Worshiping that which is dirt...that is what has been happening in a New Mexico sanctuary visited on pilgrimages, much to the changrin of the sanctuary's priest.

Erik Eckholm reports, "tens of thousands of pilgrims walk eight miles or more to the shrine on Good Friday, some bearing heavy crosses and others approaching on their knees. Scores of people visit every day the rest of the year, many hoping to cure diseases or disabilities with prayer, holy water and, most famously, the healing dirt, which visitors collect from a hole in the floor inside the church." [1]

The priest, Father Roca is a believer in the miraculous, yet he clarifies, "They are the work of the Good Lord.  I always tell people that I have no faith in dirt, I have faith in the Lord." [2]

Legends abound about the site, how the pit of dirt is continually filled, how the cross in the sanctuary came to be found---yet out of these legends miracles still happen.

At first I thought it was ironic that dirt, the indirect victim of the Fall, the essence of our mortal bodies, the genesis of our earthly lives was given such high honor. I thought: shouldn't we be aiming for glorified bodies of the second Adam, not making holy that which is of the first?

I think that was the wrong way to approach this, and as I have mulled over this story for the past couple of days I realize that God is at work even though we try to rationalize the irrational.  There are legends about how the crucifix in the sanctuary was found, how it kept wandering back to the place it was dug out of in the desert.  Legends continue about the dirt in the pit and how it miraculously refills every night, even though there is a storage shed full of dirt next to the sanctuary and a caretaker who fills the pit everyday with crisp, clean clay.

Western culture and religion loves to poke fun at the irrational, the masses rubbing their bodies with holy dirt---we are enlightened, and we shake our heads in disdain.  Yet we miss the point, the point Father Roca is desparately trying to pass on to the pilgrims in Chimayo, New Mexico: God is the source of the miraculous, and he rewards faith, no matter how irrational it is.

Did not Christ himself heal blindness with clay and spittle?  But it was not the clay and saliva that did it, it was the power of God.  Sometimes we are irrational beings, placing more stock in dirt than modern "medicine," but is not the hand of God behind both, if we have the faith to see the miraculous.

I don't think Christ was exaggerating when he said we could move mountains if we believed---that image is a metaphor of the miraculous.  People are being cured by holy dirt...is not that a mountain being moved?  Others are being cured of cancer through medical robotics and radiation...is not that a mountain being moved as well?

As Father Roca pleads with us to direct our faith toward God, so we must incline our rationality and irrationality toward the ultimate source of knowledge and faith: the Blessed Trinity.

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[1] A Pastor Begs to Differ With Flock On Miracles, February 20, 2008, New York Times.  Reporting by Erik Eckholm.
[2] ibid.