When Our Lady plays a shadow show

… or how Heaven answers unsaid wishes.

It was the middle of May, the «Month of Mary». Our parishes used then to organize an evening prayer every week in a different place. People would then prepare a nice altar and some flowers, and a statue of Our Lady between candles. Our turn came to provide the place for the prayer at home.

My grandmother had had a small chapel built after the war, to thank God for having spared her six sons, who came home safe and sound. I began to prepare the chapel facing the sea, in view of the gathering of the parishioners who would come at the end of the day, to pray after dinner. I swept the floor, put fresh candles in the candlesticks and composed two bouquets of fragrant lilacs in the vases on the altar. Between the altar and the crucifix, though, there was room for a large picture of the Virgin. I therefore went looking for a sizable poster or photograph, to hang there. I searched and searched, opening closets and drawers, searching cupboards and shelves, to no avail. I even asked brothers and neigbors. No one had the thing I was looking for. The empty space was to stay blank.

Time passed, and the hour came when the first persons were arriving. Around half past eight, we made our way to the chapel. People exclaimed: «Oh! How beautiful! What a great idea!» totally unaware of my search and marvelling at the large picture framed in a banner of sunlight.

I was stunned.

In order to enjoy such a sight of Our Lady, more than one «coincidence» had had to come together. The sky could have been cloudy or rainy: it was clear. The tide could have been low and no water would have received the setting sun; it was high tide. The rectangular «niche» in which a statue of Mary was standing was precisely placed so that the sunbeams touching the mirror of the calm sea would make the projection of Our Lady absolutely perfect on the sunbathed wall, between the altar and the crucifix.

While we stood singing and praising the Lord and praying the rosary, the beautiful shadow hang before our grateful eyes, a vision of the mercy of God, who answers unsaid wishes!

This is the view from our home; the spires of the cathedral of Léon where my parents got married in 1938.

This is the little chapel and the statue in its rectangular niche.

Father Dominique+