Weeping Madonna
Here’s another one of these “miracles” which to me seems to have a strong Roman Catholic flavor. For the readers information, the Roman Catholic Church Rarely sticks its neck out and confirms these are in fact miracles. Then again, They don’t need to; everybody else jumps for the chance to do it for them.
Phil Scovell, sysop.
WEEPING MADONNA
. I drove thirty miles last week to see a painting weep. I came away not sure of what I saw, wondering about other things as well.
. St. Nicholas Albanian Orthodox Church sits in a bungalow community on the Northwest Side of Chicago, across the street from a shopping mall. Built in 1961, it seats only about 400 people. The vestibule is small, the aisles narrow. The place cramps the movement of hundreds who had come for a glimpse at a miracle.
. Father Philip Koufos, pastor of the church, first saw the sight on December 6, St. Nicholas’ Day.
. In Orthodox churches, a decorated wall, or iconostasis, partially conceals the altar from the congregation. Father Koufos and two parishioners had approached the wall to light votive candles. Among the images on the wall was an icon of the Virgin Mary holding the young Jesus, painted by a man named Kostas Yousis in 1961. He’d made the virgin’s eyes wide and sorrowful, in the manner of icons. But never before had Father Koufos noticed moisture there.
. “First I saw a long stream of wet coming out of the eyes down to the bottom of the icon. As we further examined it, we saw multiple sprays come down and exude from the hands…an actual squirting.”
. “I immediately fell on my face. My parishioners thought I had fainted…I was in shock. Then as I recovered myself, we looked everywhere to see if water was coming down from the ceiling.” They found nothing but the wet, staring eyes of the Madonna.
. The pastor tried to keep the matter quiet, but the story spread out of the tiny church onto TV screens and into newspapers. Now here were hundreds of people, men and women from all over the city, come to see the weeping icon.
. I hesitated to move toward the painted wonder near the altar. A Protestant, I feared I might make some error of protocol and give offense. A black man, I didn’t know how the Greeks and Turks and Slavs might react to me. Then there was the icon itself. I wanted to think a bit, to talk to some who’d seen it before I went forward. I wanted to do a little praying. Even before seeing it, the thing frightened me.
. They did not resent my presence. They stared, not at me, but at my notebook, as if it were magical. “Are you with Channel Five?” they asked. “Are you with the Sun-Times?”
. A Catholic woman tells me that her rosary beads turned from blue to green as she drove to the church. Another Catholic woman sits and talks to me. “Mary is weeping,” she says, “because we’re hurting her son.” These two have no doubts.
. Another woman in a red parka is more skeptical. “It’s over by the hands. I didn’t see any by the eyes. I would have to examine it closer. It looked like a streak of varnish to me.”
. There are a few blacks here. One of them, a South Sider, takes me aside to say that a calendar had miraculously appeared in his Bible, a calendar which had predicted the weeping icon, and foretold that the wonder would cease on December 15. His church had rejected him, he said; they thought he was crazy.
. I had not yet seen the picture. I put away my notebook and joined the line. I did not have long to wait; the crowd had thinned a little.
. The virgin’s eyes were dry when I approached her, but the signs of moisture were there. Gleaming streaks ran from her face and hands down to the base of the icon, glowing in candlelight.
. “What does it mean?” I whispered.
. A guide grinned at me. “I don’t know. Maybe you’ll be the lucky one who tells us.”
. A TV reporter, shivering on the street, asked for my opinion. Instead I asked for his. “It’s Three-In-One oil on an oil painting. When the candles flicker the moisture seems to move.” He speaks with more fervor than anyone in the church. Perhaps it was the cold. “I’m a devout Christian, but I’m a reporter. I’ve learned to be skeptical.”
. So have I. Back at the office I called a group in Buffalo New York that checks out reports of supernatural events. They promised to send out an investigator and keep me posted. I’ll let you know what they discover.
. But suppose they can find no explanation for the icon’s tears? Is this a miracle, then? Or is it a natural event not yet comprehended by science? The trouble with the unexplained is precisely that it explains nothing.
. Is it any wonder that Christmas has become little more than a spending spree? Gifts, decorations, credit cards are all so easy to understand. It’s when we consider a virgin giving birth in a barn that the confusion starts. When the going gets tough, the confused go shopping.
. I crossed over from St. Nicholas to the shopping mall, a modernist cathedral fragrant with the scent of Japanese electronics and Hong Kong clothes. It was warm, well-lit. I felt safe there. I did a little shopping.
By Hiawatha Bray
Computers for Christ – Chicago