Looking for Mary

by Beverly Donofrio

  The sisters and I order a mixed plate of meats, a big green salad with tomatoes, and each drink a beer for lunch before we board our bus, which winds up roads that sometimes seem so narrow I fear we’ll fall off their edge. At the base of Mount Krizevac there are a couple of empty cafes, but fifty yards up the trail we are in the wilderness. It’s a steep climb that will take over two hours. At intervals are the fourteen stations of the cross—depictions of Christ’s Passion, beginning with his Agony in the Garden and ending at the top of the mountain with his Resurrection. Also at the top is the cement cross the villagers built at the turn of the century to consecrate their village to Mary. I’ve been told that you can leave something you don’t want at the foot of the cross. I haven’t decided yet what that will be, but I’m hoping something will occur to me on the hike up.

  I feel like I’ve been let loose from a confinement. My legs want to do a jig as I climb up the steep trail, feeling my body come awake. Deprivation really does have its rewards: mainly how appreciative you feel when it’s over. I long to walk at a clip and work up a sweat, which I do, but then am stuck waiting for my fellow pilgrims to catch up at each station. James, a nineteen-year-old with shoulder-length hair and black polish on his toenails, takes a long time because he’s walking barefoot. Somehow, I don’t think the gesture strange; I think it’s youthful and passionate, and wonder at how my perspective on things is beginning to change.

  We have to wait even longer for Mrs. Benedetti, who has had a stroke and is taking baby steps with two canes. At the second station, she collapses on a rock and starts to cry. “I wanted to climb to the top for Our Lady. I promised her, but I can’t.” One of the nurses, who works at a hospice for the terminally ill, a woman who has come to Medjugorje for discernment (to find out if she has a calling to become a nun), offers to stay behind with Mrs. Benedetti, and so we leave them behind.

  The cross at the top is huge and made of concrete. I sit on the platform at its base and drink in the view of the little village nestled amid the vineyards and forests, and as I see a trail of dark smoke curl from a chimney, I know what I will leave at the cross: my pride—my bugaboo, the thorn in my side. It has made me lie about what I really want and hide who I really am, even to myself. Pride has made me so concerned with image, I forget my heart.

  I know what my heart wants: Mary in my life, to pray rosaries, light candles, kneel in churches, talk to the Mother of God every day. People will call me a weirdo, a born-again Christian, and this will hurt my pride. So I leave it at the foot of the cross and head back down the mountain.

  At the bottom, I see Mrs. Benedetti sitting on a veranda, beaming. “What happened to you?” I ask.

  She holds up the silver, half-dollar-sized Mary medal that has hung around her neck every day. “I made it to the fourth station, and look. . . .”

  Mary’s silver face has turned gold.

  I hold the medal, still dangling on its chain, in my hand, and then I kiss Mrs. Benedetti, who says, “God bless.”

  “God bless you,” I say.

  The next morning is Saturday, and Mirjana’s apparition is scheduled to begin at noon. It’s our last full day in Medjugorje before we leave for Italy the next morning, so I rummage through the stores looking for the perfect Mary statue, and I find it. She’s wearing a creamy white dress covered by a deep blue cape through which you can see the outline of her knee under its folds. Her hair is dark brown and her expression peaceful and lovely as she points to the red heart flaming on her chest. She is a foot tall and made of marble and absolutely perfect except for the fact that she’s as heavy as a sack of potatoes. I worry about lugging her around in my baggage but know I’ll be grateful to have her once I reach home. In the same store are a few six-inch-high, slightly less detailed duplicates of the same statue; I buy three of these, too.

  After I buy them I hurry back to my room and heap them along with all the rosaries and medals and magnets into two shopping bags. At the last moment, I remember my other statue, the one with the tear on Mary’s cheek that Beatrice had given me. I grab a third shopping bag and drop it in there, then stop by the sisters’ room to pick them up, but Alma declines to come, because she’s sick with the flu. We wish her a speedy recovery, then Arlene takes her bag of holy souvenirs and we walk together through a vineyard down a lane by some houses to a field, where thousands have already gathered. We climb a hill and find a good spot on a stone wall, from which we can see Mirjana a hundred yards away. A group of Filipinos crowds around us as the minutes pass, and I balance myself precariously until Arlene graciously relieves me of one of my bags.

  The rosary begins, and the voices echoing off the surrounding hills sound like a choir. The temperature is deliciously warm, the sky shockingly blue in its brilliance, the air portentously still and peaceful. As we pray on our rosaries, Arlene nods toward the cross on Mount Krizevac, which seems to be pulsating and glowing gold. It could be a trick of the sun, so I don’t believe I am seeing one of the miracles I’ve heard about. Then I see, down on the road far below, a nun taking remarkably long strides, walking at a determined clip. She’s all in gray and wearing a long skirt and a veil that falls just below her waist and flares behind like wings.

  There’s something about her. She doesn’t look like any nun I’ve ever seen; her presence is too big. She reminds me of the statue Beatrice gave me; then I remember that Mirjana said that Our Lady wears gray in Medjugorje, and think: Oh, my God, it’s Mary. She rounds a bend and goes out of sight, so I do not point her out to Arlene—and besides, I’m afraid my imagination is getting carried away. But I can’t help thinking that if that’s Mary, she’s one lady on a mission.

  Some minutes later, everyone falls silent, as is the custom, because Mirjana is having her vision.

  There’s the sense of a collectively held breath. I close my eyes and try to feel Our Lady’s presence, and what I feel is hard to describe. It’s like the feeling you get when you’ve spent the entire day outdoors, in nature. After hours of being in the sun and in the open air with no roof over your head, you possess a certain euphoria, an expansiveness under the skin, a feeling like you’re floating. And that’s what I feel that noontime after being outside for only an hour.

  The apparition ends and Mirjana appears to be weeping, supported by two men. We recite the concluding rosary-and-a-half with the crowd; then Arlene and I walk down to a little cafe at the bottom of the hill to have cappuccinos. We order; then Arlene looks in the bag she’s been holding for me and says, “Your statue fell out of its box. Oh, no—it’s broken.”

  I take the bag and lift out the statue Beatrice had given me. Mary’s outstretched hand has broken off. I find the hand at the bottom of the bag, then hold the little hand in mine for a moment before I position it back at the end of the statue’s arm. I’m disappointed it’s broken but relieved to know I can glue it back.

  I take the box out to replace the statue and see that it isn’t open and do not understand how the statue could have fallen out. I hold the statue up and look at it. The tear and its shiny track have disappeared from Mary’s face.

  My heart feels it’s between a giggle and a tear.

  Arlene and I stare at each other, then turn the bag inside out. There is no chip of a tear and no roughness on the statue’s cheek.

  Mirjana’s words come to mind: “Every prayer you say for a nonbeliever takes a tear from Our Mother’s face.” I’d gone to confession and received communion after thirty-five years, and Mary has stopped crying.

  Walking back to our house, we run into Father Freed and I excitedly tell him what happened as I pull the statue out of the bag and hand it to him. Father Freed runs his thumb over the statue’s cheek, and it comes to me: “Do you think her hand broke off because she wants to give me a hand?” I ask him.

  Father Freed hesitates.

  “You think it means I’m supposed to give her a hand?”

  “I think it means both,” Father Freed says as the sun shoots a beam like a spotlight through
the middle of a cloud straight to the tops of our heads. “Oh, my God,” we all say, and my insides vibrate like a tuning fork.

  On our way back to our house, I feel Mary all around, and so near, like a steady hand at the small of my back, a kiss on the top of my head, a cape of comfort wrapping me in. Arlene and I pass through a field that was green just that morning but is now carpeted with white moon-faced flowers turned toward the sky. I breathe deeply, not surprised by anything anymore, but so grateful, and tranquil. I’m drugged with love.

  Then, when we reach our house, a half-dozen women call down to us from the balcony. “Look at the sun.”

  It’s spinning.

  I know that I’m lucky, and blessed. I’m being given signs to help me believe, to strengthen my faith. I know that when I tell other people about this, they won’t believe it happened. I’m seeing it, and it’s hard for me to believe, too. I am staring directly at the sun, which is physiologically impossible to do, as light rays spin in a pinwheel and bloom sunset colors in every direction into the sky.

  We continue to watch from the balcony, singing hymns for the next two hours as it sets. When a man walks by, we yell down, “Look at the sun, it’s spinning,” and he says, “So what else is new? Happens all the time here.”

  Paintings of Mary through the centuries have depicted the significant events of her life, most of which are also recounted in the mysteries of the rosary, such as the Annunciation, the Visitation (to Elizabeth), Christ’s birth, Simeon’s prophecy, finding twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple, Mary’s Dormition, Assumption, and Coronation. But probably the most common depiction is one in which Mary holds her baby, Jesus, in the crook of her left arm.

  Some of the earliest of these mother-son images were not of Mary at all, but of Isis, the mother goddess of the Egyptians for three thousand years, and of the Greco-Roman world during Mary’s time and after, who was depicted in exactly the same way. In the pagan world, people attributed miracles to icons, and the same is true of the Madonna and Child. The miracles, though, were almost exclusively performed by Mary and not by her son.

  The miracle of Our Lady of Good Counsel was one such miracle. In the Middle Ages in the small town of Genazzano, in Latrium, Italy, a small church had begun to disintegrate, and a widow donated all her money to its renovation. But her money ran out before the reconstruction was complete, leaving one wall only half built, and as the town celebrated its feast day of Saint Mark, a cloud descended over the wall while a heavenly choir sang in the sky. Everyone looked up to see who was singing, but saw nothing until the cloud dissipated to reveal a portrait of the Virgin and Child resting on the unfinished wall.

  A few days later, two Albanians arrived and claimed that the portrait was the same as the fresco that had disappeared from their church when the Turks invaded, a few days before. The portrait was exactly the measurement of the blank space left on the Albanian church’s wall and was painted on plaster as thin as eggshells, too fragile to remove, let alone transport.

  News of the miraculous painting spread fast, and people came from all over to worship the Madonna and Child. So many claimed cures and favors that a notary was directed to take down testimonies of the most striking cases. Between April and August of 1467, one hundred and seventy-one miracles were recorded.

  The painting is inside a gold frame behind glass, but it touches neither and stands on its own, defying gravity. During World War II, a bomb destroyed the church’s altar. A few feet away, the painting was untouched.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  My last night in Medjugorje, before leaving for a tour of the miraculous sites of Italy, I take a shower, and as I towel myself dry, I wonder if I could ever become a nun and if becoming a nun would mean I could never again look at myself naked or touch my own body. As I look at myself naked in the mirror, I’m relieved that I don’t seem to have gained weight from my diet of bread, and then I think that maybe when I fall in love the next time, my partner and I will not taste of each other’s bodies until we’re married. I figure I’ve never had much luck doing it the other way, and have been torturously conflicted about ever getting married at all. This way, if I want the intimacy and pleasure of sex, I’ll have to get married—no choice, that simple. Maybe following the rules will make everything in life easier.

  After I dress, I sit on my bed and study my hands. They’re still raggedy and hideous, but feel fine. By the time they’re done shedding the old blistered skin, every inch of surface will have peeled off. I wonder if I’ve been transformed: if new lines of identity really will be etched into the new skin on my palms. I think how hands are for caressing and applauding; hands fix things, they build, they help, they hold, they pray. What could Mary have been trying to tell me by giving me one of hers?

  My miracle of the Mary statue has given me some fame among my fellow pilgrims. And as we stand in our long line at the airport in Split before departing for Rome, people become suddenly very interested in my hands. Jane, the Holy Roller doomsayer from Georgia, asks if she can please take a picture, because she’s sure that when she develops them, she’ll see words of prophecy etched in my palms, or maybe a picture of Mary.

  But her camera won’t click. A half-dozen more people try, and their cameras won’t click, either. What does this mean? Again I’m being told to notice my hands. They were plagued by a torturously itchy rash. When I boarded the plane to Medjugorje, I was never for a second free of the urge to scratch them. As soon as I reached Medjugorje, the itch went away. An itch is like a longing. Maybe I won’t be plagued by longing anymore. Maybe my heart has filled with love like I hoped it would, and there is no empty space left to fill. Maybe I’m being called to work on something, to do something. Maybe I’m supposed to become the first female priest. Maybe I’ll join an order and write like Saint Therese of Lisieux—Therese the Little Flower, whom the lay Carmelite had said I reminded her of that night we’d told our stories at dinner.

  Maybe Mary won’t stop with new lines of identity; maybe I’ll be blessed with a new brain, with which I’ll deepen and expand Catholic theology—by incorporating quantum physics, say. One of the visionaries in Medjugorje had suddenly been able to speak Italian. Maybe as soon as we land in Italy, I’ll be able to speak Italian, too.

  I get a little carried away, but I’m relieved beyond imagination to believe truly that everything is possible with God.

  Our first miraculous site is Maria Maggiore, which was built in the middle of the fourth century after Pope Liberius had a dream in which the Virgin appeared, telling him to build a church on one of the seven hills of Rome. The next morning, when he went to look at the hill Mary had shown him in the dream, he found it covered with snow in the shape of a cathedral. It was summer. Liberius took this as a sign and built the first cathedral to Mary in Rome.

  Everywhere we go, I smell roses. On the streets in Rome. In Mary Major, in Saint Peter’s Basilica, in my room. I’m not saying rosaries only en masse, but alone in my room, and it isn’t laborious anymore. It keeps my mind focused on godly things, and focusing on godly things keeps me in a state of mild euphoria. I pray for peace in the world, and love. I concentrate on people I know and imagine Mary entering their hearts, spreading hope, making them feel love and reject despair; then I open the prayer to every person in the world. I pray for Jason, of course, only now I’m beginning to have faith that he really will heal.

  Yet despite all this, I cannot bring myself to attend our audience with the Pope. I know he is a very holy and a very intelligent man. I know he has a special devotion to Mary and even credits her with saving his life when he was shot. I know he probably spends every moment of his life praying to God and probably even hearing God talking back. But he is strange about women. He is a man of a certain generation, born in a small Polish village, and he has not allowed his intelligence to overrule inherited opinions about the female sex, nor does he seem open enough to other religions. I find this intensely irritating and his stand against birth control beyond primitive. Plus, my
gray roots are showing, so instead I have my hair dyed while the group stands among a thousand in Saint Peter’s Square and receives the papal blessing.

  After two days in Rome, we haul our luggage stuffed with statues and rosaries back to the bus and take off for a whirl-wind trip of visits to the miraculous sites of southern-central Italy. Twelve miles from the Adriatic Sea, in San Luciano, we see the miracle of the Eucharist. Over twelve centuries ago, the congregation was entrusted to Brazilian monks. There was a monk among them “whose heart,” it said in a video there, “was not grounded in faith but in supreme doubt. He was more dedicated to reason than contemplation.” The monk doubted that during mass the Holy Eucharist literally was transformed into the body of Christ, which is essential Catholic doctrine, but believed that it was merely a symbol. During mass, while offering bread and wine, the bread in his hands turned into three-dimensional flesh and the wine turned into blood. At first the monk was frightened and confused; then his doubt turned into rapture. Tears of bliss streamed down his face, and he praised God for putting an end to his disbelief.

  We climb up a short flight of stairs to look at the blackened host in a sepulcher and blood coagulated into what looks like a couple of small black rocks in a chalice. The video states that laboratory tests in 1971 positively identified the matter as flesh and blood belonging to the human species. In 1981 the flesh was further identified as endocardiac tissue. The last line of the video is “Not against reason but beyond it.”

  In San Giovanni Rotondo, Padre Pio’s old parish, we’re greeted by Father Joseph, a rotund, very effete priest in Franciscan robes with white hair and a white beard. “They’re walkin’ all over the place like ants,” he frets about us in a Brooklyn accent. “Americans! Even if you voted for Clinton, you can come.”