You know how occasionally you get those cases where people see the Virgin Mary in grilled cheese sandwiches, a spot under an overpass, or a mold clump in the bathroom? The latest incarnation, coming out of Houston is that the image of Mary, on Ash Wednesday no less, appeared on a school cafeteria baking sheet that had recently been used for pizza.
On Wednesday, Rodriguez, a longtime kitchen worker, was leaning over the sink of the cafeteria at Pugh Elementary washing sheet pans — the kind that normally hold rows of chocolate chip cookies or chicken nuggets.
It was with the last pan, pulled from the cold rinse, that the Virgin appeared, Rodriguez, 59, said.
“I started looking at it, and started looking at it, until I realized it was the Virgin,” she said.
The pan appears to be stained, maybe by grease, with an image several inches tall. A splotch of missing color resembles the Virgin Mother’s down-turned face, a slight rainbow stain running alongside this could be a shawl.
This example of pareidolia is now being hailed as a message from God and as a miracle. The pan has its own shrine outside a PTA member’s house where crowds are coming to pray before it.
It’s a grease spot.
My opinion on such things is that if the God of the universe – who created existence as we know it, whose power is beyond fathoming, whose previous miracles included such things as healing the sick, giving sight to the blind, and resurrecting the dead – has been minimized or reduced to executing such miracles as producing curiously-shaped grease spots on a cafeteria baking sheet, then we’re all in a lot of trouble.

The miraculous grease spot. We’re doomed.
Hey, Danny, have you seen this? Did you know there’s a company out there that fakes religious things like this for profit (both their own and the recipient of the fakes)?
http://www.ISeeJesus.com
Pretty wild.
Comment by Jon — 3/3/2007 @ 7:33 am