The Virgin Mary shedding bloody tears in Sacramento

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Yahoo! News today has an interesting news video (1:12 in length) about a statute of the Virgin Mary at a Roman Catholic church in Sacramento, California, shedding tears of blood. The images on the video clearly show red streams of liquid of some sort coming from the upper corners of the right eye of the statute, flowing across her cheek and falling onto her robe.

The video also shows people gathering around a tree somewhere in Texas, but I don't find that "image" as compelling as the statute, so I will not make any comments about the image in the tree bark.

I think that Christians need to be careful about jumping onto the "it's a miracle" bandwagon. While I personally don't discount the miraculous, I understand that the Roman Catholic Church makes it a point to fully investigate alleged miracles because there have been hoaxes in the past. Some come from well-meaning Christians who think (for whatever reason) that God needs help pulling off a miracle. Others appear to be done for more malevolent reasons, like trying to pull a fast one on those "poor gullible Christians".

Nevertheless, it certainly looks intriguing, and I hope that the report of the Roman Catholic authorities is given wide publication regardless of the cause. If the tears are a hoax, the Roman Catholic Church should certainly let everyone know since that will reflect more confidence when the real "miracles" show up. But if no one is committing and hoax, and there is no naturalistic explanation for the crying Virgin Mary, I sure want to know that, too.

Cross-blogged at Apologia Christi.

Comments

Michael said…
I agree. When God performs a miracle, He doesn't leave the message ambiguous. Why is the statue crying? Why didn't a prophet announce the statue would cry ahead of time? Unless those basic questions can be answered, it's nothing more than natural rust.
11/29/2005 08:03:00 AM
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