![]() ![]() TV has rolled in.īut that's only the watering part you haven't heard the bleeding part. Sometimes they leave disappointed: It doesn't happen. People are coming now to these grounds from Pennsylvania and Florida and Newport News to see for themselves whatever there is to see. That's where the pastor and the associate pastor have their offices and private quarters. The rectory is about 100 yards from the church itself, over a small wooded hill. They're in different places on the parish grounds, though most are in the rectory. ![]() Elizabeth Ann Seton Church have been observed watering in recent weeks too. By the otherwise curious, now flocking in. Observed by puzzled, awe-struck, semi-frightened parishioners. According to those who run the parish, many times in the past six or seven weeks, during or before or after a service, this statue of Mary has been clearly observed "welling up." At least once copiously. It's flanked by a statue of Saint Joseph and by dozens of votive lights that flicker throughout the day, having been lighted by the swelling faithful. One of the chief watering statues at the parish - it's of Christ's mother and is about three feet high and is olive in color - is affixed to a wood base on the side of the main altar. God, if He's behind all this, makes His unfathomable choices, picks His unsuspecting spots. A cleric with an extremely low profile even within his own diocese. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church in Lake Ridge. He's a low-ranking associate pastor at St. The man apparently making this happen isn't a cardinal or a bishop or some other church potentate. Though not just the otherworldly, come to think of it. There's always a certain unpredictability. Will start to produce something that is, by touch and taste, what we know as H2O. James Bruse doesn't need to touch the statues but only has to be in their proximity - on the altar saying Mass, or maybe seated at his desk in his windowless parish office. Or the guy making this happen, who clearly has a head problem, has magic buttons up the sleeve of his black priest shirt. It's done with mirrors and blue smoke, natch. Sometimes it's just an odd drop of water or two a particular statue will produce, and sometimes it's a whole coursing mini-stream. This isn't possible, of course, but a 37-year-old Catholic priest in the exurbs of Washington, down among the split-levels of I-95, is touching parish statues - and they start to "weep." Small crystal clear droplets of water will visibly well up in the statues' eyes, will line the ridge of their noses, will suspend at their chins, will form Lilliputian pools at their plaster or bronze or wood or fiberglass feet. Proof positive you can be seeing something and still not believe you're seeing it. There are four tiny puddles of water at the statue's base now. It's as if the water is just appearing right out of the plaster and then rolling downward.Ī bead forms under the alabaster-pink chin. The Washington Post reporter is standing maybe four inches from the Blessed Mother's nose. But the eye is very small and so it is hard to know for sure. ![]() The water, from what the naked eye can tell, is forming at the corner of the right eye. This statue seems actually to be producing water. No battery-operated tear ducts like a religious Chatty Cathy with a hole in her back where you put in the size C's. The statue, which has a halo and seems to be made of plaster, is on a fake wood bookcase. There's something entirely new in his demeanor. The print reporter is the first to put his pencil down and approach the bookcase. The four people present are a priest and three journalists. There are at least half a dozen statues of Mary in here and also color enlargements on the walls of zoo animals, the kind weekend photo buffs make. "No, go ahead, go over and look at it," he says with a kind of small weariness. "That one over there," he says quietly, pointing to a foot-high statue of the Blessed Mother. Okay, yeah, Father Jimbo, let's just get on with the interview. "Uh, see that one's crying now," he says.
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