Beyond miracles
We need to get past the excitement stage regarding miracles. Though that is understandable and unavoidable, we should avoid getting stuck in that level, because much more important lessons are actually embedded in them, all of them crying for us to learn.
Foremost among these lessons is that these miracles that abound in the Gospels are meant to nourish oneś faith more than anything else. They are not just there to give relief to some sickness and suffering. They are meant to strengthen one’s faith, or even to establish it.
That’s why in all these miracles, Christ always asked for the faith from the one begging for the miracle, or checked if there is faith in that person. ¨Go, and as you have believed, so be it done to you,¨ (Mt 8,13) Christ told the centurion who asked for healing for his servant, and the servant was cured.
Also, he told the beneficiaries not to publicize the miracle. To a leper who was cleansed, he said: ¨See you tell no man, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift which Moses commanded for a testimony of them.¨ (Mt 8,4)
Miracles are not publicity stunts. They are meant only for the purpose of fortifying people´s faith. Besides, miracles require faith to happen. Remember how he behaved toward his unbelieving townmates. ¨He could not work any miracle there, beyond curing a few sick people...He marvelled at their unbelief.¨ (Mk 6,5-6)
Some of the leading Jews who did not believe in Jesus only saw some worrying uncommon feats of Jesus, but could not connect these miracles to the divinity of Christ. That’s plainly because they did not have faith.
What is important is to have faith, or to live that faith which first of all is a divine gift to us. When we have faith, we´ll see miracles in us and around us. Miracles cease being associated mainly with extraordinary things. They come continually in the daily flow of events in our life.
That we pray, that we believe in God, in the spiritual and supernatural realities that are way beyond what our senses could cope and our mind could understand, that we decide to do good when we have all the reasons and benefits to do bad, all these are samples of miracles that happen everyday and that we often miss.
Only a person with vibrant faith can discern the miracle-quality of common, ordinary events, because he will always see the hand of God in them. He does not get stuck in the natural dimensions. He sees the cosmic and eternal effects of these happenings.
For him, it would just be as miraculous to see the sun rise and set everyday as to watch a lame walk, a blind person see, a deaf man hear... It would just be as miraculous to hear the words of the consecration at Mass, that turn bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, as when he gets cured of a serious illness.
We often have to ask ourselves about the state of our faith. Is it a living faith or a dead one? Does it bring us in constant contact with God, or it is just some kind of apparatus we use from time to time? Does it make us think with the mind of God, or it is just a human science to us, to be used purely according to our own designs?
Does our faith lead us to conclude our search for justice with charity, or is it a selective kind of faith, again according to human criteria? Does it lead us to show mercy, or does it trap us in a dead end of bitterness and anguish?
The state of our faith is crucial when we are faced with difficult and tricky issues. Only those who lead saintly lives can effectively sort out the tangled threads of competing interests and values involved in these issues.
St. Paul said: ¨The spiritual man judges all things, and he himself is judged by no man. For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he might instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.¨ (1 Cor 2,15-16)
In the end, it is faith that makes miracles happen. ¨If you have faith like a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ´Remove from here,´ and it will remove. And nothing will be impossible to you.¨ (Mt 17,19)
The appalling predicament the Church is facing now is actually an invitation to intensify our faith.
(Fr. Cimagala is the Chaplain of Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE), Talamban, Cebu City. Email: roycimagala@gmail.com)
