According to press reports, a blue and white  statue of the Virgin Mary outside Sacred Heart Church in Medford has been shedding tears since this past February. People have been visiting this site, some moved by religious devotion, others out of mere curiosity. The supposed sight of tears coming from this statue has led to speculation about why the mother of Jesus might be weeping.

This event follows another such phenomenon last summer when crowds of people came to Milton Hospital to gaze at what they saw as an image of the Virgin in a window of one of the buildings. For a time, the arrival of large numbers of curious visitors created problems for hospital authorities.

I have not visited either place, though I have seen photos of them on a web site called Revelation 13 after a chapter in the last book of the Christian Bible. Despite–or perhaps because of–the fact that my Catholic tradition pays great honor to Mary, I must confess to a certain skepticism about alleged appearances. Like the Catholic Church on the official level, I am wary of accepting miracles as a matter of course. And like many Catholics on an unofficial level, I prefer images of Mary to be more beautiful and durable than a pattern of shadows on a hospital window.

On the other hand, I do take seriously the religious impulse to find the presence of the divine in the things of this world. And these things need not always be beautiful.Pilgrims venerate Mary in the magnificent cathedral at Chartres and before Michelangelo’s Pietà in Rome; but Lourdes in southern France, which would never win any prizes for esthetic standards, is one of the most popular shrines anywhere.

People come to Lourdes from all over the world, some–but not all–in search of the miraculous cures that are attributed to its waters.My family and I visited Lourdes a few years ago. What most impressed me there was not the record–a fairly short one–of authenticated cures, but the fact that a genuine healing of souls seemed to occur there. The shrine is also a place where faith is felt and manifested. To participate (as I did) in a candlelight procession of thousands of pilgrims is to be profoundly moved.We were part of a tradition of worshippers going back to 1858, when a poor village girl named Bernadette Soubirous had  visions that she came to identify as the Virgin.

It is worth remembering that Bernadette’s experiences were greeted with scepticism, even–or especially– by church authorities. To be accepted by the Church, apparitions must be judged as promoting genuine faith rather than superstition. A connection with genuine holiness is also important–Bernadette’s subsequent life bore witness to this–and the alleged appearance must have some staying power in its effects. However, the Catholic Church does not require its members to believe in any apparitions, even in those instances when it celebrates them.

A search of the newspapers of the last hundred years will yield up reports of a number of apparitions which , for one reason or another, are forgotten today. One can reasonably doubt that many will remember either the Milton or the Medford site five or ten years from now.  And undoubtedly, more reports of Marian appearances will reach the media in the interim.

It would be a mistake to see these events, however ephemeral, as mere expressions of superstion or group hysteria. It is possible even for devout Catholics to find them distasteful; but others, and not only the conventionally devout, may find them an occasion to be conscious of a loving, maternal presence that puts them in touch with the divine. Those who pray to Mary see her as a mother, and children know that a mother’s presence can be evoked by all kinds of less-than-perfect images.

That said, it seems to me unwise to build one’s whole spirituality on events like those in Milton or Medford. Evidences of the mother of Jesus appearing in human life can promote spirituality, but single-mindedly pursuing them can lead to superficiality or even mania. As always, we should measure spiritual vitality by the quality of one’s love for God and the compassion one shows toward other people. Those who live by love, divine and human, seem to me ultimately the most spiritual

Richard Griffin