What Would Jesus See

In the first reported sighting in quite some time, an image which looks like a head with a halo around it has reportedly appeared on a tree trunk in front of an apartment building in Parczew, Lublin Voivodeship, Poland, on May 14. Since then the faithful have been making the trip to see what some say is an image of Jesus while others seem to claim it’s the Virgin Mary. So much for gender specificity.

A local woman named Anna said, “I believe that this is a revelation. I heard about it from friends and left my house. It is a sign of divine providence.” Meanwhile local priest Father Jacek Swiatek thinks the “apparition will disappear with the next rain.”

When Vintage Vendors, an antique shop in Tralee, County Kerry, Northern Ireland, bought a cabinet last year they put it on the floor to sell. About a month later a customer came in and asked if they’d noticed that the wood grain on the door bears a remarkable resemblance to Mary, famed mother of Jesus Christ. Even more amazing, according to Damien Culhane who works in the shop, “I took the door off and held it up the other way and it looks even better upside down.”

The origins of the mahogany cabinet are largely a mystery. “It was built in about 1905 or 1910 in Hereford, England by Greenlands and Co” and was purchased in a private transaction in Kerry.

Since posting a photo on Facebook – gasp! – locals have been dropping by to kiss, rub, and say a prayer next to the cabinet. Culhane says they have no plans to sell the cabinet but have been offered more than €10,000 ($11,014.50) so that could change.

It was bound to happen. Lesley Rowan, a 38-year-old mother from Alexandria in West Dunbartonshire, Scotland, was looking at photographs of the fire at Notre-Dame de Paris when she spotted what she thought looked like the image of Jesus Christ standing in the flames as they leaped up from the cathedral’s roof. She did what we would all do and shared it on Facebook. “I shared it and asked for people’s opinions,” she told the Daily Mail, “even my brother in Australia said it looks like Jesus.” Many on social media agreed. Shockingly. Rowan thinks it’s a good omen. “I feel like it will bring comfort to people in Paris and all over the world at this sad time.”

Last Friday, Italian artist and chef Alfredo Lo Brutto was on Piazza Sanseverino in Agropoli, Italy, looking at the water when he looked up and saw a radiant illuminated image in the clouds that looked like Jesus posed in open-armed blessing, much like the famous Christ the Redeemer statue that overlooks Rio de Janeiro. He took a couple of photos and posted them to Facebook. “I don’t often share pictures on social media,” he said, “but when I took this one, I instantly felt like I wanted other people to see, because it was so beautiful.”

Not surprisingly, the photo went viral and has attracted a lot of attention, which of course has Lo Brutto on Cloud 9.

This is a bit sparse on details, but a photographer in Kent, England, who wants to remain unnamed, claims to have looked at his living room curtains last week and noticed some creases and shadows that formed the image of Jesus Christ. Being a photographer he did exactly what you’d expect.

“It’s a process of my work to see a different perspective on the ordinary,” he said. “The face of Jesus developing in the shadows of my curtain was a welcome sight in the afternoon light, and oddly reassuring.”

Last week, the home surveillance video camera at Glen Thorman’s house in East Jordan, Michigan, started taping when it detected motion outside the house. When Thorman, who is the local fire chief, and his wife looked at the video, they were amazed to see what they say is the image of an angel hovering over his pickup truck. So impressed was Jordan Rivers church that they posted the photo to their Facebook page where they made it official, “Yep folks… It’s an angel.”