By David Topping

God works in mysterious ways. Rather than manifesting Himself and, say, ending world hunger, killing the devil, or giving us all the ability to fly, He has taken a significantly more Dennis the Menace-y route to salvation, blasting the Virgin Mary into a tree in a backyard near Danforth Avenue and Birchmount Road.
The Sun interviewed Christopher Moreau, a condo superintendent who first spotted Mary (above) in his neighbour’s yard. Moreau told the Sun that the Virgin, a “blessing,” “raises the hair on your neck, it gives you chills,” and that his neighbours who came to see it “just started shaking,” presumably because they have really bad seasonal tree allergies. Neil MacCarthy of the Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto would neither confirm nor deny that the tree’s Maryfication was a miracle, continuing his organization’s long-standing devotion to drawing conclusions only when facts can support them.
To their credit, the Sun had the good sense to subtly mock the whole thing by examining a bunch of other famous mundane divine manifestations—though that’ll be of little help to Moreau’s poor tree-owning neighbour, who was not quoted at all in the story and who may not be too happy with Moreau’s testament that “the tree could possibly help those who are ill or in need of a potential miracle.” You know what they say about good fences…
Photo by John Hanley/Sun Media.