Monday, November 20, 2006

Tidying up for the Second Coming

According to one report in the English press, Jesus and Mary are making appearances to the devout in a church in Cannes (of all places). This is not the type of apparition that sounds worth having:

Church-goer Rita Gomez, who helps run the prayer group, said: "The visions usually begin with the whole building trembling in the middle of a prayer meeting.

"Then various worshippers will fall off their seats shaking violently or being sick. When they come round a few minutes later, they say Christ or the Holy Virgin has appeared and spoken to them."

One 14-year-old girl had fits and began smashing windows, then began bleeding 'pinkish-yellow' blood, Miss Gomez said.

She added: "This might sound like the work of the devil rather than God, but everyone who experiences a vision says it was Jesus and Mary that appeared to them."

I am not sure that there is any biblical basis for believing that divine apparitions would make you feel sick. Epilepsy, on the other hand...

Anyway, what are the messages that some say they are getting?:

Worshipper Emmanuel Duchamp, 38, said he saw Christ 'standing before him' in the church.

He added: "I wasn't ill, but I was overcome with a very warm feeling. Then Jesus started talking and I began writing down everything he told me. It was about cleaning my house and cleaning the homes of others to prepare for the coming of the Lord."

This would have to be one of most mundane messages ever received from an apparition.

(Reminds me too of the part in Pratchett and Gaiman's "Good Omens" about how a character's ability to see into the future was like looking down a long narrow tube, with snippets of information being picked up without context, and accordingly hard to interpret. For example, one message from the 1970's had been "don't buy Betamax". I hope I am remembering this correctly.)

1 comment:

Caz said...

So Jesus is a bit obsessive compulsive when it comes to the cleanliness of places he visits; stems from early trauma at birth, I'd guess. Nothing wrong with wanting a clean abode.