Brethren, Peace and Good to all of you.
Yes, I believe in miracles, those providential interventions of God in history and in the created order in order to send a message: I love you. Or excite faith, or shame doubters, etc. Yep, miracles are part of my worldview.
Much ink has been spilled either denying the possibility of miracles, or chaining them to natural causality in such a way that they are most unlikely. Many Christians believe this, particularly those who are predeterministic in their outlook, Calvinists to the core. They do have a point: before the universe was, God loved each one of us and saw our needs expressed in prayer and answered them, and continues to answer them, in the ever, eternal Present in which he lives.
Others tend to see miracles everywhere, to the point that Christianity is almost animistic in its scope. Faith-healers, snake-handlers, prosperity preachers, they all fall into that category in my judgment. Yet, they too make a point: that God is interested in us as individuals with physical and spiritual needs.
I believe that in that mysterious way known only to God, both lines of reasoning regarding “miracles” intersect and when they do, we have a “miracle.” Their actual number depends on one’s theology and particular outlook. I respect those who believe that miracles as verifiable events are few and far between, but don’t agree with them because God, I think, it’s not stingy. Yes, everything happens according to his eternal decree but his decree is unbounded and manifold beyond our imaginations. Whereas I look with great skepticism the quasi-animistic view many Christians have about miracles which, many think, they can produce at will. Somehow, I think, God will not always condescend to the incantations of certain preachers whose enthusiasm drives them to parade these “miracles” in front of an emotional audience primed to expect them – much less the ones that promise wealth and prosperity in this world.
Whereas the Greek term the writers of the Synoptic Gospels used for “miracle” translates literally as “mighty deed,” St. John in his gospel preferred the term “sign.” Jesus’ “mighty deeds” were “signs” that he was who he said he was, that he conformed to the will of the One who sent him, and that God took a particular loving interests in those who the beneficiaries of such signs.
I’ve noticed that in order to be intelligible, a sign has to be visible. Otherwise, we as human beings would not understand it. As such, every single sign or “mighty deed” narrated in Scripture, and those that the Church has discerned as “worthy of belief”, are linked always to some material reality. Let me give you three examples:
· Every single “plague” in Exodus involved an aspect of nature which, though at war with man since the fall, now helps the Children of Israel escape slavery and achieve freedom. Even the death of the Egyptian firstborns involved a visible, physical aspect which was the death of human beings who are material and visible. (Ex. 7:20-12:30)
· Jesus many times imposed hands on those he wished to heal and one occasion made mud with his saliva and then smeared with it the eyes of man blind by birth. That man recovered his sight. (John 9:1-7)
· Then we have the rising of Lazarus which was very impressive. (John 11:38-44)
We can add the multiplication of loaves and fishes, tempests stilled, walking over water, etc. The point is that a sign always impacted a given space or expanse of matter or beings, because mere spiritual “miracles” or unlikely prodigies could always be dismissed, not by latter critics, by the purported observer. That’s one of the reasons why God did not merely “beam” the Children of Israel from Egypt into Canaan, while “beaming out” the Canaanites into oblivion. A human response, even collaboration was necessary. In miracle stories, the observer becoming an actor in the miracle is as indispensable as the miracle itself. The blind man in John’s story went to wash himself at a pool; Lazarus still had to walk from his place of rest to the opening of his grave; the disciples distributed the loaves and the fishes, these didn’t materialize into the people’s bellies to save time and make the process “efficient.” The full bodily (or spiritually-enfleshed on ensouled) humanity of those who witness and are blessed by a miracle is engaged at the reception: our senses, emotions, perceptions, etc.
Or, if we were to “change our filters”, so-to-speak, and filter out everything from our notion of the miraculous connected with ordinary matter, then only one miracle would stand out, one that represents the full entry of the supernatural – only God – that in turn transformed ordinary matter into something quite extraordinary, and that’s the Resurrection of Christ. In this sign, God restores nature – the one subsumed in Jesus’ physicality – to its original state of purity, refulgence, beauty, and speed. God in Christ as an example of God in us, a state of God indwelling in a universe transformed. The other signs we call “miracles” were passing milestones, only the Resurrection of Jesus is enduring and remains, the miracle par excellence. The Resurrection is unapprehensible because it trascends our sense.This is enough for now. I hope the above all made sense. What do you think?