It’s a myrrh-acle!
A bargain-bin Mary-and-Jesus print is dripping with divine drama in Honolulu — and believers swear it’s more than just sticky.
The $20 image, reportedly rescued from a Toronto bargain bin, is now on display at the Hawaiian capital’s Holy Theotokos of Iveron Russian Orthodox Church — and it’s oozing myrrh, resin from a tree that grows in Africa and the Middle East.
Think of myrrh as biblical bubblegum — a fragrant tree resin that the Wise Men gave baby Jesus and that Christ followers today say supposedly can cure chronic pain, blindness and cancer.
As a result, it’s now drawing crowds — and believers — from around the globe.
Fifteen years ago, the parish’s priest, Father Nectarios Yangson, apparently caught a whiff of myrrh so strong it had his cat standing on its hind legs.
“During the last week of September, I began to notice an unbelievably strong smell of myrrh, at home, in my car, even at work. I couldn’t explain it,” the priest wrote in a letter to his parish.
A closer look revealed a bead of myrrh emerging right on the left knee of the baby Jesus in the icon.
“We were afraid. We asked if we had recently cleaned or anointed the icons. We hadn’t,” the clergyman added.
The replica of a Montreal original, has since been “streaming” the biblical resin.
The sticky spectacle didn’t stay secret for long — Father Nectarios snapped photos and showed them to fellow priests.
By the next Sunday service, the congregation was diving in, scooping up the miraculous myrrh like it was holy candy.
The priest continued, describing the scent, “Some days have been completely dry, while on other days they are covered in myrrh.”
“Yet whether they stream or not, they continuously give off an extremely strong scent of roses. It is truly a great miracle! I sometimes wonder if it is a warning.”
In 2008, the Russian Orthodox Church gave the cheap-but-miraculous Iveron icon the ultimate stamp of approval, green-lighting Father Nectarios to hit the road with it.
Since then, he’s paraded the sticky wonder to over 100 churches across the U.S., Europe, and beyond, drawing millions of believers along for the ride.
Jesus Christ seems to have a habit of turning up in the most unexpected places.
Case in point: archaeologists in Turkey unearthed a 1,200-year-old burnt loaf of bread earlier this month… and it just happens to bear the face of Christ.
The Karaman Governorship announced the holy carb on Facebook on October 8, leaving believers and history buffs equally floored.
Dating back to the 7th or 8th centuries A.D., this holy carb is one of five charred loaves recently dug up at Turkey’s Topraktepe archaeological site, the ancient city of Eirenopolis.
Photos show the blackened bread sporting a faint image of Christ, along with the inscription: “With gratitude to the Blessed Jesus.”
Even a millennium later, it seems someone baked their faith right into the crust.
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