Say "cheese", Mary

CNN.com - 'Virgin Mary' sandwich back on eBay - Nov 16, 2004

OK, this time I can see "a face" as well. So often I have trouble seeing anything in the Holy Rorschach tests that pass for visions of the BVM or the fruit of her womb. But this time I can see someone. But tell me, just how in tarnation do we know who the lovely young lady is? I'm thinking it's Fay Wray who, recently shuffled off this mortal coil. We really don't know what the Blessed Virgin looked like. Sure we can guess but folks are generally so ethnocentric and/or over exposed to the Western library of Biblical art that Mary and Jesus often appear as a young mother from Dresden with her chubby little son. I'm sure Jesus did not look like Jeffrey Hunter, Max von Sydow, Robert Powell (okay, maybe he came close) or Jim Caviezel. And he certainly did not look like Ted Neeley (although it'd be cool to think the Savior could belt out a rock ballad like Neeley did in "Gethsemene") nor Jeremy Sisto (Jesus as a frat boy?). No, Jesus was not a white man, not in the European sense anyway, and neither was his mother.

So when folks see an image in their windows or cheese sandwiches how do they know just who it is they're seeing? And why, oh why, would the Most Holy Mother of God appear in such a profane manner?