JAN.13, 2014 CRISTO: SPERANZA DELL' UOMO

                      Cristo:  Speranza dell' Uomo
                         (Christ :  Hope of Man



It was a few months after my husband's death in 2003 that I received a 13" x 16" framed icon of Jesus in the mail. There was no information of its source of origin so I presumed that the mailman must have made a mistake. I immediately went down to my tenants in the apartment below to inquire if they were expecting the icon. It was not so, hence I went around the neighborhood seeking the rightful recipient. Because the answers were all in the negative, I felt that it must have been meant for me after all!

The face of Jesus in the icon was/is serene but His eyes had a penetrating look that, to me, was "piercing" the very core of my being. As I gazed at His eyes, I felt the chill of guilt all over me, the sinner that I was and still am. I decided to keep it in a box inside a closet.



It was after a year when I looked at the icon again when I was packing to move to my new house in Union City. My advancing years necessitated the transfer so as to be nearer my children, Bobby, Marissa, Noel and Cielo who resided just across the freeway in Fremont.  I put the Jesus icon in my big altar in the family room but only for a few weeks since I had the "eerie" feeling of having my every move being watched. So in hiding it again went. But I decided to have copies made so as to find out something about it since I have not seen the likes of it before. No one among my family, relations and friends, even priests to whom I showed the icon had ever seen it. My desire to know more about the icon intensified that I looked at the back of the frame and discovered a "Made in Mexico" stamp. I remembered having visited the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City three times before but recalled that I never got acquainted with anyone there so as to establish a relationship.

Meantime, my Simbang Gabi Group continued to meet in my Goshen house. Belle Asis, a group member made arrangements for a session with Cora Lorenzo who reportedly was "cured" of cancer after a visit to the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes in France. The water font she brought home started to ooze with oil. During the prayers she conducted in her home, the statuettes and pictures brought by relations and friends were bathed in oil through unknown means. Like everyone else in my group, I brought my Jesus icon for the prayer session only to be miserably disappointed afterwards since my icon was the only one without any trace of oil. I felt God used the icon to point at me - a great sinner!


Rick and Elvy Tan, my ever solicitous neighbors, brought me home from the prayer session that night, In the course of our "Good night's and Thank you's," Elvy asked to see my Jesus icon again. When she pulled out the image from the plastic bag, drops of oil flowed down Jesus' eyes, both right and left. I, nay, we were astounded! I was shocked and pleasantly surprised at the same time since I felt liberated from the stigma of "worst sinner" I was accused of several minutes ago at the prayer session. Later, I concluded that since the "piercing eyes" of Jesus caused me so much uneasiness, only from His eyes did the solace of oil pour out.


I continued my search for some information about my Jesus icon to no avail. Meantime, I composed a prayer which I pasted on the pictures I circulated among my relations, friends and prayer group members.