What Would Jesus See

It was a week before Easter when a high school student at the Urseline Academy in New Orleans went into the national shrine of Our Lady of Prompt Succor to pray. Lo and behold! There it was, a shadow on a column beside the altar that looked remarkably like Jesus Christ. Word spread, and on Easter more than a thousand people passed through the chapel in one day. Some people who see the shadow, which is created by a floodlight shining through a chandelier, say they also see what appears to be the face of the Virgin Mary, while a few others report seeing a third image.  The chapel is open from 9:00 am-5:00 pm weekdays, and afternoons on the weekend.

A couple of weeks ago Larry Bowers of Niland, California cut open a rock he and his son found more than ten years ago in Palo Verde, something he says he’s done thousands of times over the years. But this time the design inside was different. “It looks to me like a picture of the Virgin Mary. It’s not an absolute replica, but it looks like it,” he said. Bowers plans on donating it to the Imperial Valley Gem and Mineral Society but hasn’t contacted them yet so it could turn up on eBay yet.

It must be Easter season. While Erica Scheldt was swimming at Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina, Friday  some men warned her about the cownose rays swimming in the water because their stinger can hurt. They showed her a dead one that had washed up on the beach, then put it in the water. A few minutes later it beached again. Erica thought it looked interesting so she took some photos with her phone. “I just kind of thought it looked like a bearded homeless man,” she said. “But when I posted pictures on Instagram, one of my friends was like, ‘That’s Jesus.’ And I was like, ‘Oh my God! You’re right!’ ” Even though she doesn’t have it, she’s been trying to name it. So far they’ve come up with Ray Rey, “Rey” meaning king in Spanish.

Margarita Espinoa in Barrio Espana, Colombia, sent her son Steven to fetch her a glass of water recently. When he came back, they both noticed a brown stain on the outside of the plastic glass, right between two pictures of Spiderman. As they watched, the stain grew until they both realized it had become an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe. At first they thought they shouldn’t drink the water, but after a while changed their minds and said it was “perhaps the most delicious beverage they had ever tasted.”

Kyle Toland of the Garden Oaks area of Houston, Texas, wondered why people were stopping to take pictures of a tree in front of his house. When he checked, he saw flowers and candles by the base, so he figured it was some sort of shrine to someone who had died. But as more people stopped, looked, and in many cases left more flowers, he took a closer look. Lo and behold, he saw what others had been looking at for quite a long time—what appears to many to be the figure of the Virgin Mary on the trunk of the tree. Now that he’s gone public with it he expects the crowds to grow.