Our Lady of the Lost and Found Read online

  News of the popularity of Einsiedeln reaches not only the penitents. It eventually comes to the attention of the unscrupulous as well. Two criminally minded hoodlums from Zurich, Richard and Peter, figure that all those pilgrims must be leaving jewels and other valuables at the shrine in thanks for favors received. They can just imagine the vast treasure that has been deposited there over the past twenty-five years. They decide to pay Meinrad a visit too.

  —Richard and Peter arrived at Einsiedeln on January 21, 861, Mary said. I warned Meinrad that they were coming. I told him what was going to happen. Still he welcomed them just as he welcomed everyone. Still he remained true to his faith and his fate. It was a cold day. They had had a long journey. He stoked up the fire. He encouraged them to warm their hands and feet before it. He offered them freshly baked bread, chunks of fragrant cheese, big bowls of hearty stew, and steaming mugs of chocolate. He took them to the chapel and introduced them to his pets, two crows he had tamed. They were perched on either side of the holy statue. Meinrad prayed with the two visitors and then waited for them to make their move. I stood by and waited too. Meinrad could not see me but he knew I was there.

  Despite his own love of solitude and his foreknowledge of the outcome of this particular visit, Meinrad is still a Benedictine and he lives every day by the Rule. Saint Benedict said that all guests at a monastery must be welcomed as Christ would be welcomed and so must be treated with generosity, courtesy, and love. A monk must pray with them, feed them, warm them, and bestow upon them the blessèd kiss of peace.

  After Richard and Peter have warmed up, eaten their fill, and pretended to pray with Meinrad, they smash his head in with clubs they have kept hidden in their heavy winter clothes.

  The murderers search for treasure and find nothing. Suddenly two candles standing near Meinrad’s bloody body are mysteriously lit. Terrified, Richard and Peter flee. Meinrad’s two pet crows, who witnessed the murder, now follow the criminals all the way back to Zurich. There they make a great racket and are soon recognized as Meinrad’s pets. A group of citizens travels to Einsiedeln and discovers Meinrad’s battered body. They carry it back to the abbey at Reichenau where it is preserved with great veneration. Richard and Peter are arrested and thrown in jail.

  —On the day of their hanging, Mary said, the crows perched on the gallows until the two men were dead. Then they flew back to the empty hermitage where they and the holy statue remained the only inhabitants for many years. The pilgrims stopped coming. Without Meinrad, there was no point.

  Forty-two years later, in 903, the chapel at Einsiedeln is visited by Blessèd Benno, a canon from Strasbourg. Benno decides to restore the building and live there. Eventually a community of Benedictine monks takes up residence, building a larger handsome church around Meinrad’s little chapel and the statue of Mary and Jesus. Conrad, the Bishop of Constance, comes to consecrate the new church on September 14, 948.

  —The night before the ceremony, Mary said, Conrad and some of the monks gathered in the chapel to worship. Just after midnight, as they prayed before the statue, the sanctuary was suddenly illuminated and two choirs of angels began to sing.

  The angels are joined by Saints Stephen, Lawrence, Peter, Gregory, and Augustine. Then Jesus himself appears, standing at the high altar, preparing to consecrate the church himself. Seated near him on a throne of light, presiding over the ceremony, is Mary, surrounded by still more angels.

  Bishop Conrad’s vision is confirmed and approved by Pope Leo VIII in 964 and devotion to Our Lady of Einsiedeln becomes official. The pilgrims return in droves. In 1028, the large church is destroyed by fire. Only Meinrad’s chapel and the miraculous statue are spared. When the church is rebuilt and consecrated, Meinrad is canonized by Pope Benedict IX and his body is moved from Reichenau and ensconced at Einsiedeln, his beloved hermitage.

  Throughout history, the church is destroyed by fire four more times, in 1214, 1465, 1509, and 1577. Each time, Meinrad’s chapel and the holy statue emerge from the blaze unharmed.

  As far as my own Marian reading goes, I would not presume to claim that I have done anything more than scratch the surface of the subject. In Mary’s case, there are tens of thousands of books. The Marian Library at the University of Dayton, Ohio, houses the world’s largest collection of printed material about her. By recent count, it included over ninety thousand books in fifty languages, more than fifty-five thousand clippings from newspapers and magazines, and nearly twenty thousand holy cards bearing her image. I think it is safe to assume that Mary has been the subject of more literature, art, and music than any other woman in all of history.

  I began my own excursion into the vast body of Marian literature shortly after she left. It would have been rude, I thought, to start reading about her right in front of her. It would have looked as if I wasn’t about to take her word for anything, as if I were checking out her credentials, preparing to cross-examine her, hoping to trip her up and catch her out in a lie. When I sat down to read, I soon found that the writings are of many different types: theological, ecclesiastical, devotional, testimonial, inspirational, evangelical, historical, philosophical, sociological, psychological, and every possible hybrid of some or all of the above.

  I quickly realized that I could spend the rest of my life reading about Mary and still never get to the end. Rather than finding this discouraging, I find it not only liberating but somehow comforting. This, I think, is a testament to what I have learned so far.

  There are many volumes filled with detailed narratives of Marian miracles witnessed and received. There are thousands of pages of praise and prayers. There are imaginative reconstructions of Mary’s life, some written from her own first-person point of view in the form of diaries in which she records the details of her daily life in the first century and reflects upon both the joys and the trials of being the mother of Jesus.

  There are many accounts of direct communications the authors have had with Mary. Some have engaged in ongoing conversations with her about matters of both global and personal significance. Others have found themselves in a more one-sided situation: she talks, they listen. Some have heard from Mary only once or twice. They write about what she wore, what she said, how it changed their lives.

  Others have been hearing from her on a regular basis for a number of years, receiving a series of messages which are frighteningly apocalyptic, filled with dire warnings about Armageddon and the end-time. There are lengthy predictions of volcanoes, earthquakes, tidal waves, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts, famines, colder winters, hotter summers, the extinction of many wild animals, increased UFO activity, the total disappearance of England, France, Greece, Japan, much of the Middle East, and parts of North America. Eventually all the planets will be realigned, including the earth, which will be flipped sideways on its axis. But Mary’s real message, they say, is not to scare us but to show us how to seek and find God through prayer and meditation. Some slim comfort is then offered by the prophecy that once this is all over, we (or what is left of us) will enter the after-time in which there will be two suns, new lands, new plants and animals, and a whole new species of human beings. These new people will have complete psychic abilities enabling them to communicate mentally not only with each other but with animals and spirits as well.

  In this new world, all the problems which now plague us will have been eliminated and all creatures will coexist in perfect peace and harmony. In this new world, there will be no suffering, no sadness, nary a whiff of doubt or despair.

  Our Lady of Walsingham

  In 1061, five years before the Norman Conquest, in the town of Walsingham on the eastern coast of England, Mary appears three times to the devout and wealthy widow of the manor Richeldis de Faverches.

  —She was exceptionally devoted, Mary said, and had offered many times in her prayers to use her wealth to honor me in a special way.

  Mary hears the widow’s prayers and three times takes her in spirit to the House of the Annunciation, the little
house in Nazareth where the angel Gabriel told Mary that she would be made pregnant by God.

  —I asked her to measure the house and then build a replica of it in Walsingham, Mary said. Neither of us being very experienced in these matters, it took us three trips to get all the measurements and the details exactly right.

  Once all the plans are in place, the widow hires the necessary contractors. When the men show up bright and early one morning to start work, they see that during the night a heavy frost has covered the proposed building site. But two rectangles remain clear and dry, each of them measuring 23 feet 6 inches by 12 feet 10 inches, the exact size of the house to be constructed.

  —I thought I had made my wishes clear, Mary said, but there was a mix-up at the last minute and two spots were marked instead of one. These things happen. The best-laid plans of mice and women.

  The widow decides that she prefers the spot closest to two wells on the property, so the workmen lay the foundation there. But then they find they cannot properly attach the house to the foundation.

  Puzzled and dismayed, the widow sends the workmen home and then she stays up all night, pacing through her mansion, praying over this unforeseen problem. When the workmen return at first light, they find the widow on her knees on the cold stone floor of the kitchen. She is fast asleep with her eyes wide open.

  They rouse her and together they go out to the building site. There they are amazed to discover that the foundation has been mysteriously moved during the night to the other spot two hundred feet away. Construction of the small wooden thatched-roof house then proceeds without a hitch.

  During the next hundred years, many miracles and healings take place at the Holy House of Walsingham. It becomes a popular pilgrimage destination.

  —Along the road to Walsingham, other chapels were built and crosses were erected to mark the way, Mary said. Rich and poor alike made the journey. They came on foot, on horses and donkeys, in wagons, carts, and carriages. A mile to the south of the holy house, in a small building they called the Slipper Chapel, the pilgrims took off their shoes and walked the rest of the way barefoot.

  In the middle of the thirteenth century, a large church is built around the little house which now contains a small dark statue of Mary embellished with gold and silver and precious jewels, the offerings of the wealthy pilgrims. Also ensconced in the shrine is a piece of white-colored earth said to be from the grotto where Mary nursed the baby Jesus and her breast milk dripped on the ground. The shrine is so revered that many of the pilgrims believe the Milky Way leads directly to it.

  Among the many English kings who make the pilgrimage is Edward I, who credits Our Lady of Walsingham with saving him from being crushed to death by a large stone that fell from the vaulted ceiling above a table where he was playing chess. Henry VIII and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, visit the shrine several times.

  —Henry brought me rubies, emeralds, a solid silver statue of himself, Mary said. He prayed on his knees for hours at a time. I offer no comment on what happened next. There are some things that even I do not understand. I am neither omniscient nor omnipotent. I am merely ubiquitous and immortal.

  In 1534, Henry breaks with Rome and, under the new Act of Supremacy, declares himself Head of the Church of England. He orders the destruction of the shrine at Walsingham along with the rest of the Catholic churches in the country. In 1538, the church and the house are demolished, the statue of Mary is burned, and all the offerings that have been made to her are confiscated by the royal treasury. Among those who are executed for objecting to the Act of Supremacy is Sir Thomas More, scholar, lawyer, author of Utopia, former Lord Chancellor, and once Henry’s trusted friend and adviser. He is imprisoned in the Tower of London and then beheaded on a charge of treason for his insubordination. Four hundred years later, Thomas More is canonized by Pope Pius XI.

  During those four centuries, Our Lady of Walsingham is apparently forgotten.

  —Out of sight, out of mind, Mary said. This happens all too often, but it was understandable enough. I was busy elsewhere and inadvertently overlooked Walsingham for a while. Besides, there was so much else going on in the world. Time was passing. History was happening, just like it always does. There was a lot of ground covered in those four hundred years.

  Near the end of the nineteenth century, the Slipper Chapel is restored and reopened. Early in the twentieth century, the church, too, is restored and in 1934 twelve thousand people go to Walsingham in the first national Catholic pilgrimage in England since the Reformation.

  —The historical significance of this pilgrimage was largely overlooked at the time, Mary said regretfully. It was overshadowed, no doubt, by the fact that 1934 was also the year when Stalin began his Great Purge and Adolf Hitler ordered the roundup and execution of four hundred prominent storm troopers and monarchists on the Night of the Long Knives.

  The day after President Hindenburg’s death, Hitler becomes the Führer of the Third Reich, in accordance with a law he had issued the previous day. Having thus eliminated his enemies and seized absolute control, Hitler began his reign of terror over Europe.

  —The die was cast, Mary said. And so began the darkest chapter of history by which humanity’s sense of itself was forever changed.

  Knowledge

  Like most people, my first exposure to a more or less consistent and organized study of history occurred back in high school. It was never one of my favorite subjects. I had no head for the past.

  We studied mostly North American and European history, as if the other parts of the world did not exist or, at least, as if they possessed no past to speak of. Being a chronically good student, I dutifully memorized (and then regurgitated upon request) the names of kings and queens, presidents and prime ministers. All these dead people were presented to us like so many cardboard cutouts dressed up in their fancy period costumes but stripped of their humanity. It was as if having once become instruments of human history, they were hardly still human at all.

  I memorized the dates of wars, revolutions, plagues, famines, and important inventions like the lightbulb, the cotton gin, and the telephone. Little of what I learned remained in my brain much past the day of the final exam. There are bits of that historical information still locked away in my mind, of course, patchwork pieces of the distant past that I don’t even know I know—until they are released without warning by some passing reference in a book I’m reading or some obscure question on Jeopardy!

  But for the most part, the history I learned all those years ago has been lost, either back then in the hormonal tumult of adolescence or lost since in the quotidian preoccupations of adulthood.

  Where do they go, I wonder, all those facts we once knew, those memories we once treasured, those truths we once believed in, those people we once loved and now don’t?

  Back in high school History, I mostly couldn’t see the point of having to study all those dead people, all that ancient stuff. Being an ordinary, self-absorbed adolescent, I could not (and did not much want to) entertain the possibility of the existence of a world that different from my own.

  As a teenager, I had trouble even imagining my own parents as people before I was born, so how could I possibly take seriously a world without cars, airplanes, television, telephones, and rock-and-roll? As far as I was concerned, anything that had happened before my own lifetime was more like prehistory than history, part of a past as distant and alien as the dinosaurs, those bloodthirsty, inarticulate giants with unpronounceable names, all of them lumbering blindly toward a mysterious demise.

  But, much as I could not seem to stretch my imagination back that far, still I never doubted that it was all true. Not one of my teachers ever mentioned or even alluded to the idea of history as an inexact science. We were never encouraged, expected, or allowed to question history. Year after year, we were led to believe that the past was carved in stone and that the contents of the textbooks we studied were to be regarded as strictly gospel.

  My favorite H
istory teacher was Mr. Skinner, whose Grade Ten class I attended right after lunch on Tuesdays and Thursdays. A big muscular man with a red face, a receding hairline, hands and feet so large they looked swollen, he was also the football coach. Mr. Skinner struck me even then as a man absolutely untroubled by doubt. He was always in a good mood, even when the football team had just lost six games in a row.

  After vigorously filling all four panels of the blackboard with names and dates, he would then pull out the colored chalk and draw stars and arrows all over the place, with blue circles and pink underlining for emphasis. These were probably similar to the diagrams he drew for the football team when laying out his strategy for the next game. Sometimes, with a magician’s flourish, he would pull down the tattered world map from where it hung above the blackboard like a window blind and stab at it with a wooden pointer for a while.

  Combining these methods with reading assignments of one or two chapters per week, he was able to cover vast stretches of time in no time. We galloped through the ages at breakneck speed. We gulped them down like long draughts of water. We piled them one on top of the other like bricks: a process that did not result in any recognizable or reliable structure, not a building, a house, not even a wall, but rather a tall and narrow tower of the past, teetering precariously in the fickle winds of the present, ever on the verge of collapse. We were not expected to draw conclusions, search for patterns, or wonder why one thing invariably led to another. We were expected simply to memorize and believe.