February 27, 2003

A Reader in Michigan writes:

"..I interviewed the lady of the house in her kitchen, filming her as she spoke, while the living room where the icon was, was full of people praying the Rosary, her two beautiful daughters peacefully rolling up little cotton balls full of the miraculous oil into foil wrappers for the pilgrims. I also interviewed her 14 year old son.

The lady, who is from Iraq, said that on the day the icon began to weep, she had been to the doctor's because of pain in her arm. The doctor had told her that she required surgery. She came home, deeply distressed over the news, got out her icon, lit some candles in front of it, and prayed to Our Lord and His Mother to help her. After praying, she blew out the candles and went to the kitchen to make a phone call. Shortly thereafter, her son was walking through the living room. He told me that something like a voice within him said to him, "Look up!!", which he did, and that is when he noticed that the icon look strange, as though it were "wet".

He called to his mother to come see the icon, that it was wet. His mother came in, saw the icon covered with oil, and told her son to quickly call his sister, who worked at a video store, and tell her to bring home a video camera to film the icon. Then she called her priest. She eventually called eight priest to come see the miracle. The priests all did the same thing: they wiped off the icon to see if the oil would regenerate, which it did.Someone called a local TV station. They came and filmed the icon and the crowd of people praying. Her son told me that the newsreporters seemed very moved. The news report on TV was very short, though ... naturally.

The mother told me, that when she saw the oil-drenched icon, she felt a message in her heart - that it had to do with peace with Iraq. (the oil has kept coming up until a number of months ago, when it became just a trickle, and now has stopped...!) The lady grew up an orphan, and Jesus and His Mother became her constant companions in prayer, talking to Them as though they were physically present in the rooms with her. At the time of the miraculous flowing of oil, America was already at odds with Iraq, and she hesitated to even use the word Iraq to tell me where she was from, and said instead that she was from "Babylonia". I feel the oil was a sign of Mercy from God regarding our dealings with Iraq, but now the time of Mercy has "run out"...

Her son said that people began crowding into the house all hours of the day and night, and they kept their doors open for them. He said that around 4 AM the last of the faithful would leave and the family got a little sleep. But, he said, he had noticed that the family felt that they didn't need sleep, nor food, and he found it a "miracle" that his two sisters, a teen ager and the other in her early twenties, just sat in one place day and night contentedly rolling up little cotton balls filled with the oil.

He told me that already there had been healings, pregnancies to women unable to conceive before, and his mother's arm no longer needed the surgery. The street was lined with cars, but, he said, the neighbors next door and across the street had not come to see the icon.... "a prophet in his own city...."

Now the icon's miracle is venerated at the Church of the Transfiguration in Livonia, about a half hour's drive from the original location in a neighboring city outside of Detroit, and the miraculous oil is shared with the faithful there. But although it has been a few years now that this has been occurring, still, it is not commonly known in the Detroit area. So thank you for putting it on your website!

Also, i feel it is important with regards to our current situation with Iraq. God gave us a sign of Mercy, but it gets swept to the "back pages" of the secular world's attention, and we stand to reap the bitter fruits of our neglect.

Praying for peace, and for your health and peace..."