¡En español!
¡En español!
Click here to view the original source of this article.
Web posted
Faithful see Virgin of Guadalupe in spilled ice cream in Houston
Adoring visitors dropped wilting roses, a forest
of supermarket candles and crude crosses on the concrete bed of a southwest
Houston apartment complex.
In the midst of it all, they say, the Virgin of
Guadalupe reveals herself to the faithful. In an amorphous stain of melted ice
cream, ecstatic believers swear they can discern the form of the beloved Mexican
idol.
Gloria Castro made her way to the front of the
crowd, crossed herself and burst into tears.
"She knows that we need her," the
47-year-old Houston resident said in Spanish. "I had to see her. I had to
pray to her."
Virginia Hernandez patted Castro's arm.
"But look, look how lovely," Castro
murmured. "Even the colors are the same. She wants to bring us closer to
God."
The ice cream is disintegrating fast, but
somebody placed a glass pane over the smear and hemmed the makeshift frame with
duct tape in the hopes of preserving the image.
To unfaithful eyes, the crusty smear looks about
as earthshaking as, well, a melted Popsicle.
"I just let 'em in," yawned apartment
manager Maria Cervantes. "If they want to believe it, it's fine with
me."
Cervantes spent this week watching a thick
stream of Catholics, cameramen and curious troop past her office.
The uproar began Monday, when residents picked
out the brilliant robes of the Mexican saint in the sticky swirls at the foot of
a soda machine. Word moved over the region faster than a thundercloud.
The apparition drew between 500 and 800
onlookers from as far away as Miami, Seattle and Canada, Cervantes said. Some
stay at the shrine all night long, absorbed in meditation.
Our Lady of Guadalupe enjoyed centuries of
adoration. Legend has it the olive-skinned Virgin Mary first appeared in Mexico
to an Aztec Indian named Juan Diego in December 1531. Clerics say millions of
polytheist Indians converted to Catholicism after the apparition.
Clustered in the Houston courtyard, old women
bounce babies on their laps. Fathers shush their children, teens move their lips
in silent prayer. A hand-scrawled poster, in Spanish and English, warns
worshipers to lower their voices.
In her office, Cervantes is beginning to wonder
when it will all end. Moreover, what will she do with the patch of concrete?
Some of the faithful want the complex to construct a shrine on the site.
"I don't know what to do," Cervantes
said with a sigh. "I'm just going to wait and see."