Southwest Sierra #125 – A River Named Gracias, Part 2 of 3

Continued from last week: I’d been working at the museum for about an hour when Francisco walked in. He said: “I have to ask you something, did you paint that picture of ‘Our Lady’ at the office?” I was confused. What did he mean by “Our Lady”? He saw my confusion and said, “The Madonna.” It dawned on me that he was talking about the framed Christmas card near my desk. He said that when he asked about it, Mike thought that maybe I’d painted it. I said, “No, that’s a Christmas card that I framed a long time ago because I liked it.” Francisco said, “I want to tell you a story.”

Francisco’s father had been a prisoner of war in the Philippines and was forced to work in a mine. One day, the guards began viciously beating one of the other prisoners, and Francisco’s father threw a football-sized rock at one of the guards, but missed. The guards turned on him and nearly beat him to death. They then carried him back to his cell.

As Francisco’s father lay in his cell, he was certain that he was going to die. What seemed like hours passed as he struggled to breathe. Suddenly, he noticed a pinpoint of blue/white light in the darkness. The light grew and grew until a woman stood before him.

The woman told him that he was not going to die. That he would be OK. That one day he would be married and have a family. The woman disappeared. The next morning, guards came and told him that he had been transferred to another camp. They had a large bundle of mail for him that had accumulated while he was there. It had all been opened, and as he reached for the bundle, a card slipped from one of the envelopes and fluttered to the floor. As he picked it up, he saw that it was an image of “Our Lady of Guadalupé.” He knew that this was the woman who had come to him the night before. He wept tears of gratitude.

I thanked Francisco for sharing the story, and he left.

When I got back to the mine office, I pulled the card from the frame. On the back of the card: “The Virgin of Guadalupé by Marsden Hartley, 1919”.

To be continued next week.