Homily 10th Sunday C – Miracles!<\/p>\n
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Our readings today are about healing, but not just the regular, run-of-the-mill, standard-course-of-antibiotics healing.\u00a0 We\u2019re talking about miracles.\u00a0 Dead-one-minute, walking-around-the next miracles. Even the epistle is about miracles, as St. Paul explains that his deep understanding of the faith came directly from God by a miraculous revelation. It\u2019s as if he\u2019s standing there saying, \u201cI didn\u2019t need to go to a seminary for six years, and I wasn\u2019t taught by Jesus\u2019 apostles– although I\u2019ve met them.\u00a0 No, God told me all this personally.\u201d\u00a0 Well, excuse me!<\/p>\n
Miracles are difficult, slippery things.\u00a0 We believe that miracles happen, but also believe that it\u2019s not appropriate to presume upon them.\u00a0 Faith shouldn\u2019t rely on proof, or it\u2019s not faith, exactly.\u00a0 At the same time, God does give us inexplicable experiences that at least subjectively appear to be miraculous.\u00a0 So, just for fun, and without having to explain anything, how many of you believe that you, or someone close to you, has experienced a miracle?\u00a0 [show of hands]\u00a0 OK.\u00a0 I wish I could listen to your conversations in the car on the way home!<\/p>\n
Science can demonstrate our tendency to see miracles where they aren\u2019t.\u00a0 All those reports like the face of the Virgin Mary on a grilled cheese sandwich, or the image of Jesus in a rust stain on a highway over-pass?\u00a0 These are examples of paraidiola and apophenia: our brains are hard-wired to see faces in random visual data, and we appear to be similarly hard-wired to ascribe meaning– some times deep, religious meaning, to such perceptions. That doesn\u2019t disprove the existence of miracles, nor does it mean people are easily duped.\u00a0 It just means we\u2019re interesting.<\/p>\n
Jesus himself seems to have been suspicious of miracles, even as he was performing them.\u00a0 He often asked, to no avail, for people to keep their healing quiet, knowing that when the word got out, the situation would rapidly become unmanageable.\u00a0 Which is exactly what happened.<\/p>\n
So, just to be thorough, what does the Catechism say about miracles?<\/p>\n
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Isn\u2019t that surprising?\u00a0 The Catechism says that miracles– which appear counter to physical laws– rather than being irrational, are actually a gift from God that allows us to use our reason and intellect to perceive the credibility of God\u2019s truth.\u00a0 The difficulty here is that this introduces a potential counter-argument.\u00a0 Specifically: the absence of a miracle, with the presumption of a God who loves us, might lead one to conclude that God does not exist.\u00a0 What might the widows of Zarephath and Nain have concluded if these holy men had not managed to resurrect their sons?\u00a0 Suddenly we\u2019re out in the deep end of the pool, theologically speaking.<\/p>\n
One way of backing away from this potential problem is to fall back on subjectivity, and say that miracles are in the eye of the beholder.\u00a0 It might seem pretty miraculous that the car speeding through the red light just missed you by this much.\u00a0 It may seem considerably less miraculous to the person in the car behind you that just got t-boned.<\/p>\n
Or, we can broaden our categories to say that miracles happen all the time, and we just take them for granted, or don\u2019t pay enough attention.\u00a0 A baby born three months prematurely who grows up to become an olympic athlete is a miracle.\u00a0 Antibiotics are a miracle.\u00a0 Those little snickerdoodles filled with caramel you can get at Whole Foods? Totally miraculous! The very existence of life itself is miraculous.\u00a0 Of course, if everything is miraculous, then ultimately nothing is.<\/p>\n
Many of us, much of the time, pray for miracles. When we pray of world peace, or even a sane, functional political system of government, we are praying for miracles. If we\u2019re approaching prayer with any level of maturity, we know that such hoped-for miracles don\u2019t diminish our responsibility to work for these things.\u00a0 \u201cTrust in God but tie up your camels\u201d is still a wise aphorism.<\/p>\n
Miracles are also part of how the Church discerns sainthood.\u00a0 To be declared \u201cblessed\u201d and \u201csaintly\u201d require miracles– usually documented, medically inexplicable healings, as proof that the saint is present in God\u2019s kingdom, interceding for us.\u00a0 As the Paulist Fathers pray for the canonization of our founder, Fr. Isaac Hecker, we are asking people to pray for his intercession, so that his holiness can be recognized by the universal church.\u00a0 And we have had some reported:\u00a0 one was the healing of an infant that while joyous, didn\u2019t rise to the level of proof.\u00a0 Another might have, but was reported anonymously, forestalling any investigation.\u00a0 Please, if you\u2019re reporting a miracle, sign your name!<\/p>\n
Miracles do happen.\u00a0 Some times it may be a private little reminder of God\u2019s care for you.\u00a0 Some times it may be an occurrence that supercedes natural laws, something literally supernatural.\u00a0 But our faith tells us that these are all glimpses of God.\u00a0 Not just God\u2019s power, but God\u2019s compassion and love.<\/p>\n
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Homily 10th Sunday C – Miracles! Our readings today are about healing, but not just the regular, run-of-the-mill, standard-course-of-antibiotics healing.\u00a0 We\u2019re talking about miracles.\u00a0 Dead-one-minute, walking-around-the next miracles. Even the epistle is about miracles, as St. Paul explains that his deep understanding of the faith came directly from God by a miraculous revelation. It\u2019s as if he\u2019s standing there saying, \u201cI didn\u2019t need to … Continue reading It’s a Miracle! Homily for June 9th, 2013<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-homilies"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5FUlW-3f","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=201"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":203,"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201\/revisions\/203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}