What Would Jesus See

A forest fire in the San Sebastian region of Colombia had been burning for days, devastating over 600 acres and causing hundreds to become homeless, when a local priest noticed something in a photograph he’d taken of the fire – an image of the Virgin Mary. Villagers also see the image and are convinced that the photo taken by Father Pito is a sign that their fortune is about to change. “This is good news for our area which is so dry in the summer, because the little virgin is going to illuminate us and she is going to help us get through this,” one man told a local TV station.

After returning home from a Mexico City hospital following emergency surgery for a stroke, Jennifer Lougee Mingramm and her husband Tamaha MacDonald were looking through a pile of X-rays that had been taken when they noticed something on an image of her brain – the image of Jesus Christ. Convinced it’s a sign of divine intervention that helped her heal, the couple has kept the X-ray handy at all times. Her family has even nicknamed it “Jen’s Jesus.” The couple, originally from New Zealand, is trying to raise money so she can go to the United States for a double lung transplant. “The image represents a miracle,” MacDonald said, hoping it brings continued good luck.

Soon after workers installed a window in a house they were building in the small western Ukraine village of Beregovoy, local people walking by noticed an image on the window which they thought looked like the Virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus. Not only that, but they say the  house is warmer than other buildings in the neighborhood and “exudes a calm presence by spreading positive feelings.” Taking all this as a sign, many locals began praying to the window.

Without publicly commenting on the phenomenon, church elders allowed the window to be taken from the house and put  on display at the village church, where they hold special services each day, praying to the window. It never hurts to cover your, uh, vestments.

Reginald Sanders and his fiancee were having a conversation about spirituality, of all things, when they glanced at a nearby tree and noticed something they’d never seen before – an image they both thought looked like the Virgin Mary.

The tree, which is on the 11700 block of Sawmill Stream Circle, Houston, Texas, has become something of a local curiosity, with people stopping by and praying at the tree. Sanders says he hopes everyone who looks at it is blessed. So far they are since it’s still free to look.

Last summer, after a chunk of rock broke off the cliff during a small landslide, visitors to the small town of Casaletto Spartano, Italy, noticed something the locals hadn’t – an image in the rocks  they thought looked like the Virgin Mary. Since then hundreds of visitors have shown up to check out the “Madonna of the Rock” according to La Citta di Salerno website. Strangely, the rock happens to sit just below a path used by local people during religious processions.

“We don’t know what it is,” a villager told the Italia 2 news channel, “but the more you look at it the more it looks like a real Madonna,” including hands and a cloak hanging down.

When a local website asked a buzzkill geologist for his take on it he said “it’s a simple matter of erosion occurring over several millennia.”

Seventy-five-year-old Dona Lidia, of Pocboc, Mexico, was on her way to work as a cleaner at the local high school when she spotted something in the trunk of a Melina tree that looked like the silhouette of the Virgin Mary. “I have been working here for 18 years and always take this route and I can assure you that the image was not there before,” she said. “‘I instantly had to tell my neighbors and when they came the word quickly spread.” Spread it did. Dozens of candles and flowers are left each day as an offering, despite some killjoys who say it’s just tree rings.  A group of residents held a festival around the tree today (December 12) and plan on asking the region’s bishop if the image could be considered as an official miracle. Madre mia!