Letter from the editor

Chocolate faith

Although she died about 2,000 years ago, the Virgin Mary is still making headlines. She's quite the United States traveler as well. In the past three years she's gone from Florida to Boston to Chicago to California.

But Mary doesn't travel by plane, train or automobile. Instead, she rolls by apparition, a much more mysterious and flashy style.

The latest Mary sighting occurred in Fountain Valley, Calif., on Aug. 17. Cruz Jacinto, a factory worker for Bodega Chocolates, came in to work one morning and found that chocolate runoff from a machine had formed into a two-inch pillar on the floor. She immediately recognized Mary's likeness. Jacinto knew this because the image "resembled" the picture of Mary on her prayer card. Granted, the prayer card picture was a replica of a painting likely created no more than 1,000 years ago, and sure, no one really knows what Mary looked like, but a pile of chocolate can't be far off.

To me, the chocolate looked like a faceless owl or one of those creepy bat creatures in the Beastmaster movie from the 80s. But to Jacinto, the figure meant the world.

"I have big problems right now, personally, and lately I've been saying that God doesn't exist," she said. "This has given me renewed faith."

Back in June 2003, a third-floor window at Milton Hospital near Boston, Mass., drew a crowd of 25,000 people when an image appeared that resembled Mary. The cracked window had chemicals leak into its interior to cause the image, but that didn't matter to the faithful. One woman tried to get her son, who was in a wheelchair, up to the window so his legs could touch the glass.

In November 2003, a woman in Florida sat down to a nice grilled cheese sandwich. She took one bite before realizing that she was about to gnaw on Mary. A vague image of a non-descript woman had been burnt into the bread. Needless to say, Diane Duyser didn't finish her sandwich.

She kept her holy meal for more than a decade, and the bread never turned moldy. The apparition meant so much to her that she sold it on eBay for $28,000.

That's right, someone actually paid almost 30 grand for miracle toast. Why hasn't this been marketed? Any metal workers out there want to help me make a Mary template for my George Foreman grill? Discounted miracle toast now just $500!

And in April 2005, as the College of Cardinals were preparing to elect a new Pope, Mary appeared at the Fullerton Avenue underpass on the Kennedy Expressway in Chicago. This image actually did bear a striking resemblance to a woman in a robe with her hands pressed together in prayer. Again, people flocked to pray before the salt stain near a busy highway.

So what drives people to ascribe incredible significance to non-descript images? How can a piece of chocolate make life's burdens more bearable? And how can I make $28,000 by making a grilled cheese sandwich?

I don't doubt the sincerity of the people who flock to the images to pray, but I just don't get it. I lean most toward the Protestant side of Christianity, which doesn't emphasize Mary as much as Catholics do (and often not enough), but there is no doubting the fact that Mary plays a huge role in the faith. After all, her famous story is crucial to a correct theology of Christ himself. Without the virgin birth, Jesus is just a really smart guy.

But is this what people of faith are going to cling to? Salt stains on the side of the road? I think all of us look for someone or something to direct our energies or our faith. God's pretty cool, but he's invisible, and every now and then it's nice to connect with something we can see and touch, but praying at a window seems to be quite a stretch.

Windows break, salt stains fade or grow to become unrecognizable, and people find that they need another "sign" to hold on. For Cruz Jacinto, her chocolate statue gave her a reason to believe in God again. The only question is, what happens when Mary melts?