The Tears Of Mary

And: The Summertime Blessing of Cold Gazpacho; Calvinism & Spiritual Warfare

A free post today of the Diary. I was just now going through a folder of old photos, and found the one above. I’m going to send this out to you today, because some of you might need encouragement.

Here is the explanation of the image. I photographed it at the home of Stephanie Lemoine, who befriended my late sister Ruthie in the cancer ward. Stephanie outlived Ruthie, but succumbed to the disease in July 2013, almost two years after Ruthie died. I took this photo of Stephanie when I visited her in January 2012.

That day, I had gone to her to visit her at her home in Baton Rouge, and wrote this for my blog:

Stephanie is a prayerful Catholic. For the past 10 days, she’s had in her house a Rosa Mystica statue of the Virgin Mary. It’s about 18 inches tall, and she has it on her coffee table. I had never heard of this particular devotion, even during my Catholic years, but Stephanie says this is one of two (I think) such statues in south Louisiana. Both are passed around among Catholics who are very ill or otherwise in distress. Stephanie told me that she and others sometimes see moisture forming in the eyes of the statue during prayer. She showed me a couple of images on her iPhone purporting to document this, as well as other eerie alterations on the statue’s face during and immediately following prayer. We were sitting right next to the statue the whole time. I didn’t notice anything unusual about it.

We talked for a while about how her cancer treatment was going, and things that have been on her mind. After a while, she asked me if I had time to stay and pray her daily rosary with her. Sure, I said. We knelt down to pray, and I could see at the bottom of the statue’s right eyelid moisture forming. It was strange. It was definitely not there when I first saw the statue, and I had not moved more than two feet from it the whole visit. Nobody ever touched it. We prayed the rosary together, and asked God’s help and blessing for the sick, and others in need of mercy. When we had finished, Stephanie said, “Do you see that?”

Yes, I did see that. There were two small beads of liquid appearing on the lower lid of the statue’s right eye. They had been there since we started to pray. I took the photo above with my iPhone camera.

Make of that what you will. I know better than to try to say what that was, or what it meant. I believe this kind of thing can and does happen, miraculously. All I’m willing to say about this particular incident is that these “tears” weren’t there when I first examined the statue — and I examined it from a number of angles, both before and after this incident. Nobody touched the statue while I was there. The liquid appeared to have emerged as we knelt to pray.

In any case, I don’t really care whether this was a small miracle, an optical illusion, or what have you. I used to be really into this sort of thing, but not so much anymore. I mean, I believe it can be authentic, but I don’t think much about this stuff anymore. It’s not the important thing. The important thing that happened today was my visit with Stephanie, and the great encouragement I received from being with Stephanie, who is so strong and full of faith, despite her dire situation with cancer. It was so great to pray with her. I’m not one who prays easily with people outside of a liturgical setting, but this was wonderful. Stephanie sat through so much suffering with my sister, and, well, it’s good to be with her and to talk about Ruthie. As I left, she gave me three white roses from a vase next to the statue — one for my sister’s family, one for my mom and dad, and one for my family. They looked fresh, but Stephanie said they have been in that vase since the day the statue was brought to her house. They haven’t decayed.

Of course it was a miracle. I believe that now. The meaning was that Mary was with Stephanie, accompanying her through her suffering.

On a vastly more mundane level, here’s something that made me happy today: homemade gazpacho, which is one of the best things about summer. I made the cold soup using a recipe a couple of weeks ago, but didn’t care for it, and returned by my own version, which leaves out onion and garlic (which don’t taste good to me in a cold soup). This one is just tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, sea salt, and fresh ground black pepper. Run it through the Thermomix for about ten seconds, then let it chill in the fridge. Bliss. I drank it from a mug:

This is a reminder that if you want a signed copy of Living In Wonder, you can pre-order it EXCLUSIVELY through Eighth Day Books in Wichita.

I’m getting excited about this thing. I sat this week drinking wine with a couple of men who did not know anything about this book and my work. Both are Christians. When I shared with them a couple of the miracle stories in the book, they were both strongly moved — so much I could see it in their faces. This book is going to shake a lot of people up, in a good way.

I hope it sparks discussion and debate with theologians like this Calvinist seminary professor, and his followers. In this clip, he argues that because St. Paul omitted in his letter to the Romans explicit instructions on how to deal with demons, therefore Paul must have been telling them that all you have to do is to “expound the Gospel,” and that would take care of it.

I think this is well-meaning but very naive — and logically fallacious: the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

I would suspect that this professor, whose faith I in no way question, has never had direct dealing with spiritual warfare. There’s a reason that accounts of exorcism in our time sometimes have (non-charismatic) Protestant pastors turning to Catholic priests to help with hard cases. It has nothing at all to do with any deficiencies in the Gospel. It has to do with the mechanics of spiritual warfare. Remember that Christ said (Mark 9:29) that a certain kind of demon could only be expelled through prayer and fasting? Why? I don’t know; all I know is that Jesus himself said that there is a particular “technique” (to use the Calvinist seminary prof’s term) necessary to cast out a kind of evil spirit. That’s in the Gospel of Mark!

Anyway, we Christians ought to be talking among ourselves about all this. If you disagree with me, and share Dr. Poythress’s views, by all means say so in the comments. We should be able to discuss it with mutual respect. It’s important now to talk about this topic, and becoming ever more important.

I’m thinking about something Father Dermot Moloney, at the time an old Irish missionary priest in his final years, told me in 1991, when I met him at his church in Baton Rouge. He said that when he was first ordained by his order in Ireland, they sent him to the mission field in Africa. He quickly received an education in spiritual warfare.

Shortly after he arrived, Father Moloney accompanied an older priest on a journey to evangelize a certain village. As they walked down the path to the village, they ran into an invisible wall. There was a barrier in front of them that would not let them pass, one they could feel, but could not see. The young priest was terrified, but the older, more experienced missionary didn’t flinch. He took out his flask of holy water, blessed the unseen wall and uttered prayers of exorcism. The wall fell, and the missionaries walked on.

“We converted that village,” Father Moloney told me. “We learned that a shaman had heard we were coming, and cast a spell to stop us. That was what that invisible wall was all about.”

The old priest went on to say that his years in Africa taught him that there was far more going on in the world, and in the world of the spirits, than what he had seen in Ireland.