It’s a miracle: a pray-along Mary in an ikon on the wall of Saint Charbel’s Maronite Catholic Church in Sydney, Australia, where the madonna’s lips move in concert with the congregation’s prayers. And it must be true, because photographic documentation exists in the form of cellphone videoclips that went mildly viral in the last week.
Hallelujah.
But wait. Watch the clips again, and you will see this is even more of a miracle than advertised. Not only are Mary’s lips moving in prayer, but also the angels are presumably singing along, the kid is babbling, and the kid’s hand is twitching. Why, if it weren’t a miracle, you’d almost think there was something going on like, oh, pixel distortion, or compression-artifact issues.
It’s inspiring, though, how the Mother of God, in such a world of woe, spends her time lip-synching from a so-so icon, impersonating a fencepost, manipulating tree-rings and cookie sheets, and other similar ways of making herself divinely useful.
