Our Lady of the Lost and Found Read online

  The driver got out of the car, a short blond man wearing jeans and a teeshirt (a faded green teeshirt with nothing on it, no face of Jesus or anyone else). He came toward us smiling. He shook my hand and introduced himself.

  —Hi, I’m Peter, he said. You live right there, don’t you? he asked, pointing.

  —Yes, I said and told him my name.

  —Well, I’m pleased to meet you, Peter said. We’ve just moved here from the west coast. Myself and my wife, her name is Doreen, we’re your new neighbors. We’ve got two kids. Jody is four and little Jenny is just eleven months. We’ve been married for five years now. This is sure a nice quiet neighborhood, isn’t it? Have you lived here long?

  He rattled on in a jovial, if somewhat disjointed, fashion for a few minutes, asking questions but leaving no room for answers, offering random bits and pieces of information about himself and his family but shedding no light on their laundry.

  Suddenly he broke off and turned to Mary.

  —Pardon my manners, he said, again putting out his hand.

  —I’m Mary, she said simply.

  —Pleased to meet you, he said. Do you live in the neighborhood too?

  —No, Mary said. I’m visiting from out of town for the week.

  —Well now, isn’t that nice, Peter said.

  They shook hands for a longer time than seemed necessary. Then Peter went into his house and we went on our way. Although the mystery of Peter’s laundry had not been cleared up, still I was relieved to have another of my unasked questions answered. Not only could other people see and hear her, obviously they could feel her too. Her hand in Peter’s had apparently been every bit as solid and unremarkable as mine, every bit as firm and warm as it was when she touched me.

  In a few more minutes we were home. In the time it had taken to walk around the block, not more than half an hour by my watch, I had come to feel that spending time with the Virgin Mary was, if not quite something I had been doing all my life, then at least something I had been expecting or intending to do all along.

  In the back porch we took off our shoes and hung up our sweaters. We went into the kitchen and began to make dinner as if this were the most ordinary thing in the world to be doing at this time of the day in this part of the world. Which, of course, it was.

  History (3)

  The world, the human world, is bound together not by protons and electrons, but by stories. Nothing has meaning in itself: all the objects in the world would be shards of bare mute blankness, spinning wildly out of orbit, if we didn’t bind them together with stories.

  —Brian Morton, Starting Out in the Evening

  Over the years there have been many things I thought were facts that turned out to be untrue. Mostly these are relatively inconsequential things that everybody assumes are true, popular misconceptions that go largely unquestioned and unexamined unless or until they are eventually put to the test. The discovery that these things are false is interesting but, with any luck, has little or no bearing on life as we know it. Yes, lightning can strike the same place twice, and yes, bears can climb trees. No, porcupines do not throw their quills, bats are not blind, cats are not afraid of water, Chicago is not the windiest city in the United States, Frankenstein was not the name of the monster, Nero did not fiddle while Rome burned, and it is never too cold to snow. And in my first solo building project (a box to hold yard waste too large and woody for the composter), I learned the hard way that a two-by-four piece of lumber does not actually measure two inches by four inches.

  So too (but with far greater significance) has the notion of history as an inviolable body of knowledge to which I was inured back in high school since been completely dispelled, summarily counteracted and corrected. First by Dr. Sloan and Ancient History 101 and, more recently, by Mary herself.

  —Everything they have ever said about me has become true, she said that Tuesday evening as we sat together in the living room and she told me more about her life.

  —Everything they have ever said about me has become true. In one way or another.

  And I was left to make whatever I could of that.

  She obviously enjoyed watching my logical modern mind trying to grapple with these mysteries, trying to set them in order, put them in perspective, trying in vain to hammer each piece of the puzzle into place and keep it there. She tossed out such cryptic comments and contradictions as if hoping they would be like grains of sand irritating the inside of an oyster shell long and hard enough to eventually produce a pearl.

  Think about pearls of wisdom falling from heaven. Consider Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, the goddess of all love and beauty born out of the sea foam, a perfect pearl arising from an oyster shell with one hand upon her breasts, the other trying to hide her nakedness with her long golden hair. Consider also his earlier Virgin and Child with Eight Angels. Notice that in these two paintings Venus and the Virgin are the same woman. Do not imagine this to be a coincidence. Consider Mary as the holy embodiment of beauty and the beautiful embodiment of holiness. Consider Mary as the utterly pure oyster from which issued Jesus Christ, most brilliant and precious pearl.

  Think about Jesus saying: Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.

  Think about the pearly gates: And the twelve gates were twelve pearls; every several gate was of one pearl: and the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass.

  Think about glass. Created by superheating a mixture of sand, limestone, and other minerals at a temperature of about 2,400°F, it becomes a liquid. It is then supercooled back to a transparent solid. On a molecular level, glass is an amorphous substance because it is both and neither liquid nor solid. It is strong enough to emerge from the fire in a new and beautiful form, yet so fragile as to be shattered by a single careless brush of the hand.

  Pour yourself a cold glass of water on a hot summer day and remember that the vessel was made by fire, Heraclitus’ symbol of change. Think about transparent glass taking on the color of whatever is poured into it: green Kool-Aid, brown tea, red blood. Think about the glass being half empty and half full.

  Sweet Mother of ’s Hertogenbosch

  Early in the year 1380, the Cathedral of Saint Jan in the Dutch city of ’s Hertogenbosch is undergoing extensive renovation and expansion. This flourishing city with the unwieldy name began as a village beside the River Maas on the estate of Hendrik I, Duke of Brabant. It became a city in 1185 and was given this name meaning “in the Duke’s woods.” The locals, for simplicity’s sake, call it Den Bosch. The cathedral, too, is nearly two hundred years old and needs to be enlarged to accommodate the ever-growing congregation.

  Easter arrives and any hope of celebrating it in the newly renovated cathedral must be abandoned as the work is far from done. On Maundy Thursday, an apprentice stonemason eating his lunch in the builders’ shed discovers a mutilated statue of Mary buried beneath a pile of stones and rubble. Being a practical sort, the young man finds an axe and is about to chop up the statue for firewood. But the architect for the project, uneasy at the thought of such sacrilege, stops him and tells him that since it is the custom to arrange all movable statues around the Easter Sepulcher, he had better carry this one inside and find a place for it among the rest.

  —When the parishioners of Den Bosch saw that dirty old statue, Mary said, they were shocked and disgusted. They began murmuring to each other in growing consternation. Some of the more outraged covered their eyes and refused to look at it. Admittedly, the statue as it was then did not show me to my best advantage. But still there was no need to overreact, no excuse for such a commotion.

  The parishioners’ voices grow louder and louder until soon they are mocking and sneering at the statue’s disfigured face, pointing their fingers and shrieking insults at the young mason who brought the hideous thing inside. Finally losing his temper, the mason jumps to his feet and yells at them all, saying they are
just as old and ugly themselves so they have no right to criticize. Whether chastened by his rebuke or rendered speechless by his audacity, the congregation falls silent. The statue stays in the sepulcher all through the Easter celebrations.

  Afterward, when the other statues are returned to their usual places, a lay brother named Wouter, who has taken quite a liking to the miserable old statue, moves her to a side chapel. Still the parishioners are annoyed. Tired of all the complaints, the sacristan tells Brother Wouter he can do whatever he wants with the statue as long as he keeps her out of sight. But now Brother Wouter discovers she has become too heavy to move. She stays in the chapel.

  The cathedral is still swarming with workmen involved in the renovation. One of the painters, the kind of clownish man who will do anything for a laugh, smears the statue with yellow paint. The other workmen think this is hilarious. They gather round laughing and pointing and slapping their knees. Later, someone drapes a length of embroidered linen around the statue’s shoulders in an anonymous attempt to recover her dignity.

  Meanwhile, Brother Wouter has come to the conclusion that the statue is incomplete. Both of Mary’s hands are extended. In the right she holds an apple but the left is empty.

  —A year later, in 1381, Mary said, Brother Wouter found the missing piece. He came upon a group of children playing with a wooden doll on Orthen Street. Bribing them with candy and guilders, he persuaded them to give up the doll. It was the baby Jesus and it fit perfectly into that empty left hand.

  The statue is restored and moved to a more prominent position in another chapel. Still, the parishioners are not about to accept this abomination. Even after the statue has been repainted and repaired, the insults and abuses continue.

  —It was time to take action, Mary said, time to fall back on that old standard of reward and punishment. The next visitor who laughed and asked if the statue had jaundice fainted on the spot. She was confined to her bed for two weeks until she apologized and promised to make amends. Punishment. But there was another visitor, a housewife named Hadewych van Vichten, who had been lame for three years with a mysterious malady that the doctors could not cure. She prayed to the statue for healing. She brought a miniature tin leg to the chapel and laid it at my feet. She was instantly cured. Reward, Mary said. Now I was speaking their language. Now they understood.

  The miracles in Den Bosch continue. Those who believe are rewarded with graces, favors, and cures. Those who disparage the statue are punished, not violently, not excessively, but gently, with fainting spells, aches and pains, headaches, nightmares, disappointments, indigestion, and acne. Soon there is no more talk among the parishioners of ugliness or jaundice.

  Eventually the Sweet Mother of ’s Hertogenbosch is restored to her rightful splendor. Her gown is painted scarlet and the baby Jesus’ garment is green. Her hair is frosted with gold and luminous roses adorn her tunic. In this small country known for tulips, dikes, canals, and windmills, devotion to Mary continues through the centuries, even when the statue herself is removed from the chapel and hidden during nearly three hundred years of conflict and iconoclasm. Over the years, the shrine is visited not only by thousands of regular citizens but by many members of royalty as well, including the Emperor Maximilian, Ferdinand of Castile, Ferdinand of Naples, Edward IV of England, and Philip I of Spain. The statue is finally returned to the chapel in 1828 and in 1878 Pope Leo XIII orders her coronation.

  Today the shrine is crowded with miniature wax and metal body parts, including the little leg given in thanks by the housewife, Hadewych van Vichten, more than six hundred years ago.

  Mary told me stories from her past in the same way most people do. They resurrect details and dramas from years ago, offering amusing anecdotes and wry confessions delivered with fluctuating measures of pride and regret. Exorcising and exercising their various demons and gods, excavating all possible parallels and patterns, they are, in effect, inventing themselves as they go along. Every life is open to interpretation. Every history is subject to exegesis.

  Consciously or unconsciously, we reconstruct our recollections as we construct our stories, succumbing not infrequently to the temptations of embellishment and exaggeration. Being a writer, I already knew that all stories change with the telling. Immortal though she might be, Mary was no exception to this. Apparently, immortality does not guarantee infallibility or objectivity any more than it guarantees omnipotence, omniscience, or absolute truth. It all depends on memory, which has its own irrepressible tendencies to make meaning, magic, or mischief.

  I learned about Mary from her stories in the same way you learn about any new person who comes into your life: a little bit at a time. As she doled out more and more pieces of the puzzle that comprised her life, I listened carefully and stockpiled contradictions, enigmas, and ambiguities. In the beginning, I assumed that it would all make sense in the end, that all my questions would be answered, and all the mysteries would be solved.

  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. In the beginning I assumed that in the end I would know everything there was to know about Mary.

  Our Lady of Czestochowa

  Back when Mary is still alive, she sometimes has her portrait painted by the apostle Luke. Although Luke is a physician by trade, he also becomes an accomplished artist over the years. He is eventually revered as the patron saint of artists, doctors, and butchers, this last not because of his proficiency with the knife but because his emblem is a winged ox.

  —I spent many long hours sitting for Luke, Mary said. This was after Jesus was killed, after I had gone to live in Ephesus with John, who loved me like his own mother, just as Jesus had told him to. That was John the Evangelist, not to be confused with all the other Johns. There have been so many. John the Baptist, of course, and John of the Cross, John the Divine, John the Good, John the Silent, and John the Dwarf, just to name a few. The confusion is compounded even more by the fact that John the Evangelist is also called John Before the Latin Gate, a name that arose after Emperor Domitian sentenced him to be boiled in oil near the Roman gate that led to the town of Latinum.

  —Anyway, Mary continued, it was Luke who painted me, and while he worked, I sat very still and tried not to sweat or twitch, tried not to think of how my neck was aching, my shoulders were cramping, and my nose was starting to itch. While he painted, I talked. He did not know Jesus himself, so I told him about my son’s life and later he wrote it all down in his gospel.

  Mary is one of Luke’s favorite subjects and he paints her in many different poses and attitudes. If the large scrolls on which he prefers to paint are in short supply, Luke will use almost anything that comes to hand, including the furniture. He paints Mary on the cypress top of a table made by Jesus himself. After Luke completes Mary’s face, he paints Jesus as a baby nestled in the crook of her left arm. He dresses them both in blue and red robes laden with gold and gems. Then he crowns them with more gems, more gold. Mother and child, they are both black.

  —This painting was apparently lost or just plain forgotten, Mary said, until nearly four hundred years later when Helen, mother of Constantine the Great, discovered it in Jerusalem, along with the nails used to crucify Jesus and the True Cross itself. Helen gave the painting to her son, who was by then the Emperor of Constantinople, absolute master of the Roman Empire. Constantine built a church to house the painting and soon the miracles began, not the least of which was the saving of Constantinople from the attacking Saracens.

  A thousand years later, in the fourteenth century, after a treacherous and complicated journey through Eastern Europe, the painting becomes the property of Prince Ladislaus of Poland. He keeps it in a special chamber in his castle at Belz, which is attacked by the Tartars in 1382. An arrow shot by one of the Tartars flies through the window and hits the Black Madonna right in the throat.

  In his precipitous flight from Belz, Prince Ladislaus takes the precious portrait with him, fearing that if he leaves it behind, it will be dest
royed by the Tartars. Ladislaus spends a night in the town of Czestochowa where he puts the painting in a small church. On the morning of August 26, 1382, when he picks up the painting and tries to leave town, the horse pulling his carriage will not move. Ladislaus takes this as a sign that God wants the painting to stay in Czestochowa. A Pauline monastery is built to house it on the Jasna Góra, Mountain of Light.

  Fifty years later, in 1430, the monastery is invaded by the Hussites, who try to steal the painting. One of the thieves slashes the Black Madonna twice with his sword. He then falls to the ground screaming in pain and dies. The rest of the Hussites flee in terror and the monastery is saved.

  Despite repeated attempts to repair them, these two cuts on Mary’s cheek and the earlier wound to her throat are still visible on the portrait today, more than five hundred years later.

  —Some wounds never heal, Mary said. People should know that by now.

  The history of Our Lady of Czestochowa is as long and complicated as the history of Poland itself. Her power and her miracles continue unabated through all those wars, invasions, partitions, and political upheavals. In 1717, she is crowned Queen of Poland by Pope Clement XI and more than two hundred thousand pilgrims gather for her coronation.

  No matter how hard the Russians and the Nazis have tried to control her, still Our Lady of Czestochowa has remained at the spiritual heart of the country. After the Nazis claim Warsaw and Hitler forbids all pilgrimages, more than five hundred thousand Poles travel secretly to the sanctuary. When Poland is liberated in 1945, a million and a half people make the trip to the shrine to give thanks. When the Russian army captures the city three years later, again hundreds of thousands of pilgrims journey to the site, moving as if invisible right past the Communist soldiers who are patrolling the streets.