Search
-
PARMA, Ohio — “Mary will find her way home,” Deacon William Fredrick, director of the Shrine of Our Lady of Mariapoch in Burton, Ohio, said confidently when he announced June 11 at the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Parma that the new icon of Our Lady of Mariapoch commissioned for the shrine had been lost in transit from Hungary.
The icon left Hungary in the company of Basilian Father Abel Szocska, apostolic administrator of the Eparchy of Nyiregyhaza, Hungary, and hegumen of the Basilian monastery at Mariapocs, and his companion and translator, Father Csaba Sivado. They had last seen it on a luggage cart in Berlin June 9.
Four days later, Deacon Fredrick’s wife, Nancy, said she got the news from the central investigative center of American Airlines that the last contact with the icon was in Berlin and that other airlines responding also did not have it. She was told to begin the laborious task of filling out the many forms required for them and for Air Berlin.
One half-hour later, Deacon Fredrick saw a package on his front porch as he returned home. It was the icon! One of the many labels on the package said JFK International Airport, Jamaica, New York. The package was addressed to Father Abel Szocska, with Deacon Fredrick’s home address.
When called to give Horizons the details of the icon’s safe arrival, Nancy first said, “Do you believe in miracles?”
“We have no idea how it got here, we have no idea where it came from,” she said.
The icon was to have been presented to the faithful of the eparchy during a Divine Liturgy at the cathedral June 11, and then put on display for veneration. The day, however, did not go as planned.
“I felt as a bridegroom who was forsaken by the fiance,” said Basilian Father Abel Szocska that day, dismayed that the icon had not arrived with him in Parma.
Father Szocska said they discovered the icon was missing, only after they arrived in Chicago, went through immigration and picked up their luggage.
“It seems to me that Mary and God want us to share and take part in the fate of the weeping icon of Mariapocs,” he said, as he recounted the story of the original icon being taken away from the people by the emperor and placed in the cathedral in Vienna. He said the Theotokos didn’t abandon her children but performed miracles through the replacement icon, which also wept.
More than 100 people attended the June 11 Divine Liturgy at the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, expecting to venerate the new icon.
The liturgy was celebrated by Bishop Emeritus John Kudrick of Parma and concelebrated by Archpriest Michael Hayduk, cathedral protopresbyter, and the priests from Hungary.
Father Sivado read a letter of greeting from Metropolitan Fulop Kocsis, head of the Greek Catholic Church in Hungary.
“May our Mary of Pocs be our common mother. In her love, let us be each other’s brothers and sisters on the two shores of the ocean. She is the one who binds us together,” he said, ending with his blessing to all those present.
At the conclusion of liturgy, Father Szocska presented Father Hayduk with a silver coin, stamped with the icon of Mariapocs and the image of St. John Paul II, given to the shrine in Hungary by the pope when he visited in 1991.
Father Szocska also presented Mother Theodora Strohmeyer, hegumena of Christ the Bridegroom, with a coin, and thanked her for her hospitality in housing the visiting priests at the monastery.
A reception followed, where those present were able to greet the Hungarian priests and view a video of the blessing of the now-missing icon at the shrine in Mariapocs.
The icon will be on display at the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Parma until June 25.
This article is an update to a report published in the June 18 issue of Horizons.
