Divine or Imagined? : Visions of Holiness in Lubbock

From the mists above and a hunger within, Theresa Werner thought she saw God. He seemed so much like the paintings.

His hair was white and his eyes were fire. The rumble of his voice was at once a comfort and a fright. “Convert your ways, for time shall erase all men’s memories,” he said.

And that was just the once. Other days it was the Virgin Mary who spoke to her. Our Lady lamented the sinners and warned of chastisements. In her diary, Theresa wrote: Can this really be happening? I am so unsure.

Maybe They Were Delusion

It seemed crazy to repeat. Why would God and Mary talk to a country girl like her, anyhow? Maybe the voices were just something that came naturally out of herself or her prayers--or maybe they were a delusion.

Yet they sounded so real. And, after all, why shouldn’t the Lord reach out to her, smoothing away the doubt? People want more than Bible-story miracles from way back where and when. Why not here and why not now?

For Theresa, as for so many others, religion too often seemed a long passageway without a door. She needed something to grip onto--God actually beside her in this life as he would be in the next.

And now she thought she might have been chosen for her very ordinariness. She wanted to be sure and so she asked for signs. Once, a voice circled the kitchen as she mopped the floor.

“Is that you, Mary?” she questioned. Then she lit candles and prayed for the poor souls in purgatory. The room rapidly filled with the fragrance of roses. Mary!

Sensing Mary’s Presence

The voices were nothing to keep to herself. Theresa told her priest, Msgr. Joe James, and he was not surprised. He and many others at St. John Neumann’s Catholic Church in Lubbock thought they were sensing Our Lady’s presence.

Theresa, actually, was only one of three to receive messages. Mike Slate and Mary Constancio got them, too. They wrote down each word during Monday night rosary sessions in the chapel, like dictation from heaven.

What if this is all in my head? Theresa continued to fret. Msgr. James tried to reassure her: Don’t be so concerned about what’s true and what’s not. That will be understood soon enough. By their fruits ye shall know them.

Yet during the last year the fruits have not been so easy to sort--amid the passions of the zealous and the disapproval of the bishop and the scrutiny of a formal investigation by church experts.

News of the messages, like so many reports of visions, weeping statues and heavenly images on someone’s table top, became a spiritual magnet.

Busloads came to see and hear for themselves--upward of 15,000 pilgrims on one day last summer, for maybe the sky had finally opened with answers.

To the regulars at St. John’s this all seemed a great puzzle. What the heck was going on? Had Theresa and the others made some wondrous connection with the divine--or merely inhaled the desperate breath of their own imaginations?

It is those questions that have split a parish of 250 families. To this day the chasm waits to be closed, here in the cotton-daubed plains of the Texas Panhandle, all in the fullness of time.

Theresa Werner, a 34-year-old farmer’s daughter, grew up in Nazareth, just up the road from Tulia and Plainview and Lubbock. The town is mostly Catholic, a rarity hereabouts where people are more inclined to be Baptists.

Theresa was always the bashful girl. Her long, auburn hair seemed combed to hide her face. She liked to be alone, off in her room or up on her horse.

God was a powerful presence in her young life. One overcast day, she was skinny-dipping in the swimming hole, even though she knew that wasn’t right.

Suddenly, she sensed the Lord above, ready to zap her. The clouds seemed to drop down and start to churn. Theresa scooted off in a fright until at last reason took hold. Why run? Fast as you go, you can never get away.

God was at school, too. The nuns invoked his name. Pay attention or they got out the paddles. They taught about virtue and sin, heaven and hell. It was beautiful and scary and mysterious, all at the same time.

Stories About Blessed Mother

Some of the most wonderful stories were about the Blessed Mother. Mary remained a virgin even though she gave birth to Jesus. God spared her all sin, and in death she was taken up body and soul into heaven.

Imagine the goodness! In her mercy, the Holy Virgin was really the mother of everyone who wanted the light of her son. Pray to her, and she answered. She was to be hailed: Mary, full of grace . ...

Sometimes she even appeared to people right before their eyes. Through the ages, hundreds have thought they have seen her, roses at her feet and a white glow above her head.

Of course, who can say for sure? It is a good thing the Catholic Church uses its authority to judge the real from the unreal. Only a handful or so of the visions have been approved. Shrines go up where they took place.

Millions each year visit Guadalupe in Mexico or Fatima in Portugal or Lourdes in France. Theresa herself tingled at the thought of them, though the fascination would pass. Religion can get to be a little confining.

Took Turn for the Wild

As Theresa grew older, she took a turn for the wild. Catholicism went up on a shelf like a can of preserves, there for later if she had a craving. And that would come on and off.

In 1981, she got married. Mark Werner was in Alaska, working the pipeline. He put an ad in one of those weekly papers: “Man, 31, earns a good living. Loves a good family life.” They became pen pals before they became lovers.

Nowadays, here in Lubbock, Mark is a baker at a cafeteria, a not-so-hot job with odd hours. There are strains. He and Theresa have a small son to care for and not enough money to do it the way they would like.

The truth of it is, sometimes they seem headed for the Big D. Theresa heaved a jar of cold cream at Mark’s head, and it was a lucky thing he got a hand up.

Religion soothes some of that. In prayer, time seems to melt away. People so often are adrift within themselves, and the aimless motion never stops until they know God as their compass.

‘Holding Jesus’ Heart’

One night, Theresa had a vision of the dove of the Lord descending in a shaft of light. “Just then, Mark and my hands are on fire,” she wrote in her diary. “We are holding Jesus’ heart now in our hands.”

They could sense a sacred and eternal flame, like the splendor of salvation reaching out from the dark.

Lubbock is a sprawl of homes and shopping plazas, more new than old, grown now beyond the Loop Highway that once hemmed it in from the surrounding cotton fields. Little is spectacular but the big sky above. Sunsets are a real show.

The population is 211,000. Although that number stays pretty much the same, the residents come and go, stationed for a time at Reese Air Force Base or enrolled at Texas Tech University.

There are seven Catholic churches here, and people pick the one they want for proximity or just because they like it. Of these, St. John Neumann’s is known for its odd-looking building and its eccentric goings-on.

Partially Underground

The church is constructed partially underground, the contours of its lawn sloping up to become both an outside wall and a roof. Much of the design--like the goings-on--is owed to Joe James, 57, the founding pastor.

He, too, is a small-town Texan, handy with machinery. That would be him making the repairs on the wind generators, those big white whirligigs that hover above the church.

The monsignor lives at two speeds, neutral and fourth gear, one day sullen and morose and the next day all revved up. He won’t be found with the other priests at the Tuesday golf game.

Those others don’t have much interesting to say, anyway. So many these days have intellectualized religion. God would have to write them a personal letter before they would even believe in the Resurrection.

That is not the way of Joe James. He is anything but a career-man church bureaucrat. His whole life is a reach for the divine: the feel of it.

Charismatic Spirituality

He embraces what is often called a charismatic spirituality, a more fervent prayer life that in recent years has found a place in nearly every Christian denomination.

God makes himself known to us in dreams and visions and passages of Scripture that come to life. He bestows gifts of the Holy Spirit, or charisms, among them the powers of prophecy and healing.

To James, Catholicism has a spontaneous, hand-clapping, Pentecostal flavor. And at St. John’s, a few of the flock lay their hands on the heads of the sick and even speak in tongues.

This is not for every Catholic, and turnover is high. Some of that owes to Lubbock’s transient nature. Then, too, plenty have quit after run-ins with the monsignor, who can be an angry and quarrelsome man.

He is tired of all those smorgasbord Catholics, picking and choosing. You need to pray! And tithe! After all, religion demands as well as provides. And anyone who does not understand that can leave.

Went on Rome Sabbatical

Oh, my, people have said often enough. If only there was a way to put out that fire and just keep the warmth. Then early last year that appeared to happen. Joe James went away on a sabbatical to Rome and came back changed.

During that time, he made two pilgrimages to the mountain hamlet of Medjugorje in Yugoslavia. Hundreds of thousands have made the same difficult journey since 1981, when six children there began seeing the Holy Virgin.

The apparitions, as yet unapproved by the church, have been likened to miracles like Lourdes--part of the seamless continuity of Mary’s message of peace and faith and conversion.

Pilgrims sometimes describe the sky ablaze with shapes and colors: the sun in a dance of spinning and pulsation. Msgr. James saw none of that, but he did somehow come away with the certain knowledge that Mary is real.

That gave fresh meaning to the rosary prayers that had become trivial to him with repetition. Here is truth, he told himself: The Holy Virgin delivers to the open of heart an oasis of understanding.

And, not incidentally, he was cured of his hypoglycemia.

Mary is more than a mere statue! Joe James proclaimed when he got back in February, 1988. She aches for us to give glory to her son. She wants us to fast twice a week and pray three hours a day. Take this seriously.

Who knows how many did? At the Sunday night prayer meeting, only five came. Joe James himself was tired and would have gone home but for an inner voice reminding him: Where two or three are gathered in my name I am there.

His pride made him ashamed. He told the others of it, and they dropped to their knees. It was then that the monsignor felt the presence of the Virgin, walking in the room and placing her gentle hand on each person’s shoulder.

Agnes Klein lit with it, too. She could not see Mary’s face, “as it was more of an outline.” But she did sense Our Lady moving about--a foot off the floor and wrapped in white.

Smelled Roses in Chapel

The following Sunday, several people smelled roses in the chapel where there were no flowers at all. Could it be perfume or air freshener? Everyone began to sniff around.

“In my spirit I knew it was the presence of the Blessed Virgin,” Richard Wood concluded. And Msgr. James agreed. It was the same scent he had smelled beside the Mountain of Apparitions in Medjugorje.

The next night, at the regular Monday rosary session, an unusual serenity settled over Mary Constancio. In her mind’s eye she saw the Virgin. Then she heard the kindest of voices, melodic as song.

“Pray three rosaries a day and within six months you will see much conversion,” Our Lady told her.

Awakened by Voice

And the night after, as Mary Constancio slept beside her husband, Henry, the same tuneful voice awakened her:

“Go and tell your priest and go and tell your bishop that Mary your mother has come to give a message: That they should spread her word . . . come and say the rosary with me on Monday nights . . . “

Times before, Mary Constancio, 34, had felt the finger of God pointing the way--with a premonition or an answered prayer. But this was so much more vivid and rapturous. She shook Henry.

“The Blessed Mother is speaking to me,” she said.

“OK, OK, that’s good,” he answered and rolled over.

She got up and scribbled the Virgin’s words in one of her son’s composition books. Then she began phoning friends in her prayer group, right then, in the middle of the night. Yes, it is so. Our Lady is with us.

Praise God, Joe James said. And praise God people did. After all, this was Mary Constancio, trustworthy mother and wife, a respiratory therapist at the hospital and nobody’s idea of a kook. She was hearing from the Holy Virgin!

Sparsely Attended

For years, the Monday rosary session had been sparsely attended. Three couples had started it and they often were the only ones there--the beads sliding through their fingers, their prayers a rapid mumble.

But soon there were 30, then twice that, then more. They came to hear the Virgin speak through her messenger, and each Monday there were beautiful new words. “Blessed children of God . . . my heart is burning with love for you . . . “

It was as if all the barriers were dissolving between here and eternity. So much of what Our Lady asked of them were the same things Joe James had commended all along. Fast, pray, tithe.

To the monsignor, this indeed seemed miraculous, though he advised caution, too. Prophecies can be a trick of the human mind, just another sharp rock in the winding cave of consciousness. This was a time for discernment, he said.

Fortunately, the necessary judgments became obvious to him rather soon. Things lined up perfectly, like the landing lights on a runway.

Time and again, all was provided for. When Mary Constancio had to leave one Monday, Our Lady told her the message would simply go to someone else.

The Virgin chose that new woman in the parish, the reedy country girl who already was saying God appeared to her. And lo, during the Joyful Mysteries of the rosary, Theresa Werner’s eyes grew huge and her hands quavered.

She began to write words that seared into her mind: “My dear children, it moves me deeply to see the faithful gather . . . that I may bless them . . . “

At the same moment, the usually taciturn Mike Slate, 39, a retired Air Force master sergeant and respected parishioner, began to tremble. He, too, was hearing the same message.

From then on, instead of one messenger on Monday nights there were three. They were the chosen ones of St. John Neumann’s, and the things happening to them startled and mystified the rest. What stories!

Out-of-Body Feelings

Did you hear? Mary and Mike were over at Theresa’s apartment, praying at the kitchen table. Suddenly, they felt as if they were leaving their bodies and ascending straight up.

They passed the planets and the stars and then they entered heaven through a lustrous gate, where the Lord Jesus was there to welcome them.

In May, the Monday rosary sessions were moved from the chapel into the church, better to accommodate the hundreds and more.

Mary Constancio and Mike Slate went on receiving messages from Our Lady, the words always carrying a loving, if distressed, tone: “For my heart becomes sorrowful when I see . . . my children falling into the grips of Satan.”

Theresa Werner, on the other hand, heard mostly from God, and he was invariably angry and unamiable, his voice rising from the brimstone depths of reckoning to threaten with strikings dead and tearings asunder.

‘Famine Shall Befall Thee’

“Afflictions I shall give unto thee . . . Famine shall befall thee; disease for which there shall be no cure! Woe unto thee.”

The Lord’s messages seemed to favor the archaic phrasing of the King James Bible, though the verses were sometimes a scramble, like free association.

Please make it stop, Theresa cried from time to time. She plugged her ears with fingers, but the voice was more inside than out.

Earlene Steiert, Theresa’s mom, came down from Nazareth, and it all made her hair stand on end. She searched her daughter’s eyes for something malign. But no, the girl was not possessed. Where were these words coming from, then?

That question was the nub of it. St. John Neumann’s is not a parish of the poor and uneducated. There are plenty of professional types, including many from Texas Tech. Opinions broke into thirds.

Praying as Never Before

Some were out-and-out ecstatic: The church had been blessed. By the fruits ye shall know. And no one could deny that people were praying as never before, happy and reverent and infused with God.

Msgr. James was studying the messages and cataloguing their truths. He had a color-code: orange for the Father, yellow for the Son, red for the Holy Spirit, blue for the Virgin Mary, and green for the saints and angels.

The mounting body of prose had more substance than anything he’d read by hot-shot theologians, he said. And he challenged: “If you think these are made up, try writing one yourself at the same speed that’s half as good.”

Still, some people were unsure. Deacon Clark Cochrane, head of Texas Tech’s political science department, reminded the parish not to depend on miracles for their faith. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed.

Maybe the Virgin Mary was appearing in Lubbock--and maybe not. And to many who were uncertain the answer was not even essential. So what if the glitter is false as long as the light is true. Who can deny the messages were good?

‘Seems Loony Tunes’

Well, actually, plenty failed to find the merit. Have you people gone nuts? they wanted to know. Nancy Richard, wife of a church deacon, was threatening to quit. “This all just seems loony tunes to me,” she said.

Paul Koch, an acolyte, remarked caustically to friends, “Too much is coincidence. Something gets said in a sermon on Sunday and it shows up in a message on Monday.”

Skeptics, for the most part, thought the whole thing was something Joe James had imported from Medjugorje.

Nothing deceitful, mind you. But the monsignor had the lyrical tongue of a revivalist. If he was on fire with Our Lady, others naturally would be drawn to the flame for its soul-comforting warmth.

The rosary sessions seemed to them like a seance, the voices born and reborn in the messengers by the powers of suggestion--from Joe James, from their own upbringing, from their longing to know God.

Mary Constancio, after all, spoke of the monsignor as if he preached from some elevated pulpit at the right hand of God. Mike Slate, the burly Vietnam vet, was already a man prone to chatting with angels.

And that batty Theresa. Who knew what went on in her head? She acted as if she had her own burning bush.

Enough was enough. Jo Wilmoth, of the parish council, took Joe James aside. “Father, don’t you think we ought to slow down a bit?” she said.

But he just aimed an index finger at her heart and demanded to know: “Are you praying three

rosaries a day?”

By mid-summer, 2,000 and more crowded around St. John’s every Monday night. They came from as far as Dallas and Albuquerque and Mexico City--and every new face seemed further evidence of the ripening fruits of a miracle.

Several pilgrims claimed to be cured of aches and ailments. Those reports fetched all the Texas newspapers. The Ft. Worth Star Telegram asked: “It happened in Lourdes. Why not in Lubbock?”

To some, the publicity was a vindication of sorts, though it left the doubters appalled. This thing had gotten so huge everything else was nudged aside. The parish council had quit meeting. The newsletter had stopped.

And for what? For all people knew, the messages might be heresy. Yet dissent was unwelcome. “The mood from Father James was, if you don’t like what’s going on, get up and leave,” said John Zak.

The anxiety spread. Other local priests were perturbed, too. Why isn’t the Holy Virgin appearing at our church? their parishioners wanted to know.

Msgr. Curtis Halfmann, over at St. Joseph’s, explained to his flock that the Virgin Mary was appearing in fertile imaginations, not corporeal presence.

Lines for Confession

Yes, he knew the rosary messages had supposedly brought many back to God. There were six lines at St. John’s just for confession.

But whatever the good ends did not justify the means. “Think of a woman who came to repentance after having an abortion,” he said.

Some clergymen, increasingly upset, began calling the office of the Bishop of Lubbock, Michael J. Sheehan. Do something! they pleaded.

The bishop stepped carefully amid the fissures. In a statement, he said he could neither encourage nor discourage participation in the rosary sessions.

He did want to warn, however. The teaching is clear. Catholics are to imitate the virtues of the Virgin and venerate her as they would the saints, but worship is reserved for God.

What’s more, while private revelations from Mary have sometimes been approved by the church, “the tradition is never to presume supernatural causes.” That comes only after a lengthy investigation.

Orders From Bishop

OK, let’s get Rome moving on it, Joe James said. But the bishop had another idea in mind and he delivered the news behind closed doors. Start playing this thing real low-key, he said. Hear me? Understand?

This only confused the monsignor. Why put on the brakes now with the Blessed Mother in our midst? Instead he was planning a shrine, an information center and much more. He wouldn’t--he couldn’t--slow down. After all:

Theresa Werner had revealed to him this vision. Come Aug. 15, on the Feast of the Assumption, some 20,000 people would come to Lubbock, and Our Lady would appear above and the sun would throb like a heart in the sky.

Such a prospect was fever to him. There was so much to do. He went to City Hall to alert officials. Twenty thousand people! they gasped. Where will we hold an event as big as that?

Well, the monsignor answered, the Virgin Mary has been showing up at our place so we might as well have it there.

The great numbers sprawled across the lawn, past the parking lot and into the empty field across the street. They faced an outdoor altar set up on the flat roof above the church office. State troopers managed the traffic.

Space in the concrete courtyard beside the fountain was reserved for the lame in their walkers and wheelchairs. The sun stared down 98-degrees mean, and in time the crowd bloomed with umbrellas for protection.

People had come from everywhere. Who knows how they heard? Some read of it in the papers and said the event summoned a memory of a dream they’d had. They milled about in expectation--Catholics, fundamentalists, gypsies, name it.

When Theresa Werner arrived in late afternoon, there was a brief cascade of rain. Praise the Lord. This was just as prophesied--that the Virgin would come through the clouds like an inconsolable storm yet also gentle as a dove.

Theresa had endured a difficult week. She had quarreled with Joe James about whether to attend a retreat--only later to remind herself that he was her earthly superior and she kissed his feet.

Asked to Give Blessing

A few days later, as the pilgrims began arriving, she felt uneasy when so many wanted her blessings. She had never prayed over people before, but found she was able, through the glory of God and his Son Jesus Christ.

Now was the feast day itself, and she met the other messengers to pray the rosary. Mass started just before sunset, and only moments into the liturgy an ancient power seemed to burst through the modern sky.

Clouds glided in from the south and when they reached across the descending sun, people spied images out of the changing light. See her! some shouted. And there was Mary, as promised, the handmaid of the Lord.

Celeste Lovette of Whiteface, Tex., glimpsed the Virgin in a full Nativity scene, just like a Christmas card. Sunbeams shot out from the cradle of straw as if they were rods of neon.

We have a God, Celeste whispered to herself. Then she watched the fluid gleaming reshape into a new portrait, the Virgin smiling, her hands out.

Some Saw Serpent

Different people beheld different images, some Jesus and some an eagle and some a serpent with a beady little eye. And some--even a man devout as Joe James--saw nothing at all.

As people peered longer into the brightness, the sun seemed to spin and flip and pulsate, lurching closer, then pulling back. All was spectacle.

Those with Polaroid cameras snapped away, and the photos rode the heat of the crowd, hand to hand. They showed the outline of what could be an entrance superimposed on the sun. It is the doorway to heaven, people declared.

Rosaries dipped in the fountain turned the bright golden of wedding bands, or so dozens of witnesses claimed. Rose Marie Dama, of Waco, Tex., said hers changed colors even as she held it in her hands.

Celeste Benoist of Albuquerque swore the water gave life to the legs of her infant boy, struck by cerebral palsy. Josie Todd of Lubbock escaped the pain in her back that had kept her from work for 17 years.

Moon Had Bright Hues

When the moon rose, it too throbbed in bright hues. The glow bathed the crowd as people responded to the beseeches of the Mass. Let us proclaim the mystery of our faith.

In the darkness, a lady in white moved through the multitude. Her head was hidden under a hood, and she discreetly handed out gifts of $100 bills. No one knew who she was, and she seemed to vanish as suddenly as she came.

“Please take this,” she told polio victim Elena Ramos, of Abernathy, Tex., giving her a booklet of Bible verses with the money folded inside.

Among the throng was at least one other mysterious woman. She emerged for just an instant and embraced Theresa Werner. “I have a message from the Lord,” she said. “The work is finished.”

And that was how Theresa learned her time as an instrument for God’s divine purposes on earth was over.

Finally, she could rest.