Our Lady of the Lost and Found Read online

  In 1979, more than two and a half million pilgrims visit the shrine. One of them is Pope John Paul II, who was born in Krakow in 1920. He is the first non-Italian pope to be elected in 456 years and he is the first pope in history to visit a Communist country. To the multitudes gathered in the Assembly at Jasna Góra, he speaks of how the history of Poland has been written in many ways, but the Polish heart writes it, reads it, and lives it through the history of Mary, their Mother and Queen.

  Listening to Mary’s stories, I soon realized that it was no more possible to know everything about her than it is to know everything about anybody. Just when you think you have another person all figured out, they are just as likely to throw you a curve that leaves you bewildered and scratching your head.

  The man who dumps you because he isn’t ready for a serious commitment marries a cocktail waitress named Candi six scant months after breaking your heart. The woman who hates big cities and small children meets a new man named Lance and follows him to Manhattan, where they proceed to have four children and live blissfully ever after. The man who is afraid of heights takes up skydiving. The woman who hates traveling goes on a Mediterranean cruise.

  The man who apparently has everything going for him lowers and locks his garage door one Sunday morning, tucks a note under the windshield wiper like a parking ticket, gets into the car and starts it. His lovely wife and their two children are away visiting relatives. His body is discovered the next day by the mailman. The note, addressed to no one in particular, says: I’m sorry. It’s not your fault. The car is a brand-new black BMW. The man, safely strapped into the driver’s seat, is wearing neatly pressed khakis and a yellow teeshirt. On the passenger seat beside him is a half-eaten bag of salt and vinegar potato chips, an empty can of Coke, and a book called Planning Your Retirement with a bookmark carefully inserted at the last chapter. On the bookmark is a painting of a field of sunflowers before a black mountain below a blue sky. At the bottom is a quote from Anatole France: To accomplish great things we must not only act but also dream, not only plan but also believe.

  When all is said and done, you have to admit that learning about another person invariably involves putting two and two together and getting five.

  You have to admit that another person, any other person, is, in the end, an enigma: inscrutable, unpredictable, ultimately unknowable. But no less compelling for that.

  There were whole days when the more Mary told me, the less I knew for sure.

  Our Lady of Good Counsel

  In 1467, in the tiny village of Genazzano, Italy, situated on a hilltop thirty miles southeast of Rome, Mary delivers a miraculous gift to the faithful.

  —I quietly advised a widow named Petruccia de Geneo to begin rebuilding an old church in Genazzano, Mary said. Originally built more than ten centuries before, this church was now in a sorry state, not much more than a pile of crumbling stone.

  According to legend, the spot on which the abandoned church stood was, in pagan times, the site of a temple dedicated to Venus, the Roman goddess of love. When early Christians denounced her as a harlot, the temple was razed and the church dedicated to Mary was built on the site. Ironically enough, Venus eventually became a Christian saint called Venerina or Venere, to whom young girls are still known to appeal for help in finding a good husband. It was Venus who was first known as Stella Maris, Star of the Sea. But now, as far as the Genazzano faithful are concerned, this title belongs to Mary: Stella Maris, Our Lady of the Mariners, the guiding star by which all sailors steer their ships.

  It is to Mary that they sing “Ave Maris Stella”: Hail, thou star of ocean, God’s own mother blest, Ever sinless Virgin, Gate of heavenly rest…Virgin all excelling, Mildest of the mild; Freed from guilt preserve us, Meek and undefiled.

  —Petruccia tried to have the church fixed up, Mary said, but she was not wealthy and she soon ran out of money. Instead of helping her out, as you might think they would, her neighbors ridiculed her mercilessly, and work on the church was stopped. I told her to never mind them. I promised her that someday soon I would come and take possession of the church and then wouldn’t they be surprised? Of course, when Petruccia told her neighbors what I had said, they just scoffed and laughed all the harder.

  On April 25, 1467, the citizens of Genazzano gather to celebrate the feast day of Saint Mark.

  —How many of them, Mary said, could be expected to know that this date was also once a pagan feast commemorated to Venus? It is no coincidence that so many early Christian celebrations and ceremonies fall on the same days as pagan rituals and festivals. The first Christians had to be clever. Knowing that they would be killed if their faith was exposed, they carefully timed their celebrations to take place on the days when the pagans were celebrating something too. That way the Christians just blended in with all the other revelers and so countless lives were saved.

  With or without a thought to Venus, the citizens of Genazzano are honoring Saint Mark, who is said to have been the favorite disciple and the ever-faithful companion of Saint Peter.

  —I was always quite fond of Mark myself, Mary said, although, like so many young men, he was impulsive and prone to extremes on occasion. I remember a time when he found himself sexually aroused by a beautiful young woman who had innocently kissed his hand. He was so disgusted with himself that he chopped off his own hand with an axe. I thought this was quite unnecessary and immediately restored the hand myself. I reminded him that he was, after all, only human and should not be so hard on himself. I reminded him that much as self-control was necessary, self-mutilation was not. Many things have been done in my name that I would rather not be held responsible for.

  It is a perfect spring day. All the village shops and businesses are closed for the occasion. The trees seem to have sprung into bud overnight and the sky is that high clear blue dome only possible at this time of year. The villagers are in high spirits and, following a rather boisterous procession through the streets led by the village priest, they congregate in the town square to continue their revelry. There is much praising and praying, singing and eating, liberal partaking of wine.

  Of course Petruccia is there, too, lingering self-consciously on the sidelines, hurt at still being snubbed by her former friends but not willing to miss the celebration either. She ignores the rest of them and offers her prayers separately, silently. She cannot help but pray that Mary will make good on her promise soon. She is trying to be patient. Over and over again she reminds herself that God’s time is not our time: But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

  But still Petruccia’s patience is wearing thin and she is more than a little tired of being treated like the village idiot.

  Suddenly, in the midst of the festivities, at about four o’clock in the afternoon, the sky above Genazzano grows dark. The crowd falls silent. A giant white cloud descends from the sky in slow motion. It settles upon one of the unfinished walls of the church, which some of the more malicious villagers have taken to calling Petruccia’s Folly. Although the church is quite empty, its bells begin to ring vigorously. The air fills with their music, the cloud parts, and the darkness lifts. There, standing without support on a narrow stone ledge in front of the ruined church, is a beautiful painting of Mary and the baby Jesus, mother and child cheek to cheek. Jesus, wearing red, has one little hand wrapped around his mother’s neck while, with the other, he tugs at the gold-brocade neck of her black dress.

  The townspeople stare first at the painting and then at Petruccia with their mouths hanging open like foolish dogs. Their heads bounce back and forth like balls. Petruccia smiles and then falls to the ground weeping.

  In the following four months, 171 miracles occur in the village of Genazzano, more than one a day, all credited to the painting.

  When the painting is examined, first by the village priest, then by the bishop, and finally by a papal commission hastily dispatched from Rome, it is found to
have been rendered on a thin layer of porcelain no thicker than an eggshell. When the painting is viewed straight on, Mary appears to be smiling, but when looked at from an angle, she is very sad. Her cheeks sometimes change color from red to pink and at different times of the year, the whole tone of the painting changes.

  —They called it Madonna de Paradiso, Mary said, because they thought the angels had brought it down from heaven. But there was more to the story than that.

  Genazzano is soon visited by two men from the Albanian city of Shkodër on the shores of Lake Scutari. These men say they were suddenly overcome by an inexplicable urge to visit this town of which they know little or nothing. They say they want to see the painting. When these men are taken by the townspeople to the church, they are shocked and amazed. These men say they were praying on their knees before this very painting back in Shkodër when suddenly it disappeared and they were left dumbstruck before a blank stone wall. Now they realize why they were compelled to travel to Genazzano. Now they realize that the painting flew off the wall in Shkodër at the exact moment when the Turks invaded Albania. The townspeople shiver. There can be no doubt that it is a miracle wrought by Mary herself.

  —The villagers were suitably humbled by the whole experience, Mary said. They finished rebuilding Petruccia’s church, and when she died, they buried her in the chapel there. The whole town came to the funeral and everybody cried. They were sorry for being so mean to her. They understood that by doubting her, they had been doubting me too. Human nature being what it is, they could not see the error of their ways until it was too late. They were remorseful, repentant, begging me for forgiveness and a second chance. I did not have the heart to punish them. I let them have their church, I let them have their miracles, I let them give their hearts and souls over to Our Lady of Good Counsel. I was not disappointed. Those men and women and each of their succeeding generations have been devoted to me ever since.

  Four hundred years later, during World War II, the village of Genazzano is caught in the middle of the war zone. A bomb is dropped directly onto the church, destroying its roof, its walls, and most of its interior. But the portrait on porcelain, the portrait so fragile that even the reverberations of the explosions could have shattered it to smithereens, the portrait remains untouched. Today it still hangs suspended in the air without support, defying gravity, logic, and disbelief.

  Time

  —Another beautiful morning, Mary said.

  It was Wednesday. She had come into the kitchen for more coffee. I was reading at the table. I had almost finished Allende’s The House of the Spirits. Mary commented that she, too, had recently reread it and loved it. She stretched and yawned and filled her mug. We were not dressed yet. She was wearing her pale green nightgown with smocking across the bodice. I had on my old pink chenille housecoat over a sleeveless white cotton nightgown. Although I like to get up early, I have never been one to rush into getting dressed. Neither, apparently, was Mary.

  It was, indeed, another perfect spring morning. The sun was shining softly in a high blue sky dotted here and there with ragged wisps of cloud. I had opened the kitchen window, and the curtains rose and fell lazily on the breeze coming in through the screen. The air was clean and fresh, the birds were singing, and the hours spooled out before us. The whole day lay ahead, inviting us into its boundless realm of possibility. We were poised at the beginning of another stretch of time in which anything might happen, for which a to-do list was not necessary, and for which we did not need to be anything but ready.

  Mary added a generous measure of milk to her coffee and then took her watch from the windowsill above the sink where she’d left it the night before after we did the dishes.

  —This is what is called Ordinary Time, she said, strapping on the watch.

  It did not feel ordinary to me. Although it seemed as if two centuries had passed since she arrived, in fact it had only been two days.

  She tapped her watch face on which there was a tiny intricate painting of a curly haired medieval angel playing the lute.

  —According to the Catholic liturgical calendar, she explained, all the days of the year that are not Lent, Easter, Advent, or Christmas are called Ordinary Time. So here we are: Easter is over and Christmas is still a long way off. I guess you could say this is the time in which we’re meant to feel that we have all the time in the world.

  I could see then what she meant. Ordinary Time is all those days that blend one into the next without exceptional incident, good or bad; all those days unmarked by either tragedy or celebration. Ordinary Time is the spaces between events, the parts of a life that do not show up in photo albums or get told in stories. In real life, this is the bulk of most people’s lives. But in literature, this is the part that doesn’t make it into the book. This is the line space between scenes, the blank half-page at the end of a chapter, and the next one begins with a sentence like: Three years later he was dead.

  Ordinary Time is all those days you do not remember when you look back on your life. Unless, of course, the Virgin Mary came to visit in the middle of it and everything was changed: before and after; then and now; past, present, and future.

  Looking back on it now, my time with Mary seems to have passed all too quickly. But at the time, each day unfolded at a leisurely and luxurious pace. The hours opened before me one after another like an infinite series of doors, each admitting me into yet another room where I could stay as long as I liked. For the time that Mary was with me, I wore time as effortlessly as I wear my housecoat, my slippers, my skin.

  This was nothing like my usual relationship with time, which has always been somewhat adversarial. When I was younger, there most often seemed to be too much of it. I was consistently guilty of, as my mother often pointed out, wishing my life away. Now that I am older, there never seems to be enough of it. I do not recall exactly when I crossed that invisible line between slouching and scrambling through time. But cross it I did. Just as everyone does.

  My friends and I have often puzzled over this apparent acceleration of time as we age. We usually conclude that this must be a matter of perception, a phenomenon provoked by our growing awareness of our own mortality, our burgeoning consciousness of the fact that we have crossed the halfway point and it is getting harder and harder to think of the glass as being half full rather than half empty. But current medical research suggests that this change in how people experience time may have a physiological basis after all, that it may be the result of the lowering of dopamine levels in the brain as the body ages. If my sense of time speeding up is all in my head, it’s good to know that maybe it’s the product of a neurological process and not just my imagination.

  Perception or physiology, too much or too little, either way I have always harbored a certain resentment toward time. I have often looked back with regret for all the time I’ve wasted over the years. Growing older, I began striving to make the most of every day, but still I was never satisfied. Still I went to bed at night and nagged at myself about all the things I didn’t get done that day.

  In my heart, I knew there must be something more to a day than how many things you had checked off your list at the end of it, how much you had accomplished in it. But, also in my heart, I did not know what that something was.

  In recent years, as time has speeded up, I have become increasingly fond of calendars. Each New Year’s morning I make a small ceremony of taking down the old ones and putting up the new. I begin buying them in the fall so that when the time comes, I am ready. I comb bookstores and gift shops searching for just the right calendar to hang in each room.

  This year in the kitchen I have one called Kitchen Garden. Each month features a full-color photograph of carefully arranged and labeled examples of a certain food group. January is bread, March is pasta, June is salad greens, August is peppers, September is mushrooms, October is cheese. If I had had this calendar the year that Mary was here, we would have been looking at April’s mixed herbs: savory, sage, marjoram, mint, pa
rsley, basil, rosemary, chives. But time has passed. It is not April and Mary is not here. It is July and I am looking alone at summer fruits: peaches, pears, cherries, plums, blueberries, raspberries, figs. They are so beautiful that my mouth waters and I think of William Carlos Williams’s poem “This Is Just To Say”:

  I have eaten

  the plums

  that were in

  the icebox

  and which

  you were probably

  saving

  for breakfast

  Forgive me

  they were delicious

  so sweet

  and so cold

  Also, I imagine, so purple and plump in a plain white bowl on a hot July afternoon and his teeth pulled the flesh from the pit and the succulent juice was divine on his tongue.

  Later this month it will be my birthday and another year of my life will have passed.

  This past New Year’s morning, the pleasure I took in my calendar-hanging ritual was deepened by now knowing that, according to the sanctoral cycle of the liturgical year, the first day of January is one of the Solemnities of Mary, the day on which she is celebrated as the Mother of God. I am certain it is not by accident that on the kitchen calendar, the January food is bread, no less than twenty-eight varieties of it: poppy seed, whole grain, rye, bagel, brioche, baguette, crusty, braided, unleavened.

  Remember that Jesus said: I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. Remember the repeated miracle of the loaves and the fishes. Remember the Last Supper: And he took bread, and gave thanks, and broke it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me.