Saint Laura and the Hilltop Epiphany

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I wasn’t expecting to cry at the top of Cerro San Cristóbal, but then, most moments that truly move us come unannounced. We don’t schedule our epiphanies.

My husband and I were in Santiago, Chile, on honeymoon. On the first day we took the charming funicular up the hill to visit the Santuario de la Inmaculada Concepción. Being a Saturday, the hill was bustling with Santiaguinos walking, cycling, playing with children, enjoying the blossom, the views and drinking the local Motes con Huesillos.

We stopped outside the Santuario de la Inmaculada Concepción listening to the mass coming through the open doors. It’s a beautiful Neo-Romanesque building and the simple paintings of the saints are redolent of the Arts and Crafts movement. Nearby, a little higher up, a towering statue of the Virgin Mary watches over the city, arms open in silent welcome.

Although mass was already underway, we slipped inside. It was in Latin, unfamiliar and ancient, and of course I couldn’t understand it. This only deepened the sense that I had stepped out of time. And then, quite unexpectedly, I felt something.

An elusive, unmistakable stillness that isn’t empty, but full, and difficult to articulate. It felt that the distance between me and the divine had thinned. I felt close to the saints. Perhaps the best way I can put it (and I’m not sure I can really) was that I was in the presence of souls who had lived and loved and suffered and somehow still held their arms open, for us, just as the Virgin Mary did above us.

The next morning, the experience was still with me, as it is now. I wasn’t brought up Catholic and and don’t know much about the saints, but I wondered, is there a Saint Laura? I’d never asked before and so I Googled it, as one does. And there she was: Saint Laura of Córdoba.

Her feast day was the 19th October, the very day I’d sat in that chapel, my soul stirred.

Was that a coincidence, serendipity or a sign? It felt like a gift of grace, inexplicable, but something to contemplate and be grateful for.

The funny thing about signs is, they often only appear when you’re open to them. Or maybe, more accurately, you only notice them when you’re open. Psychologically, there’s an argument to be made for this: we are meaning-making creatures and we seek patterns. Once you start seeing beauty or symbols or synchronicities, you find more — not because they weren’t there before, but because your mental posture has shifted and you’re paying attention.

So yes, signs can be explained without invoking angels or divine choreography, if you want, but it doesn’t make it less meaningful.

In fact, I’d argue that if a ‘sign’ — real or imagined — moves you, wakes something up in you, nudges you towards the good or the true, why not follow it?

And why am I writing this now? The obvious time to tell this story would have been the 19th October, my feast day and the anniversary of my hilltop epiphany. But in the months since, I’ve noticed people posting those AI-generated portraits — “Here’s me as a famous character, created by ChatGPT!” — and in Laura-fashion I’ve resisted thus far. (I’ve always preferred the edge of the dancefloor to the middle, to get a better view of the drunk fools in the middle.) But this week, even my luddite husband has been churning out Chat GPT-generated Caravaggio and Holbein-style portraits of himself and I thought, why not?

But which character would I be… Well, Saint Laura of Córdoba popped straight into my mind, the woman whose feast day found me on a hill in Santiago. So, here are my ChatGPT Laura-and-Laura mash ups. I’m not sure if it’s a good likeness of either of us.

Saint Laura was a widow who became a nun and abbess at a convent near Cordoba. During a time of religious persecution under Islamic rule, she was arrested for her Christian faith. Because she refused to renounce her beliefs, she was scalded to death in a cauldron of boiling oil, pitch or molten lead, according to the story. She was unimaginably courageous in the face of brutal cruelty and pain, after a life in which she chose contemplation, service and spiritual vocation after being widowed.

As for me, I don’t know what comes next. I’m not going to enter a convent or become a mystic overnight, but I’ll continue to be open to meaning, patterns and signs.

Maybe this is nothing more than an anecdote. But it’s one that endures, humming inside me. It is one I wanted to share. Because whether you believe in signs or not, in God or not, in the saints or just the scent of blossom on a hillside breeze, there are moments in life that pierce us. And if you’re reading this, maybe you’ve had one too.