the 1700's when a Jesuit Priest Jose Antonio Genovese had a vision of the Virgin Mary. He was ordered to paint a representation of the apparition. The painting portrays the Blessed Virgin Mary wearing a white tunic with a blue veil, holding an infant Jesus and her grasping a wrist of a youth, lifting him away for the leviathan. Angels holding a crown above her and supporting her feet. When he completed the painting, the Virgin Mary appeared to him again for approval and blessed the painting. She told him that it would be a source of joy for all the world.
The Diocesan Shrine and Parish of Our Lady of the Abandoned in Marikina City itself are a testament of a religious controversy rooting back from Marikina's early history, wherein both the Jesuits and Augustinians fought over the ecclesiastical control of the area. One of the remarkable miracles of the parish is the one during the World War II when the city was bombarded by the Japanese army, but luckily, the bomb didn't explode and they added it as a miracle which was attributed to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
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