Image of Virgin Mary on Chicago's Kennedy Expressway Underpass!

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Genesis315:
I think that’s a bit of a stretch.
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Obviously not for the person who first saw the image while driving through the underpass on the expressway at 65 miles per hour.
 
I think that it is authentic. The Virgin Mary has appeared before, hasn’t she? And Her statues have cried blood?
 
As much as I love our lady, I am sorry but all I see here is a section of concrete in need of repair. In this day and age here in the USA all the faithful would love to see a miracle, but instead of looking for the extra-ordinary I suggest we take another look at the “ordinary” miracles that God allows to happen in our lives. The beating of your heart, the birth of a child, the sunrise in the morning, and the sunset in the evening, all of these are miracles, gifts from our heavenly Father. Let’s stop searching for the extra-ordinary, and take the time to remember to thank him for the “ordinary” miracles he gives to us every day.Linda H.
 
i saw this on tv also. i admit that it is uncanny how much the stained concrete resembles the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. but there is no miracle here. just like i am amazed that frog legs taste like chicken, i am amazed by other coincidences. those who say this is a miraculous appearance of our Mother don’t understand apparitions of Mary. she herself shows up. she doesn’t appear as chunks of concrete, grilled cheese sandwiches, potato chips… it is really her–a person. i wish people would get that through their heads.

it’s fitting to thank God for the daily occurrences and various holy objects which remind us of Him and his Love for us. but treating a dead thing like a living person is pretty sad. let’s not be too idiotic about this sort of thing.
 
I may be really gullible…but why not there?..how can we really know it is not real?. I live near Chicago and I want to go see it. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it were true!
 
Linda H.:
As much as I love our lady, I am sorry but all I see here is a section of concrete in need of repair. In this day and age here in the USA all the faithful would love to see a miracle, but instead of looking for the extra-ordinary I suggest we take another look at the “ordinary” miracles that God allows to happen in our lives. The beating of your heart, the birth of a child, the sunrise in the morning, and the sunset in the evening, all of these are miracles, gifts from our heavenly Father. Let’s stop searching for the extra-ordinary, and take the time to remember to thank him for the “ordinary” miracles he gives to us every day.Linda H.
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Good points… People see what their minds want to see.
 
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Laurel:
I may be really gullible…but why not there?..how can we really know it is not real?. I live near Chicago and I want to go see it. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it were true!
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Now, I don’t intend the question I’m about to ask as criticism - I’m just trying to learn. But if it is true, what does it prove? And why would you want to go see it?
 
Well, I suppose all of you who have been keeping up with this story knows then, that it was defaced & thus completely painted over. A man with admitted psychological problems painted “BIG LIE” in brown shoe pollish over it and thus, the ENTIRE alledged image was painted over in brown paint…here’s the thing…even though it was painted over, the image once again emerged…

Now, I’m not one for believing this, and, I was rolling my eyes the entire time, but, when I saw it graffitied (although, as a radio personality said, there is other writting at the underpass that the faithful have been putting there…) I was saddened, and now that it’s re-emerging, I’m a bit freaked out.

nbc5.com/slideshow/4458034/detail.html?qs=;s=13;w=320 Slide 13.
 
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adstrinity:
Now, I’m not one for believing this, and, I was rolling my eyes the entire time, but, when I saw it graffitied (although, as a radio personality said, there is other writting at the underpass that the faithful have been putting there…) I was saddened, and now that it’s re-emerging, I’m a bit freaked out.
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Which part got you ‘freaked out’ - that the media chose to latch on to this in attempt to make Catholics look nutty, or that someone would deface the image as an attack against Catholics? And if you didn’t believe it, then why did it freak you out? If it isn’t true, then the graffiti was an attack against nothing.

Dan
 
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djrakowski:
Which part got you ‘freaked out’ - that the media chose to latch on to this in attempt to make Catholics look nutty, or that someone would deface the image as an attack against Catholics? And if you didn’t believe it, then why did it freak you out? If it isn’t true, then the graffiti was an attack against nothing.

Dan
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I freaked out because I didn’t regard it much before, now that it’s re-emerged AFTER being painted over…that is someting of which to take note.
 
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adstrinity:
I freaked out because I didn’t regard it much before, now that it’s re-emerged AFTER being painted over…that is someting of which to take note.
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This image appeared on the side of a bank when I was a kid where I grew up. After a while, someone poured acid on it and it was thought that it was permenantly damaged. It rained the very next night and it was washed clean and totally unscathed. Unfortunately, a couple years ago, some kid threw a rock through it and shattered it.
(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)
 
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PLAL:
Obviously not for the person who first saw the image while driving through the underpass on the expressway at 65 miles per hour.
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Just a note… the water stain/image is on the walls of the road under the Kennedy. So, hopefully, drivers were not passing by there at 65mph. My understanding is that some pious woman repeatedly noticed it while driving to work and inquired her priest about the matter. Word spread, then the press picked up on it.
 
suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-apparitions29.html

**Apparitions of Mary leave lasting impression **

May 29, 2005

**BY LISA DONOVAN Staff Reporter **

The waves of worshippers who snarled traffic on Fullerton at the entrance to the Kennedy Expy. are gone.

But the dozen vases of fresh roses, tall flickering votive candles and the trickle of faithful are evidence of a tidy, round-the-clock vigil for the Virgin Mary – whose image, some say, emerged last month on the underpass wall.

If history is any indication, the popularity of these so-called apparitions fade. But the image will live on as a place of reverence for believers and a curiosity to others, as is the case in several Chicago area communities where nearly a dozen images have been spotted in the last 25 years.

AREA SIGHTINGS

In the last 25 years, there have been nearly a dozen reported religious apparitions in the Chicago area, each one of them drawing dozens, sometimes hundreds, of believers. They include statues, paintings and icons that appear to weep or move, and images, shapes or shadows that appear on walls, windows and – most recently – the underpass wall of the Kennedy Expressway, at Fullerton.

Some of the best-known include:
  • **2001:** A scar on a tree trunk at Rogers Park was thought to be an image of Mary. The tree is gone, neighbors say, but the shrine still sits at Honore and Rogers where fresh flowers and lighted candles are evidence of its perpetual adoration.
  • **1999:** In Joliet, a shadowy outline of Mary is seen in the second-story window of a house at 611 Abe St.
  • **1994:** In Cicero, drops of moisture that look like tears stream down the cheeks of an icon of Mary at St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church, 1220 S. 60th Ct. The icon becomes famous as Our Lady of Cicero.
  • **1991:** At Queen of Heaven Cemetery, 1400 S. Wolf Rd. in Hillside, a retired railroad worker says he saw a large fiberglass crucifix bleed in the veterans section. So many people come to see the crucifix, some of them trampling over or driving on graves, that the cemetery has to move the crucifix and create a special parking lot for it. Today, the crowds are gone, but the icon still draws the faithful, a spokeswoman said.
  • **1986:** At Nicholas Albanian Orthodox Churchm 2701 N. Narragansett on Chicago's Northwest Side, a painting of Mary begins to weep on the saint's name day. The church opens its doors for veneration of the icon on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
  • **June 1984:** At St. John of God Catholic Church on the Southwest Side, a wooden statue of the Virgin Mary appears to shed tears. The Archdiocese of Chicago investigates the phenomenon for more than a year before announcing it could not positively rule out natural causes for the liquid oozing from the wood.
    Source: Sun-Times archives
 
cont…
  • About 2 million faithful have gone to worship at St. Nicholas Albanian Orthodox Church on the Northwest Side since a picture of Mary appeared to weep on her name day back in 1986. Today, perhaps a dozen worshippers -- some regular visitors -- still make the trek to the church when it opens its doors for veneration on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays.
  • Crowds trampled graves, precipitating the need for a special parking lot at Queen of Heaven Cemetery, where in 1991 a man said he saw a fiberglass crucifix bleed. The crowds have trailed off, a cemetery spokeswoman said recently.
  • And in Joliet, where a shadowy outline of Mary was seen in the window of a vacant house in 1999, the crowds that clogged Abe Street have disappeared. Today, the house is occupied, and the neighbors, who were going about their business one night last week, turned down the rap music thumping from a Dodge Neon after a reporter stopped to look at a shrine created at the front gate of the house.
    Nothing contrary to teachings

    To be sure, the shrines created at the sightings can be a mystery unto themselves. Consider the corner of Rogers and Honore on the city’s Far North Side. That’s where, in 2001, some say the Virgin Mary’s likeness turned up in the oval scar of a tree trunk. The tree is gone, one longtime resident says, but year-round, fresh flowers and lighted candles adorn a waist-high shelving unit-turned-altar.

    Earlier this month, an older woman pushing a stroller stopped abruptly before the site, bowing her head and making a sign of the cross. Moments later, she is asked what this all means to her.

    The woman, who speaks only Spanish, explains that she has no idea what unfolded here. As her daughter translates, she reveals she is only visiting the neighborhood. But surely this spot, complete with the tall burning votives with the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe wrapped around the glass candle holder, must be sacred. The Rev. James Presta, rector president of St. Joseph College Seminary on the Loyola campus in Rogers Park, said there is nothing about the shrine to the tree trunk that runs contrary to what the church teaches.
 
cont…

If it draws people to God, fine.
  • Indeed, Cardinal Francis George said in the weeks after Catholics flocked to the underpass to pay homage to what they saw as the image of Mary: If it reminds people of the Holy Mother’s care for her people, then that’s “wonderful.”

    But, said Presta, “I think the church is cautious, too – it may be helpful to some, but it might not be helpful to others.”

    The underpass image obviously was not helpful to Victor L. Gonzalez, of the 2700 block of North Menard, who was charged with misdemeanor criminal damage to state-supported property for writing the “Big Lie” graffiti over the image, police said. Authorities painted over the scrawl and the image, but several women scrubbed off the paint to reveal an altered image, believers say, of “Our Lady.”

    "What offends me is what that particular person wrote: ‘Big Lie’ " over the image in the underpass, Presta said. “Well, [big lie] to whom? What makes you think you know more the truth than someone else?”

    A miracle in Cicero

    At a near west suburban Cicero church, a handful of churchgoers on a recent Sunday bow before the icon of the Virgin Mary, now behind plexiglass, and pray for a child’s health. It was in 1994, and again in recent weeks, that an oily, tearlike moisture streamed down the face of “Our Lady of Cicero” at St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church.

    Church authorities later ruled the weeping icon a miracle. The icon is a Byzantine rendering of Mary with an adult-looking Christ in her arms that evokes sadness. For many, the fact that the icon was one of the few things to survive a 1997 fire seemed to reinforce that this was a supernatural event.

    “To me, she seems to be conveying in those tears sadness over what’s happening today,” St. George Archpriest Nicholas Dahdal said after a recent Sunday service. “I believe that she is telling us, ‘I wept at the foot of the cross for my son, who died for your sins, and yet you have learned nothing.’”

    Perhaps, he says, she is heartbroken by wars across the globe. Maggie Barhoumeh, 14, of Morton Grove, and her 49-year-old mother, Denise, offer a prayer before the Virgin and what appears to be her tear-streaked face, and ask for her blessings.
 
cont…

It is well-known in the congregation that prayers have been answered, they say: Infertile couples have become pregnant. Cancer has been cured.
  • “But in order to be blessed, you have to believe,” said Denise Marhoumeh.

    Beyond the Cicero church, it’s unclear whether any other religious organization’s hierarchy has declared miracles at the sites of similar apparitions. For now, the Chicago Archdiocese is not investigating the sighting of the Virgin Mary on the Kennedy Expy. underpass as a miracle, a spokesman said.

    Visit the outdoor shrines in Rogers Park, Joliet and even along the underpass, and what is clear from the handwritten Spanish messages praying for “familia” to the visitors themselves is that these places hold special meaning for Hispanics.

    Hope for the future

    Some say this goes back to the 16th century, when the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to Aztec peasant Juan Diego in Mexico. What she left behind was her own imprint on his cloak, an icon that remains in a Mexico City basilica.

    History is part of it, some Latinos say, but others say they are offering a prayer of hope for the future.

    A middle-aged mother and her adult daughter, from Venezuela, visited the Kennedy underpass in recent weeks. Isabel Avendano Di Lanzo, in Chicago for reconstructive surgery, and her mother were praying before the so-called apparition there for everything from Isabel’s health to peace in their South American homeland. “The Virgin Mary’s image has manifested itself in places all over the world,” Isabel said through a translator, “and that’s her way to ask for us to pray together.”
 
It should also be noted near the Image of Virgin Mary on Chicago’s Kennedy Expressway, a huge prayer vigil was held at Chicago’s notorious Albany Abortion Mill in December 2003. It included a 33-foot statue of Our Lady of the Millenium overlooking the Abortion Mill.

Was the nearby later Image of the Virgin Mary on the Kennedy Expressway trying to give us a message to stop murdering babies in the womb??
prolifeaction.org/home/2003/ourlady2.htm

This article appeared on the homepage in Dec 2003.

Our Lady Overshadows Abortion Mill


For nearly two whole days, a 33-foot tall statue of Our Lady of the New Millenium looked down on the parking lot of Albany Medical Surgical Center on Chicago’s northwest side, a notorious abortion mill. For 24 hours, a vigil was held at the foot of the statue, which is owned by Mrs. Francine Demma and displayed throughout the Archdiocese of Chicago. Hundreds of pro-lifers came to spend a few hours praying for an end to abortion, and especially for the women bound for abortions at Albany.

http://www.prolifeaction.org/home/2003/olnm2.jpg Ana Esquivel and Julie McCreevy

The vigil began and ended with Mass at the Knanaya Catholic Center across the street from Albany, who also gave the use of their parking lot for mounting the statue. At least three babies were saved from abortion during the vigil, organized by Julie McCreevy of Helpers of God’s Precious Infants and her assistant Ana Esquivel.

See Joe Scheidler’s Hotline for more details on the vigil.
 
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