On the eve of the first Sunday of Advent, 27 November 1982, oil began to flow from a small icon of the Virgin and Child in a house in Soufanieh, a Christian quarter of Damascus. Nicolas Nazzour is Greek Orthodox. Myrna Nazzour, whose baptismal name is Mary, is Melkite Greek Catholic. They were newly married, and Myrna was still in her teens. The icon was of the kind long venerated as Our Lady of Kazan. The oil was fragrant. It ran onto the cloth set beneath the image, and soon the same oil appeared on Myrna’s hands, and at times on her face and body, most often while the household was at prayer. Orthodox and Catholic neighbors came into the room together. Copies of the icon, carried into other houses, later gave oil as well. The family called their priests and kept praying.
Our Lady appeared in that house five times, from 15 December 1982 to 24 March 1983. She spoke in literary Arabic or in the Damascus dialect. What follows is the story of those visits and of the years after them. The English of her words follows the 2025 revision by Father Alam Alam of the text published by the Soufanieh association, and the messages are kept in full beside this account.
The first time, on Wednesday 15 December, there were no words. Myrna ran in fear to her sister-in-law Helen and pointed toward the terrace: the Blessed Virgin. Helen saw nothing. Myrna’s brother-in-law carried her downstairs, and the family sent for Father George Abu Zakhem of the Greek Orthodox Church, and for Father Elias Zahlaoui. They prayed. Father Zahlaoui told her that Our Lady may have come to speak and found her too frightened to hear. He gave her a prayer to hold ready: “O Virgin Mary, help me to receive you and to be receptive to your message.”
Three nights later, Saturday 18 December, at 11:37 in the evening, she returned and spoke. Remember God, for God is with us. Their knowledge was unfinished, but a day would come when they would know as God knows her. Do good to those who do evil, and do no one harm. She had given oil, more than they had asked, and she would give something stronger than oil. Repent and have faith. Remember her in joy. Announce her Son, Emmanuel: whoever announces him is saved, and whoever does not, his faith is vain. Love one another. She asked for love, and she said she would visit homes, because those who go to church do not always go there to pray. She asked them for a shrine. “Give. Do not turn away anyone who asks for help.” Before she withdrew, Myrna’s hand touched her foot.
On 30 December 1982 Patriarch Ignatius IV Hazim of Antioch received Nicolas and Myrna. The icon was taken, at the patriarchate’s wish, to the Orthodox church of the Holy Cross, and the patriarchate issued a statement the next day.
On Saturday 8 January 1983, again at 11:37 at night, Our Lady was weeping. She said only, “It’s all right.” Myrna wept with her and cried out that the Virgin was crying. Before she left, she smiled.
On the afternoon of 21 February 1983 two Orthodox archimandrites brought the icon home in an ordinary black bag, and they gave no explanation. That evening, at half past nine, Our Lady said, “Let me say it between us: I have come back here.” She spoke then of humility and of forgiveness. A humble soul wants his faults named, so that he can mend them. The proud man turns the correction aside, rebels, and grows hostile. Whoever poses as pure and loving before men is impure before God. She asked them to repeat, always: “God saves me. Jesus enlightens me. The Holy Spirit is my life. I therefore fear nothing.” And she said, “Isn’t it so, my son Joseph?” No one in the house knew a Joseph. Father Joseph Malouli had come that night. He had prayed a decade of the Rosary with Myrna in private, asking Our Lady not to let them spoil her work, and then he showed his papers. He had been a priest in Damascus since 1940. Almost no one there knew the name given him at baptism. She told them to forbear and to forgive, and to forbear much less than the Father has forborne.
On Thursday 24 March 1983, the eve of the Annunciation, again at half past nine, Our Lady said that her mission had ended. She remembered the night the angel called her blessed among women, and how she could answer only that she was the servant of the Lord. She was happy. She would not herself say, “Your sins are forgiven.” God had said it. Then she gave the word the house has kept: “Establish a church. I did not say: Build a church.” The Church that Jesus adopted is one, because Jesus is one. It is the kingdom of heaven on earth. Whoever divided it has sinned, and whoever rejoices in its division sins as well. Jesus built it. It was small, and when it grew it was divided. Whoever divided it has no love in him. “You are to bring people together.” Pray, pray, and pray again. How beautiful are her children when they kneel in prayer. Do not be afraid, for she is with them. Do not be divided as the proud are divided. Teach the generations the word of unity, love, and faith, and pray for those on earth and those in heaven. She began the Creed, and Myrna continued it. When the others had finished, Myrna went on into the Gloria. Oil came from the crucifix of the rosary Our Lady was holding, the moment it touched Myrna’s hands. Myrna anointed the people in the room. At Our Lady’s asking, she traced the sign of the cross on the Virgin’s forehead.
From the autumn of 1983 the grace took another form. Myrna entered ecstasy. She no longer saw the room, and she came back with short words, first from Our Lady and then, beginning on Ascension 1984, from Christ. The words stayed simple. Often, before she repeated them, she said that he had given her something she herself had not yet understood. One message was lost: a Muslim woman prayed with such feeling that Myrna, shaken, could not remember what had been entrusted to her. Nothing was invented in its place. Through those years she remained a wife, and she became a mother. Her daughter Myriam was born in 1986. Christ told her that her married life would remain as it was, and that her willingness to come to him was enough.
The words return, again and again, to the division of his Church. On 1 May 1985 Our Lady said, “My children, come together. My heart is wounded. Do not allow my heart to be broken because of your divisions.” On 14 August, the eve of her Dormition, she said that her feast was to see them gathered: their prayer was her feast, their faith was her feast, the union of their hearts was her feast. On 7 September 1985, the Nativity of Mary, Christ spoke of the joy of heaven because the daughter of the Father, the Mother of God, and the spouse of the Holy Spirit had been born. On the anniversary nights of late November he asked Myrna for her prayer and her humility, and he told her that the soul is saved only by the Cross. He asked whether she wished to be crucified or glorified. She answered, glorified, and when he asked by whom, she said, by the Creator. He answered that this glory comes by way of the Cross. He had been crucified for love of them, and whoever shares his suffering will share his glory.
The stigmata belong to that same call. In the years when Catholics and Orthodox keep Easter on one day, Myrna has borne the wounds of the Passion in the presence of priests and physicians: in 1984, 1987, 1990, 2001, 2004, 2014, and again on Holy Saturday 2025. On 19 April 1984 no words were kept. On Holy Thursday 2004 the wounds were watched by clergy from several countries and by physicians from Germany, France, the United States, Norway, and Sweden, and a wound was measured on her left side.
On Great and Holy Saturday 1990 Christ told her that she would not hear his voice again until the feast of Easter had been made one. That November Our Lady said the same of the visions. The oil, she promised, would go on appearing on Myrna’s hands for the glory of her Son, whenever he wished and wherever Myrna went. “We are with you and with everyone who wishes the feast to be unified.”
Eleven years passed. There was oil, and there was prayer, and there was no new word. Then, on the Easters the Churches kept together, the voice returned, and it asked the same thing. In 2001 Christ spoke of patience, of his Mother still interceding, of the unity of hearts, and of his Body and Blood, given so that adoration would at last be offered at one altar. He spoke of hard days coming, and of turmoil within the Church. In 2004 he called the wound of his Heart the source of love, and he sent those who had traveled to Soufanieh home with the East held in their hearts. A light had risen again from the East, and they were to be its radiance, keeping their identity, their will, their freedom, and their faith. In Holy Week of 2014 he said that the wounds which had bled upon that earth were the wounds in his own Body, for the cause and the author were the same. On Holy Saturday 2025 he told them not to fear and not to despair, to be patient, and to put their hope in him. They were not to be consumed by worry for tomorrow. They were to lay down whatever leads them into sin. The hardest thing, he said, is to become an enemy of one’s own soul. They must not surrender faith, freedom, and will to Satan. They were to be a ray of light for souls who wish to begin again and to draw near to him.
Our Lady also entrusted Myrna with a secret, which she is not to speak until her death. Of the night of 7 September 1984 she remembers only the seal she placed on it: “This is between you and me until your death.” The one sentence she has been free to repeat is that she should live her life, and not allow that life to stop her praying. The rest she carries.
In 1987 Father Naoum Attallah, superior of the Lazarists in Damascus, granted a nihil obstat for the messages given from 1982 through 1987, so they could be published. Father Joseph Malouli prepared the text. It closes where a priest must close: the last word belongs to the Holy Church. A nihil obstat allows a writing to be read. It is not a declaration that heaven has spoken, and the Holy See has not yet given that judgment. The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch received the couple, kept the icon for a time, and published its statement. Catholic and Orthodox priests have prayed in the house from the beginning. Father Elias Zahlaoui and Father Joseph Malouli have stayed beside Myrna. Soufanieh still waits upon the Church. The prayer in the house has not waited.
The house is still there. The oil is still given. The icon is still honored. The association keeps the messages, and the library holds three films from the official channel. They are set below. Until the Church speaks further, the prayer Our Lady asked them to learn is already enough to say: God saves me. Jesus enlightens me. The Holy Spirit is my life. I therefore fear nothing.
