By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Writer
Thousands of the faithful in Ireland are rallying around a mysterious image of Our Lady clearly seen in the wood grain of a tree stump discovered when laborers were clearing trees on the grounds of a church. They have launched a petition drive to stop the stump from being disposed of.
The image was discovered on the grounds of St. Mary’s Church in Rathkeale earlier this week by one of the laborers employed to clear trees from the grounds.
“One of the lads said, ‘Look, our Blessed Lady in the tree’,” said Noel White, chairman of the local graveyard committee, to the Irish press. “One of the other lads looked over and actually knelt down and blessed himself, he got such a shock. It was the perfect shape of the figure of Our Lady holding the baby.”
On one side of the stump, the dark-brown rough texture of the wood is replaced by a much paler, smoother seam of timber with a distinctive shape. It is this pale shape which has attracted the crowds.
Residents have now organised a petition drive to save the stump from being dug out of the ground and disposed of. Instead, they are asking to have it made into a permanent fixture at the church.
However, Fr. William Russell of St. Mary’s is trying to dispel the notion that there is any kind of apparition taking place on the grounds of his church. “There’s nothing there . . . it’s just a tree . . . you can’t worship a tree,” he said during an interview on a local radio station.
“If people were there praying, it didn’t do any harm,” he added. “There’s no harm in that. I don’t believe in idolatry, that would be the danger.”
A spokesman for the Limerick diocesan office said the “church’s response to phenomena of this type is one of great scepticism”.
“While we do not wish in any way to detract from devotion to Our Lady, we would also wish to avoid anything which might lead to superstition,” he said.
Residents see things differently, however. “Nature has a funny way of showing things up and let it be a freak of nature or something else but whatever it is, surely it is a wonderful thing to see so many people coming out to pray, especially young people who have been saying the Rosary in the church for the past few nights,” White said.
“There have been queues of cars up and down the street of the town all day belonging to people who have never been here, all coming to say the Rosary and light candles. Maybe this is Our Lady’s way of getting people back to the church.”
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