They Come to Unite Their Own Tears to the Virgin's Tears

According to tradition, on 4 November 1696, the faithful who were attending Mass in the small Greek-Catholic village church saw the Virgin of the "Odigitria" icon weeping tears. The phenomenon repeated itself until December 8, and was witnessed by a great number of people flocking from neighboring villages. The priest saved these "precious pearls of mercy" tears in a silk handkerchief and sent them to the bishop, who had them examined by ecclesiastical and lay witnesses. The results of these examinations were unanimous. The royal family became interested in the prodigy as well. Emperor Leopold I ordered that the icon of the crying Virgin be transferred to Vienna and exhibited inside the cathedral. In the capital, this miraculous icon instantly became the object of a great veneration among the faithful, who invoked her in all necessities, especially during the war against the Turks, who were definitively expelled from the Autrio-Hungarian territory in 1697. Meanwhile, a copy of the icon, placed in Mariapocs, also began to shed tears in 1715, during the first half of the month of August. Pilgrims came in great numbers and the civil authorities decided to build a larger church. The construction began in 1749, but the interior was only completed in 1946. The afflux of pilgrims in the course of the following two centuries increased steadily, partly because of a third miraculous lacrimation in 1905 which lasted more than a month (...) Pope John Paul II during the Angelus of 17 August 1988, declared, "Mariapocs is a place of unity, where the faithful of different nations venerate Mary's maternal love, Mary who is saddened by the sins of her children and who intercedes for them before her divine Son. It is as if they go there to unite their own tears to the Virgin's tears, to purify and let their tears melt together into a single offering, united to the redemptive offering of Jesus the Savior."