You’ve heard of the famous Virgin Mary piece of grilled cheese, right?
Did you know that thing sold for over $28,000 on eBay? That’s a ton of cash!
Imagine seeing something like this for yourself. Maybe you have. Ever seen a cloud that looked a certain way or a shape in a ceiling tile? Of course—our imaginations are fantastic things. But have you ever seen what appears to be a holy image and it was so incredibly timely that you believed—though you wouldn’t sell it for $28,000on eBay—that God might have been whispering something to you? In any case, it inspired you, right?
Something like this happened to Anthony Coscia. He was having a difficult time finding a job and wasn’t feeling terribly confident about a job interview. He recalls:
“I was out of work for eighteen months, and I was following all the great advice of the experts from outplacement firms who tutor job-seekers on what to do, yet, I wasn’t getting any job offers. I was spending a lot of time visiting Jesus before and after my job interviews, praying, and I got to know Jesus pretty well in that time of closeness and dependency on him.”
He explains that, “One day, as I was inside a Catholic Church asking God what I did well, or not well, at a recent job interview. I felt his loving assurance that it was all going to work out and that I needed to trust him more.”
Tony, the name he goes by, was walking along the aisle, passing each pew, when he says Jesus said, “Sit here.”
Tony almost giggled. The place he was right next to was a spot where the pew is cut, enough to make room for the massive pillar that holds up the structure. The only place to “sit” was definitely not a place one would reasonably choose! He wanted to trust God, but was thinking, “I hoped nobody would come in and see me crunched here in this tiny space with my knees touching the pillar because they would certainly think I was very strange and maybe even think that I was nuts, too!”
He trusted God anyways and sat down, and what happened next is amazing.
“Then Jesus said, “Look.” So I looked at what I could but the only thing that made sense was to look at the marble slap in front of my nose. What I saw was a painting (from the marble lines) . . . a painting of the Blessed Virgin Mary riding on a horse with St. Joseph her spouse walking alongside, and with baby Jesus lying across Mary’s lap.”
Here’s the image included in his book:
Now look closely with some visual aid:
Sort of plausable that the image looks a lot like the story from Matthew’s Gospel:
When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.” (2:13)
Tony chose, at the wise advice of his priest, not to publicize the pillar, but it’s still a really great thing to think about: in order for this image to appear to Tony like this, God must have pre-ordained the situation—the good and the bad. God must have guided the trees falling, the mud, and the perfect pressure to make this image inside the mountain. Then he must have guided the hands of the workers cutting the stone because even being a quarter-inch off would throw off the whole thing. He wold have been thinking of this moment even when Tony was troubled about not having a job.
It’s really cool to consider, and Tony’s anxiousness was relieved: “My fears about getting a job were completely destroyed.”
While Tony doesn’t seek money or recognition, he does hope this story increases the faith of readers. Many times, the things we think are coincidences, might be ways God wants to talk to us. You’ll learn more about this in Tony’s book Tony’s 50,000 Co-Incidence Miracles.
