Our Lady of the Lost and Found Read online

  In fact, there were many Marys. Painted in various combinations of white and blue and gold, she was short, tall, sad, smiling, praying, and pressing her hands to her chest. In each of these incarnations, she was pretty, pale, and patient. In some of them, she bore a distinct resemblance to Snow White.

  —I hope their prices are reasonable, Mary in the car beside me said as the light turned green and we drove on.

  Although these religious statues had undoubtedly been there all along, and I had probably driven past them a hundred times or more, I had never noticed them before. I knew that the fact of my finally seeing them now was a matter of neither miracle nor coincidence. Rather it was another instance of what Mary had talked about before: of seeing and not seeing at the same time.

  I have had occasion to reflect upon this many times since Mary was here. I have found that since I began to think about Mary, she has begun to show up everywhere. These sightings have been numerous and frequently surprising. Sometimes it has seemed as if Mary’s name were right on the tip of everyone’s tongue.

  There was the newspaper story, for instance, of Notre Dame de Bonsecours Chapel in the city of Montreal, where water damage to the roof had caused the paintings on the ceiling to come unglued, revealing the original oil frescoes beneath. These turned out to be a series of scenes depicting Mary’s life that had been painted more than a hundred years before. In front of the church, built on the banks of the Saint Lawrence River, there was a statue of Mary overlooking the harbor. Originally, the article said, the statue had faced the city, but one day it had miraculously turned to look out over the water where the sailors on a ship stranded in a storm were praying to Mary for rescue. The article did not say whether the sailors were saved or not, but it seems safe to assume they were, and the statue continues to be much revered.

  A week later, in another newspaper, there was a report of a new trend in designer clothing. Hand-painted and jeweled images of Mary were appearing on high-fashion runways in Paris, New York, and Milan. There, on the breastless bodies of haute couture models with long necks, large mouths, high cheekbones, and jutting hips, was Mary’s face imprinted on see-through sleeveless tops costing thousands of dollars and accessorized with Miraculous Medal earrings in silver and blue. Some of the people interviewed in the article could not decide whether they were more offended by the prices or the pictures. The general consensus was that these designs would not catch on in this country because we are too conservative.

  She made the front cover of Life magazine with a feature article called “The Mystery of Mary.” The cover photo was of a pure white marble statue of Mary and inside, each page of the article was illustrated with a mosaic of nearly a hundred different icons of her. There were photographs too:

  A crowd of worshippers is gathered in front of a large lighted dome in the dark. They are mostly young women waving their hands above their heads. One girl is wearing blue polish on her bitten-down fingernails. On the stage there is a white statue of Mary holding Jesus flanked by colored spotlights and gigantic black speakers like those you see at rock concerts.

  A dark-haired woman tilts her head back and drinks holy water from the spring at Lourdes out of a clear plastic bottle shaped like Mary.

  A blond woman in a white sweater and blue jeans helps her small blond daughter light a candle inside a replica of the Lourdes grotto in Belleville, Illinois. Behind them a statue of Mary glows in a niche carved into the simulated rock. All around them hundreds of candles in glass jars flicker. Beside them a sign says: VOTIVES 2.00.

  She keeps showing up on television too. As I click through the channels in the evening searching for something worth watching, I am often startled to see her face smiling out at me from the screen. Usually the program is a documentary on one of the educational channels, another biography of her perhaps, or an investigative look into people’s increasing preoccupation with miracles, angels, and all things divine. Sometimes there she is in prime-time on a major network in a program about visions and apparitions both past and present.

  I have recently watched video footage of the sun spinning, dancing, pulsating, and changing color in the sky while Mary speaks to young visionaries; of statues, paintings, and other icons of Mary weeping blood, tears, and oil; of two different women, one in Bolivia, the other in Syria, receiving the stigmata, writhing in their beds before the cameras as blood oozes from their hands, their feet, and their foreheads, and within hours their wounds are healed over and they are in the kitchen drinking tea and talking to reporters.

  I have seen the American actress Lola Falana declare that her multiple sclerosis went into complete remission and stayed there after she went to Medjugorje, a town in the former Yugoslavia where Mary has been appearing regularly since 1981. Ten million other pilgrims have also made the trip. A handsome man in a business suit, who has been there five times, says that, in Medjugorje, the miraculous is commonplace.

  I have seen thousands of colored crystals appear on a large print of Our Lady of Guadalupe in the hallway of the home of Katya Rivas in Cochabamba, Bolivia. These crystals look like tiny jewels or those sugary sparkles used on birthday cakes. As they continue to grow in the dark during the night, one area begins to glow softly. When a bright light is shone on the image, this area flares phosphorescent green. The reporters are mystified but Katya Rivas is not. This, she says, is the womb of Mary in which Jesus became a man. Although Katya never finished high school and speaks no English, she records messages from Mary and Jesus in Polish, Latin, and Greek. These writings, which now fill nine spiral-bound notebooks, are eloquent, intelligent, and theologically sound.

  I have seen a woman named Hermilla Carrazco mopping the floor of her humble two-bedroom house in Monterrey, Mexico, and there, in the living room in front of an old plaid couch, an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe has appeared. Thousands of people come to pray at the little altar she has set up in the room. They leave candles, rosaries, milagros, pictures, letters, and rose petals. I have seen the intricate etched images of Mary and Jesus that appear on these petals when they are placed between the pages of Bibles and prayer books. Each tiny image is different, so clear and detailed that you can see the stray hairs on Jesus’ forehead and the six-pointed stars on Mary’s gown.

  I have seen a crowd of thousands descending upon a farm in Conyers, Georgia, where Mary gives frightening apocalyptic messages to a woman named Nancy Fowler on the thirteenth of every month. Traffic is backed up for a hundred miles, and there are dozens of Greyhound buses lined up in the parking lot, some with pictures of Mary tucked under the windshield wipers. These pilgrims look like ordinary tourists in their shorts and teeshirts. They are carrying coolers, umbrellas, lawn chairs, and camcorders. In one scene shot in the dead of winter, millions of rose petals fall from the sky. In another scene, a cluster of people huddles around a large white statue of Mary bedecked with flowers. They press up against her. They say they can hear her heart beating. While thousands of people remain staunch and unwavering in their belief in Nancy Fowler, some local skeptics sport bumper stickers that read: EAT, DRINK, AND SEE MARY.

  I have seen a children’s program which is a retelling of the story of Mary appearing as Our Lady of Guadalupe in 1531. In this episode, Juan Diego is played by a Jack Russell terrier named Wishbone and Mary gently teaches him a lesson about the importance of loving his mother.

  I have had several sightings of Mary in other places, too, places much closer to home.

  Shortly after she left, new people moved in two doors down from a friend of mine. They immediately erected a backyard shrine. The plaster Mary which serves as the centerpiece for this changing diorama is about four feet tall, painted blue and white like all the others, but often draped with a red velvet cape. She has been joined, at various times, by several smaller versions of herself, by an assortment of Jesus statues, by a battalion of saints gathered in a semicircle at her feet, and once, by three Barbie dolls and a bust of Beethoven. This Mary, like all the others, gazes placidly o
ver the tidy lawn and garden stretching before her. She is apparently neither pleased when she has company nor troubled when she does not. Rain or shine, she just stands there, smiling. In the winter, as the snow piles up to her waist, still she keeps on smiling.

  The last time I went to get my hair cut, my hairdresser was wearing a Miraculous Medal and an abalone cross together on a silver chain around her neck. Tucked into the frame of the mirror at her station was a photograph of her baby daughter in a voluminous white christening gown and, above that, a laminated holy card of Mary as Our Lady of Fatima. Dressed all in white with a circle of white stars at her head, she was standing barefoot on a cloud, gazing fondly down at three blond children kneeling in prayer before her.

  One day at the grocery store the man checking out in front of me opened his wallet and there, in the plastic sleeve that might have held a picture of his wife, his children, or his dog, was a picture of Our Lady of Czestochowa. He took out some money, crossed himself, and slipped his wallet into the back pocket of his jeans.

  One rainy afternoon when I stopped at my favorite restaurant for coffee, the woman at the table near the window was praying the rosary while she waited for her food to come. The rain ran down the windowpane and soft jazz music floated through the room. The woman’s head was bowed, her eyes were closed, her lips were moving, and the white rosary beads slipped through her fingers like pearls.

  Just last week I received a catalog from a mail-order stamp company from which I used to regularly buy sets and special issues to add to my collection. In recent years I have not tended to my stamps as often as I once did. After I had failed to place an order for more than a year, this company dropped me from their mailing list. But suddenly, here they were again. The first item in this new catalog was a set of stamps called “Raphael’s Madonnas.”

  The set included fifty stamps featuring Raphael’s paintings and drawings of Mary. There were enlarged colored pictures of and detailed information about several. I recognized some of the paintings I had studied back in university.

  Madonna of the Pomegranate from Austria. Coronation of the Virgin from Lesotho. Madonna of Saint Anthony from Liberia. Madonna Esterhazy from Hungary. Madonna of the Diadem from the Ivory Coast. Madonna Connestabile from the U.S.S.R. Madonna in the Meadow, Madonna in the Garden, and Madonna with the Goldfinch from Paraguay. Madonna del Gran’Duca from San Marino, Italy. This painting, according to the catalog, was the first Raphael did in Florence in 1504 or 1505. Nearly three centuries later, it became the property of Grand Duke Ferdinand III of Hapsburg. He carried it with him everywhere, and so it also became known as Madonna of the Journey. This painting alone has appeared on stamps at least twenty-three times.

  The catalog informed me that in the past two decades nearly three hundred such stamps have been issued by seventy-five countries, a veritable world geography of Mary.

  I had no memory of any such stamps in my own collection. Having been a more or less avid collector for so many years, how could I possibly have missed these? Considering the thousands of stamps I had accumulated, how could I not have at least some of them?

  I hauled out the three large binders that comprise my collection and began flipping through them. I quickly discovered that I had not missed the Mary stamps at all. In fact, I had dozens of those with Raphael’s Madonnas on them, as well as hundreds of others featuring pictures of Mary by all the famous painters.

  I did not remember putting them into the albums along with all the others. But I suppose I must have because there they were. There was Mary’s face looking out at me alongside poisonous snakes from Guinea, musical instruments from Germany, equestrians from Hungary, elephants from Laos, cosmonauts from Russia, dogs and cats from Poland, cows and chickens from Romania, and a whole page of flamboyantly colored beetles from Burundi.

  This new proliferation of Marys in my life would seem to give lie to the popular notion that you are most likely to find something when you’re not looking for it. This idea is most often offered in the spirit of consolation and encouragement to a single woman looking for a man and repeatedly coming up empty-handed and/or broken-hearted.

  —Don’t worry, people say. You’ll find him when you least expect it. Once you stop looking, you’ll find him for sure.

  These well-meaning advisers may or may not go on to mention how a watched pot never boils.

  In light of my recent experience of running into Mary everywhere I turn, it now seems to me that, much as the old notion of finding something when you’re not looking for it has often been proved true, the opposite is also and equally true: you find what you are looking for. Sometimes, once your blinders have been removed, you find it over and over and over again.

  So there was Mary: on television, in newspapers and magazines, in a friend’s neighborhood, in my stamp collection, at the beauty salon, the grocery store, and my favorite downtown restaurant.

  And, on a Thursday afternoon in April, there she was among the lawn ornaments just where she had always been. If only I had thought to look.

  History (6)

  Just as the divine might manifest to us in a variety of ways, so on a subatomic level, an electron can be in many places at once, as a particle and as a wave. It seems strange, but on the subatomic level, only potentialities exist for the electron’s location—that is, until one actually observes what is there. In the act of observation, the potentialities collapse into an actuality, and the electron appears in one place only.

  —G. Scott Sparrow, Blessed Among Women

  While contemplating the long and complex history of Mary, I find that I cannot help but also contemplate the nature of history and truth. Why do we assume that the past is ultimately any more knowable than the future, or the present, for that matter? It is easy enough to prove that this is not true. All you have to do is ask three people who shared the same experience ten years ago to tell the story. Chances are you will get three different stories.

  When I was younger I did not even consider the possibility that there were parts of the past that could never be known for sure, that some pieces of knowledge, once lost, would never be found. I carried with me a picture of the past as a solid territory of absolute truth. It was as if the past were a place, one that you could travel to like a tourist with trusty guidebook in hand. Once there you would happily discover that everything really was just the way the book had said it would be. Surely the past was the place, probably the only place, where you would be forever safe from surprises, lies, and disappointment.

  Now I know better. I would not go so far as to say that nothing is true, but I wonder if what we take to be the facts of history are as necessarily true as we would like them to be. Are they provable, permanent, are they even possible? Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

  Our Lady of Prompt Succor

  In 1727, a small group of French nuns founds an Ursuline Monastery in New Orleans, Louisiana, which is still a French territory. Financed by King Louis XV, their permanent building is erected in 1734 in what is now known as the French Quarter on the corner of Chartres and Ursulines Streets. It is now considered to be the oldest building still standing in the Mississippi Valley. Although the Ursulines are impressed by the town with its broad straight streets and its large elegant homes, they are scandalized by the decadent and corrupt behavior of its citizens. The good nuns have their work cut out for them.

  —The Ursulines, whose main goal is the proper education of young women, were founded in Italy by Saint Angela Merici in 1535, Mary said. The order is named after Saint Ursula who lived in the fourth century, a beautiful British princess, a serious Christian betrothed against her wishes to a pagan prince. In an attempt to postpone the wedding, preserve her virginity, and further dedicate herself to Christ, she made a long and complicated pilgrimage to Rome by boat. She was accompanied by eleven thousand other virgins. On the return journey, they traveled up the Rhine River and docked at Cologne, which had recently been con
quered by the Huns.

  Overjoyed at the prospect of setting their feet down on solid ground again, if only for a few days, Ursula and the eleven thousand virgins gladly disembark. They are promptly slaughtered by the Huns. For seven centuries, the truth of this tragic tale is doubted. But in 1155, a huge cache of bones is discovered on the site of the Cologne massacre.

  —The bones are now on display in the Golden Chamber of the Basilica of Saint Ursula in Cologne, Mary said. Vertebrae, shoulder blades, femurs, and ribs are bolted to the ceiling and walls. Some are arranged to spell out her name. There are rows of shelves filled with skulls, some wearing caps, others wrapped in red brocade with holes cut out for the eyes. In the basilica itself, eleven large stained glass windows each represent a thousand virgins. The whole story is told in a series of paintings done in 1456 by a Cologne artist. They span three walls. The last painting shows the massacre. There are headless corpses wearing frilly pastel gowns, amputated hands and feet oozing blood, a man in brown tights hacking down virgins with a hoe as if they were stalks of corn. Above the banks of the Rhine, the souls of the virgins float.

  The New Orleans Ursulines dedicate themselves to nursing the sick and teaching the children of local colonists, Indians, and blacks. In 1763, France gives Louisiana to Spain and many Spanish nuns emigrate and join the Ursulines to carry on their good work. But in 1800, Louisiana comes again under French control and many of the nuns flee, fearing that a replay of the recent French Revolution will occur here in the New World. In 1803, the Louisiana Purchase takes place by which the American president, Thomas Jefferson, buys over 825,000 square miles of territory from Napoleon Bonaparte, who has lost interest in taking over the New World. This effectively doubles the area of the United States. By this time, there are only seven Ursulines left in New Orleans. In 1808, exhausted and overwhelmed, they appeal to France for help.