On Mt. Taburno in Italy, in the year 1401, a young deaf/mute girl named Agnese saw the Madonna, gained hearing and speech, and led her village to a miracle. This is how Tom came to know of her and the hidden statue which still holds relevance for our world today.

Mt. Taburno is over 4500 feet high, lying inland of Naples just above the ankle of the ‘boot.’ Tom’s friend Rudy, whom he worked with at the Town of Greece Highway Department, and Rudy’s wife Carmine had both grown up in the village at the base of that mountain.

Sometime in the 1980s Tom and his wife Elaine were invited over to meet Rudy and Carmine’s nieces, two young women who also grew up in that village. It was a fun, lively evening among friends with Rudy and Carmine translating for the nieces who spoke no english.

The nieces had brought pictures and postcards from Italy. One of the postcards had a line drawing of a church with a few other buildings behind it. Tom suddenly got quite serious, picked it up and asked, “Is this real?” When Rudy translated Tom’s question the nieces laughed.

Confused, Tom asked more seriously, “Is this a real place?” Again the nieces laughed and giggled to each other, as delightful young women do. This questioning went back and forth a few times and was the hit of the evening for the young women but was frustrating for Tom. He wanted to know if the pencil drawing was of an actual place or an artist’s conception. His only answer was laughter.

What caught Tom’s attention was the profound inscription above the door of the church. The nieces on the other hand thought he was pointing to the building directly behind the church, which was their home, and asking, “Is your house real?”

Seeing the postcard had initiated a ‘knowing.’ Tom didn’t care for the word psychic but still, he had immediately become aware of the ancient history of the church and it’s implications for the world today.

I have looked up “Sanctuary of the Madonna of Taburno” on Wikipedia. I found that the name of the girl in the story is Agnese and the year was 1401.

Here’s how Tom told it:
Agnese was a young deaf mute girl who lived in the village at the foot of Mt. Taburno. Each year the sheep were brought up the mountain to pasture at the higher elevations. Someone had to stay with them while the rest of the villagers returned to work below. This particular year the young girl was old enough to be left there alone. She was given a stern warning that she was to be working, spinning wool into yarn, and not just sitting around watching sheep graze.

Agnese was a willing and hard worker, and singularly alone in her innocence, which is essential. As she spun she had a vision. Mother Mary came to her and told her to bring the townspeople up the mountain, the Madonna had something to show them. Agnese protested that her job was to be spinning yarn and she’d risk getting a severe beating for leaving her work undone. Mary assured her that she’d take care of that. Agnese then asked how she was supposed to call them when she can’t speak. Mary assured her that it would also be taken care of. Agnese still balked saying that she can’t hear what they may say in return. Mary again reassured Agnese that all would be well. “Go,” Mary told her.

Agnese ran down the mountain into the village and straight to the priest, who was the major authority in any Italian town of that era. “Father! Father! I’ve seen the Madonna! I’ve seen the Madonna! She wants to speak to us!”

“Agnese,” the surprised priest said, “You can speak!” Let’s count that as miracle number one.

“Yes, yes, I can speak. I’ve seen the Madonna! She wants us to come up the mountain!”

“And you can hear me?” The priest asked. That would be miracle number two.

“Yes, I can speak and hear. But the Madonna! She’s up on the mountain! She has something to show us!”

“Agnese, you can hear, and you can speak! This is amazing. We must tell your father.”

Word of the two miracles spread quickly, reaching the entire town. But dealing with the doubters and providing for everyone to get up the mountain en masse took three days. By then the openness and wonder that is so essential for the fulfillment of spiritual experiences had faded due to the necessary preparations, and occasional controversy. However, upon arriving at the location of Agnese’s spinning wheel, there was more yarn laying around than anyone could have spun in the time involved. That was counted as miracle number three, which has some meaning in the Catholic tradition.

The people milled about the area talking and looking around, some waiting quietly. Some said they saw something but nothing really consolidated their attention. After some amount of time they decided nothing more was going to happen and began to leave. That’s when one of them noticed a glint shining through a crack in the rock face, a small crack in a solid rock wall. It was just enough to tell that the glint wasn’t coming from the face of the rock but from somewhere deeper within.

People began trying to chip open the crack with rocks that were laying around while others went back down to the village to get proper tools. Within a short amount of time they had opened the crack enough for one of the smaller adults to climb through. He immediately began ranting and raving so fiercely they thought he’d gone mad. Quickly, the rock face was opened enough for several others to get through.

Inside was a fair sized hollow space. In the center of the space was a statue of a seated Virgin Mary holding the Christ child in her left arm. Her right hand was outstretched to her side. She was holding three spheres which were too large to remain in her hand unaided. There was a painting on the wall behind her. If you stood behind the statue looking at the wall, you would see a perfect depiction of the village as it was at that time, in 1401.

The painting and the statue had been done many years, perhaps centuries earlier, by some unnamed artist-prophet. It then became enveloped by the natural movement of rock due to compression and shearing stresses within the mountain itself.

Above the painting was a line of writing in Latin, a warning if you will. The modern translation of which is, loosely put, “Pray the rosary daily or God will release one of these upon you.” The spheres were understood to represent the three natural disasters which mountainous areas are subject to, wild fires, earthquakes, and landslides. In other words, it is currently translated as a threat from God.

However, Tom claims the original artist meant the warning to be understood this way – the three spheres are clearly too large to be held securely in the Madonna’s hand unless there is some kind of ‘glue’ holding them together. And yes, they do represent natural disasters. The ‘glue’ which holds them in place is human spirituality; love, wisdom, and compassion. So, according to Tom, the original meaning was – we ought strive to maintain at least a minimum level of ‘spiritual glue’ amongst ourselves, in our societies, and with the Big Blue Marble, or we risk becoming an irritation upon the face of the Earth.

At this time we see deep divisions between various factions of American society and the world at large. We see an emboldening of white supremacists, nationalists, neo-nazis, and many others. Even some so-called ‘religious’ groups which view their fellow humans far less than compassionately are gaining popularity. We also see an increase in the intensity and frequency of storms, wildfires, and even lava flows. We continue to pollute the surface of Mother Earth and her seas with chemicals and plastics. We’re even messing around with nuclear fusion, which has serious spiritual consequences. Vibrationally speaking, if we become too much of an irritant upon the face of Mother Earth she may ‘shrug her shoulders’ in an attempt to relieve her discomfort.

Tom told this story to many different groups of people in the ensuing years after that early 1980s visit with Rudy, Carmine, and their nieces. Over his life Tom had made close, trustworthy friends with many highly ranked military personnel. In 1991 the START Treaty was signed between the US and the USSR, it was designed to limit the number of intercontinental ballistic missiles. The first missiles to be removed from service were the ones at the very top of Mt. Taburno because they had been ‘compromised.’ Tom was quite pleased that he had been the one to compromise them by often mention their existence when telling this story.

On a related note, the December 26, 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami affected a huge area and many more islands than were covered by typical media. At that time, there were aboriginal people living on a few of the islands, living exactly as they had been for the past several thousand years, untouched by modern civilization. Apparently, they survived the tsunami fully intact. The reason could be as simple as the chief intuitively deciding they should pick fruit or dig roots up at the higher elevations that day. Tom’s comment was that they maintain a compassionate connection to each other and to the Earth itself, which the modern world has lost to a large degree.

Also connected to this are the Tibetans. They are the only people in known history to change from a warrior culture to a peaceful, spiritually oriented one. What helped them in their transition was that even though they were known as fierce warriors when the teachings of the Buddha reached them, they still had a strong sense of being shepherds of the Earth, rather than owners, entitled to exploit resources for profit. This sacred way of living provided a deeply compassionate foundation upon which their spiritual society could be built.

So we’re left with a question… Today, what compassionate foundation do we have upon which we may build a more spiritual society?