Whether there was a miracle or not at Jackson Catholic Middle School on Friday must be carefully examined by church leaders.
In what is called “Eucharist adoration,” a large wafer — unleavened bread — about 3 or 4 inches in diameter was blessed by a priest and set on a gold stand, called a luna, in the school chapel.
During the day, as adult volunteers sat near it, a student claimed to see the image of Jesus on the wafer.
Dave Krajewski, a psychotherapist with Crossroads Psychotherapy in Jackson and a Catholic, said he got a call from a friend about 4 p.m. Friday. He went to JCMS, 915 Cooper St., and was among 10 or 20 people squeezed into the chapel to observe the wafer.
The outline of the male figure, Krajewski said, was a red or orange vibrant color. He had long brown hair and looked like he was wearing a robe.
“I left the school not knowing if I had seen a miracle or not,” Krajewski said. “But I’m not ruling it out.”
The Rev. Cecilio Reyna of St. Mary Catholic Church, 120 E. Wesley St., wrote on his blog about being called and driving over to see the wafer.
"I did see what appeared to be the outline of a man's face with some bright spots toward the bottom of the luna. One of the spots where it was glowing," he wrote on www.patercreyna.blogspot.com.
About 8 p.m. the blessed wafer was moved to St. John Catholic Church, 711 Francis St., for safe keeping. But before it was placed in the tabernacle, it was placed on the altar and several lights were turned on.
“The image the students saw and the less visible image I saw in the evening, which was the same image, was gone. Nevertheless, I decided to take a picture. When I uploaded the picture to my computer, I noticed an image that was entirely different than the one I saw in the school chapel,”
Reyna wrote.
“It reminded me of an image of Jesus taken from the Shroud of Turin. What is also interesting is the subtle rose colored tint in the area of the face, which is not visible anywhere else,” he added.
They are now waiting for Bishop Earl Boyea of the Lansing Catholic Diocese, a 10-county region that includes Jackson, to visit. That is the beginning of a very long process to determine if this is actually declared a miracle by the Catholic church.
A miracle, according to www.Catholic.com, is "the hand of God acting within nature to produce an effect that neither man nor nature unaided could do on its own."