The Vision of Christ in a Tortilla Shell

Original article in normal print. My comments highlighted!

Web News Item: The Vision of Christ in a Tortilla Shell

Maria Orosco, a 78-year-old mother of two, had just finished making herself a homemade tortilla shell when she says she saw the face of Christ materialize in the shell along with three large paragraphs of what appeared to be Hebrew text. Orosco then covered the vision with beans, wrapped it up and ate it. “Open your mouth wide and I will fill it.

I am the bread of life. O taste and see that the Lord is good.”

"I was hungry," Orosco explained to a throng of reporters following the incident. "This is Mexico. Food doesn't exactly grow on trees."

Good observation, mangos not withstanding.

The world would likely have never known about the vision had not Orosco, overcome with guilt, confessed the whole ordeal to her local priest, Father Jose Colon the next day.

From a pastoral perspective: what is going on here in the area of guilt and grace?

"I convinced her to go public," Colon told The Holy Observer through an interpreter. "I thought it was important for the world to know that God is still speaking to His children. Why he chose to appear to a ravenously hungry woman as a piece of food—well, that's the first question I'll be asking Him when I get out of purgatory."

You get thirty extra days in purgatory (if it exists) for telling the woman to go public!

The reaction from Biblical scholars around the world has manifested itself in a collective expression of utter disbelief.

Why should we doubt that a poor woman ate a bean burrito? Blessed art thou holy Maria mother of two, may you always have enough taco shells.

"We're not talking about some tears on a statue here. This is like if the archaeologists had blown their noses with the Dead Sea Scrolls," said an exasperated Ian Rothchild of the Association of International Bible Scholars. "There's no telling what this message could have been—clarification of the book of Revelation, an answer to predestination versus free will or even a clear message to the Amish to stop living in the past. This woman should be thrown in jail."

So should ivory tower scholars!

My personal perception however is that the writing was a list of ingredients, additives, and a calorie, sodium, and carbohydrate count, and that Maria Orosco did exactly what God would have both expected and wanted her to do…she ate the evidence. In so many of the “relics” of the church someone seems often to have eaten the evidence. Where are the actual pieces of the true cross? Where is the ark? How many fingers did St. Francis have? 12? The shroud is arguable. We don’t even have the autographa (originals) of the writings of Holy Scripture… Bloody good thing! If we did we would worship the pages and invent some vicious Pharisaism and beat people into spiritual submission.


My favorite relics are the two skulls of Christopher Columbus, one when he was a young man, and one when he was an old man.

Over against all this I think Simon Peter had it right: “Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” 1 Peter 1:8