Bread of Tears

It happened one afternoon last autumn. I was praying before an icon of the Holy Family. “What should I do? Should I stay Catholic or become Orthodox? Please give me some sign.”

A tear rolled down Mary’s face. I wiped it away. My fingers were wet. I burst into the living room and called to my wife. “The icon is weeping,” I told her. She looked incredulous. “Call Father T.,” she said.

Father T. was the priest of our Eastern-Catholic parish. He retired from the local police force as a homicide detective before taking holy orders. I told him what happened. “I’m an old cop,” he said, “so I assume there are natural causes before I start looking for supernatural ones.” As we were talking, I watched a tear form in Joseph’s eye and roll down his face.

“It’s happening again,” I said.

Father T. was silent for a moment. “Oh.”

We hung up. I was staring at the icon when another tear formed in Mary’s eye. This time I brought it to my wife. “Do you see this?” I asked her. She wiped the tear from the icon and tasted it. “It’s sweet.”

A few hours later I called Father T. back. He said that, in his opinion, the weeping icon was a sign to remain Catholic. Surely, Mary and Joseph were crying because I was thinking about leaving the Church. Also, icons of the Holy Family are definitely “Western-style.” (Mrs. Davis and I bought the icon shortly after we were married, at a conference hosted by the Society of St. Pius X.) Isn’t that significant? Besides, in the East, miraculous icons usually stream myrrh all over, like a glass of ice water sweating in the hot sun. Ours wept tears from its eyes, more like the miraculous statues one finds in the West. This was a “hybrid” miracle: no doubt a sign to remain Eastern Catholic. All of which are perfectly good arguments.

Afterwards I called Father A., an old Russian priest in whom I’d been confiding. Father A. also happens to be a master iconographer. I asked him, “Is this a sign to become Orthodox?” To my surprise, he demurred. Weeping icons are not like Ouija boards, he said. They don’t give yes-or-no answers to the questions we ask God in prayer. First and foremost, they are gifts. They remind us of God’s presence in our lives, and of His love for us. Secondly, they call us to repentance—to enter more deeply into a life of prayer and fasting.

Father A. told me that, of course, he would love for us to become Orthodox. He felt that our fasting and prayer would, in time, lead us to the Orthodox Church. But God is not like you and me, he said. His gifts are never purely utilitarian. The Father doesn’t give His children socks for Christmas. No: He’s always gratuitous, superabundant. He never offers us anything less than the source of all peace and happiness in the universe: Himself.

And this (said Father A.) is what the weeping icon “means.” It means that God loves us and will never abandon us. It means that He wants to be part of our life, and He wants us to be part of His.

I am now an Orthodox Christian. My wife is not.

More than once I’ve pleaded with God: “Did I do the right thing by becoming Orthodox? If so, make the icon weep just one more time. Just one more tear. Then I’ll have no more doubts.” Maybe she has done the same.

It hasn’t wept again, and I’m not surprised. Christ healed the demoniacs and we said, “He casts out demons by the ruler of the demons.” He healed a man’s withered hand and we scolded Him for working on the Sabbath. He made the lame to walk and the blind to see, yet we crucified Him anyway. And when He rose again on the third day, we started a rumor that His disciples stole His corpse. Even with a room full of eyewitnesses, we refused to believe He was alive—not until we put our fingers into the print of the nails, and our hands into His side.

“An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign,” the Master said, “and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.” Even then, we doubt. How many miracles would Christ have to perform before faith became redundant?

All I know is that every time I glance at the icon I get a pit in my stomach because I half-expect to see it weeping again. And I think to myself, Jesus Christ. That really happened.

Father A. was right, I think. This miracle was hard to decipher because there’s nothing to decipher. It’s not a code to break, a puzzle to solve. It’s more like Jeopardy. Christ gives the answer; it’s our job is to find the right question. And the answer is always, “My love.”