In recent years, there has been an overwhelming amount of products associated with the Virgin Mary. Some of these products are sold at tacky trinket stands in places like Lourdes where millions of pilgrims flock each year. At Lourdes, one can buy bright pink rosaries and velvet images of Christ. Online, one can purchase a variety of other items, from tasteful to tacky, and from reverent to flippant.

Printed Devotion

One of the more recent items associated with the Virgin Mary that is turning some heads and turning a significant profit is T-shirts that read “Mary is my homegirl.” These T-shirts are being produced by Teenage Millionaire, a California-based clothing company. According to the company, these T-shirts are one of their bestsellers. Young Catholics and Protestants have been attracted to these T-shirts as a way to witness their love and admiration for Mary. There is, as one might imagine, a companion T-shirt that says “Jesus is my homeboy” on it.

Some skeptics have expressed concerns that these T-shirts (along with a the slew of other Mary products being marketed) are disrespectful because they present these spiritual figures in a way that is perhaps too lighthearted, or that is meant to be taken ironically. The “Mary is my homegirl” T-shirts, do, however, witness to increasingly widespread enthusiasm surrounding the Virgin Mary in our society. These T-shirts also garnered popular attention when they were mentioned on the hit TV show Gilmore Girls.

The “Holy” Sandwich

Sometimes Mary pops up in unusual places. In 1994, one of the most unusual Marian “manifestations” was claimed. This time, the face of the Virgin Mary appeared in the burn marks on a grilled cheese sandwich. According to Diana Duyser, a 52-year-old woman living in Hollywood, Florida, she had taken one bite of her grilled cheese sandwich, and then she noticed the face of the Virgin Mary staring back up at her. She was alarmed and called her husband into the room to see the image on the sandwich.

Duyser then put the sandwich in a clear plastic box and placed it beside her bed. She kept it for ten years, and she reports that it did not mold or crumble at all during the decade. According to Duyser, she sincerely believes that the image on her sandwich is that of Mary, the Mother of God. She was not, however, averse to making a profit off the sandwich. According to Duyser the sandwich brought her significant good luck and fortune, including winnings of $70,000 at several nearby casinos.

After ten years, Duyser decided that it was time to share her sandwich with the world and she posted an ad for it on eBay, with a starting bid of $3,000. While the sandwich was for sale, more than 1,700,000 people visited the site, and many of them placed joke bids, along with joke items that followed the theme of the sandwich. The price of the sandwich rose and rose to $99.9 million and then finally began to decrease, because so many of the bids were fake.

In the end, an online casino called GoldenPalaceCasino.com purchased the sandwich for $28,000 The CEO of the online casino said that they intend to use the sandwich to raise money for charity. As to why they were so eager to acquire the sandwich, their spokesperson Monty Kerr was quoted in the Miami Herald saying, “It's a part of pop culture that is immediately and widely recognizable. We knew right away that we wanted to have it.”