"Hallelujah" from Beethoven's Christ On The Mount Of Olives

the young Beethoven, by Joseph Willibrord Maehler

   The composer Beethoven was born into a Catholic family, but does not seem to have been devout as an adult.  It is known that he did not attend Mass regularly, and scholars are reluctant to assign to him any religious affiliation at all.  At the same time, it is also clear from his letters and his few religious compositions that, in his stubborn and idiosyncratic way, he retained a strong belief in God and His Providence.

Beethoven’s best-known and by far most successful religious composition is the Missa Sollemnis, which he completed just a few years before his death.  He did make other forays into sacred music earlier in his career, however.  In 1802, for instance, he produced the oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives, a revision of which he published in 1811.  The dramatic action of the piece focuses on Christ’s “Agony in the Garden” after the last supper, shortly before his arrest.  Beethoven’s piece reaches its climax not with the Resurrection, but at the moment in which Jesus decisively sets aside his human fears and says, “Not my will, but Yours!”

Christ on the Mount of Olives was not one of Beethoven’s more successful endeavors.  The composer himself was sharply critical of Franz Xaver Huber’s libretto; critics did not consider most of the music up to Beethoven’s usual standards.  The oratorio as a whole has not been performed as often as many other Beethoven pieces over the past two centuries, except for one passage: the triumphant “Hallelujah” that rings out at Our Lord’s moment of decision.  It’s a glorious musical acknowledgment of Christ’s self-sacrificing act of redemption, and a glorious way to celebrate the Easter Season.

The Geometry Of Faith

“The Catholic Church,” according to G.K. Chesterton, “is much larger on the inside than it is on the outside.”  Those of us who have been out and now are in (back in, for some of us) know how true it is.  And it stands to reason: as both a worldly and a spiritual entity, the Church cannot be contained within purely physical bounds.

What is both seen and unseen?     

This sounds like sheer nonsense, of course, to those who are formed in a materialist worldview, because they reject a priori the existence of a non-physical reality.  It may be a decided minority who consciously embrace such a worldview, but many, many more unthinkingly see the world in the same way.  Explaining Catholicism and the Catholic Church under these circumstances (except, maybe, in the most zealously orthodox Catholic schools) sometimes feels like trying to converse with someone who speaks a completely different language.

    Instructing the unknowing, however, is one of the Spiritual Works of Mercy (and for some of us, it’s also part of our employment contract), so we must always search for new ways to communicate the experience of faith.  In another post, for instance (“A Dark Matter: 'Proving' God In A Materialistic World"), I discuss the cosmological theories of “dark matter” and “dark energy”  as a way of addressing the common idea that, because we can’t detect God directly using scientific instruments, it’s unreasonable to believe in him.  Scientists believe that 95% of the matter and energy in the universe is completely undetectable, but they are convinced it is there because of its observed effects on things we can detect; likewise, we can be sure of the existence of God, even though he is beyond this world, because of his effect on things (and people) that we are able to see.

The Faith Postulate

     In a similar way, there are things we can know only by experiencing them; the love of God as we experience it in His Church is a prime example.  The outsider will often dismiss this sort of knowledge as requiring an irrational, unsupported belief, since the proof comes after our initial commitment.  We might ask such skeptics to consider geometry as an analogy.  Euclidean Geometry, for instance, starts with the parallel postulate, which requires that parallel lines never meet.  It’s not proven, you simply have to take it as a given.  Once you do, of course, you find that the entire system is consistent, which validates your starting assumptions.  More importantly, you find that when you apply it to the real world, for measuring property lines, for instance, it is absolutely reliable.  Likewise the Catholic Faith: once you “step inside” and see the results in your own life, the most “reasonable” response is belief (this is Blaise Pascal's proscription for those who remain unconvinced by the logic of his famous wager).  From the inside we can also see that Christianity yields truer results on a global scale than other systems of belief (as I explain in “What Would Darwin Do?”).

     All analogies are imperfect, of course, and a skeptic might point out that, while the Catholic Church claims to hold immutable truths, we can change the parallel postulate and still come up with other internally consistent systems of geometry, systems which may not work on a plane, but work perfectly well in other contexts.  In spherical geometry, for instance, parallel lines (which are actually lines of longitude) meet exactly twice, at the poles.  This system is much more accurate than Euclidean geometry for measuring on a globe.  Spherical geometry shows us, for example, that what looks like shortest distance from, say, Chicago to Rome (a straight line from west to east) on a flat map is actually much longer than a route which loops north (or appears to “loop” north) over Greenland. 

United Airlines' graphic showing Chicago to Rome flight path

The Fullness of Truth

     The fact that there are different geometries, however, doesn’t weaken the analogy at all: if anything, it develops it further.  Like Euclidean geometry, which only works on a two-dimensional plane, the scientific worldview is an accurate and quite useful tool for interpreting reality . . . within a certain narrow focus.  It enables us to learn about and work with things that are physical and measurable, but it cannot tell us about things like love, justice, or any other reality that might exist outside of the purely physical realm. Just as a bathroom scale can tell us how much we weigh but can’t tell us our age, it cannot alone tell us anything about things outside of its set boundaries.  The Christian Revelation, on the other hand, reaches beyond the material world and gives us access to a much fuller reality, and once we accept its premises, we can see both its internal consistency and its Truth when applied to our experience.

     Maybe when we look at it in this way, it can help us explain what St. Paul means when he says: “Let no one deceive himself.  If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise.  For the wisdom of this world is folly with God” (1 Corinthians 3:18-19).  He is not rejecting reason, but saying that, to someone who thinks in only two dimensions, three-dimensional reasoning is incomprehensible.  Likewise with Chesterton: those on the outside of the Catholic Church often think they are looking at a plane, while from the inside we can see it in all its three-dimensional fullness.  Finally, one last quote, from one of the greatest of geometricians, Archimedes: "Give me a place to stand, and I will move the world!”  Everything depends on that “place to stand”, and there’s no firmer ground than the Church founded by Jesus Christ.

(This Thursday Throwback was first published 9 March 2015 on the blog Nisi Dominus)

     

Reasonable Faith

In a recent post, “Moses, Pharaoh, & Why We Preach The Gospel”  I touched on a few of the limitations we run into in arguing for the Faith out in the world, and why we should nonetheless continue to do so. There is, of course, much more to say on this topic than I cover in my little blog post.  For instance,  I often hear Catholic apologists say that it is enough to convince people that the Catholic Faith is a “reasonable” faith; it is not necessarily their job to “close the sale.”  This may at first seem like aiming too low: aren’t we trying to save souls? Don’t we want people to embrace the fullness of the faith?  

St. Augustine of Hippo, Bishop and Doctor of the church

    Of course, we do need to promote the faith in its entirety, but to be successful we need to take into account what the Faith teaches us about the nature of humanity, about what it means to be both body and soul, made in the image and likeness of God.  Human reason is finite and fallible, so it needs to be guided by faith.  That’s why St. Augustine, in a commentary on John’s Gospel, says: “Therefore do not seek to understand in order to believe, but believe that you may understand; since, 'except you believe, you shall not understand.'”

This, unfortunately, is the sort of quote that those who do not share the faith can easily misunderstand, or even attempt to use against Christian belief.  It can appear that Augustine is rejecting reason in favor of "blind" faith, but that's not the case; rather, he is recognizing that our imperfect human reason is subject to our wayward desires, which tend to cloud our reason, and that “to perceive . . . more accurately, we need the Lord Himself for expounder.”  The “belief” to which he refers does not simply mean accepting a set of propositions, but entrusting ourselves to God; after all, he says, “even the devils believed him, but they did not believe in Him.” After embracing God, the source of all Truth, and rejecting the false gods our wayward human desires put in our way, our reason can proceed on a firm foundation.  

True Faith, therefore, involves first the heart, and then the head. A mistaken belief that the faith is unreasonable can keep people from even considering Christian belief. For that reason we must, as St. Peter tells us, “always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope within you” (1 Peter 3:15). Once both the heart and the head are open to the His message Christ's Gospel can begin to take root.

(This Thursday Throwback is based on a discussion in my Sunday Snippets post of 28 February 2015)

He Is Risen! - 'Laudamus Te'

"The Resurrection", by Sebastiano Ricci

He is Risen, Alleluia, Alleluia!

Here's some joyful music for Easter Sunday, Laudamus Te ("We Praise You") from Mozart's Great Mass in C Minor, beautifully performed by Anne Sofie von Otter.

Where Have All The Fathers Gone?

Today is the Solemnity of St. Joseph, Patron Saint of Fathers.  It seems a good time to republish one of my first blog posts, a piece on the importance of Fatherhood (originally posted January 22nd, 2014) Decline of Fatherhood It's not easy being the Dad . . . Federico Barrocci's Aeneas' Flight From Troy       One of the largest elephants in the room today (if I may further abuse an already overworked metaphor) is the decline of fatherhood.  It is just one of a number of factors in the implosion of the traditional family, but it’s a - or maybe, the - key one. If you google “the importance of the father” you’ll find 98,600,000 results. That’s 98 plus million. These are not mostly religious or conservative sources: most are related to various universities or government agencies, some are mainstream magazines not known for their cultural conservatism, such as Parenting and Psychology Today. Whatever their perspective they all have the same general message: growing up without a father is bad. Real bad.    In order to get a sense of the immensity of the problem you can to go to site of one of the organizations set up specifically to address this problem, such as The National Fatherhood Initiative at Fatherhood.org. They have lists of problem areas, including: poverty, emotional/behavioral problems, maternal & child health, crime & incarceration, sexual activity & teen pregnancy, child abuse, drug & alcohol abuse, childhood obesity, education. Not only do they cite studies and statistics, they have links to collections of studies and statistics for each category, a veritable mountain of information that is researched, published and . . . ignored. The information is there, its import is crystal clear, but it seems that nobody who is able to have an impact on public opinion is willing to say or do anything. That’s why I was so pleased to hear Maine Governor Paul Lepage address the issue (here) in such a forthright way at a public appearance a couple years ago.

Like Father, Like Son (and Daughter)

     Of course, while there are political dimensions to it, this is not primarily a political problem; its sources are social and cultural and therefore, on a deeper level, spiritual and religious. Which means we can’t expect governors, or senators or presidents, to fix it for us: the answers lie in our own attitudes, choices and behaviors.

     The Australian Catholic publication AD2000 (which I cited here also, in a recent post about church architecture) produced a fascinating article (here) a few years ago about a very important aspect of the fatherhood  crisis, especially for us as Catholics, called “Church Attendance: the family, feminism, and the declining role of fatherhood.”   The article focused on a survey done in Switzerland that examined  the relationship between the parents’church attendance and that of their children, and examined the different effects of the father’s religious practice (or lack thereof) and that of the mother. There are a variety of angles and permutations, but the big picture is this:

     .[I]f a father does not go to church, no matter how regular the mother is in her religious

     practice, only one child in 50 becomes a regular church attender. But if a father attends

     regularly then regardless of the practice of the mother at least one child in three will become a

     regular church attender.

Wow. Notice that this is for all children, by the way, not just boys. AD2000 goes on to quote an

Anglican clergyman named Robbie Low, who says:

     . . . when a child begins to move into that period of differentiation from home and

     engagement with the world 'out there', he (and she) looks increasingly to the father for

     that role model. Where the father is indifferent, inadequate or just plain absent, that task

     is much harder and the consequences more profound.

This has been shown to be true over and over again, of course, although one must have courage to

say so in "polite" company these days. Vicar Low points out an important way that the decline of

fatherhood has affected his church, one which we Catholics would be wise to consider:

     Emasculated liturgy, gender-free Bibles and a fatherless flock are increasingly on offer.

     In response to this, decline has, unsurprisingly, accelerated. To minister to a fatherless

     society the Church of England, in its unwisdom, has produced its own single-parent

     family parish model in the woman priest.

Lex Orandi, etc.

Guido Reni's St. Joseph With The Infant Jesus

Guido Reni's St. Joseph With The Infant Jesus 

     It's a startling thought, but it rings true;  and while we won’t be seeing women priests in the Catholic Church (see John Paul the Great’s Ordinatio Sacerdotalis [here], and the CDF document [here] affirming that the teaching on an the all-male priesthood is infallible), we are already seeing the emasculation of the liturgy in many other ways.  At all but one of the Masses in my parish the majority of lectors and extraordinary ministers are women, in some cases all of them; in all but one Mass, most or all of the altar servers are girls (and if three of my sons didn’t serve, it might be all the Masses). Among the various other things that a priest does, he is an iconic representation of the fatherhood of God. When he is surrounded by women in the sanctuary, that image is diluted. As a more practical matter, the more something is dominated by girls, the less attractive it is to boys. That may be a regrettable reality, but a reality it remains. Over the last dozen years we have seen the male/female ratio among altar servers tip ever further in the female direction. Altar serving has historically been a first step for many men in discerning a vocation to the priesthood, so as fewer boys become servers we can expect fewer “father figures” to preside at Mass and consecrate the body and blood of Christ; also, more generally, the more the Mass is seen as a “girl thing”, the more religious belief and practice themselves will seem to be “unmanly” (lex orandi, lex credendi – “the law of praying is the law of believing”), and the fewer men will bother to show up at all.

     I’m not trying to pick a fight with those whose daughters are altar servers, or who serve as lectors at Mass.  I think that it’s a good thing that we’re trying to do more than pay lip service to the truth that women enjoy a dignity equal to that of men. I also appreciate the huge number of single mothers who are struggling, sometimes heroically, to do the best they can for their children.  I’m only asking that you please look at the resources I have linked above and consider that, in a society that is destroying itself because it refuses to acknowledge the difference between women and men, we as Catholics can be a prophetic voice proclaiming and celebrating the separate but complementary roles proper to each sex.  

     On April 4th, the Feast of the Annunciation, we will (quite rightly) celebrate the Blessed Mother and her "yes" to God's plan that she be the Mother of the Savior (Luke 1:38).  Today is a reminder that Joseph also gives his assent, in his case to give up his own plans in order to be the Messiah's Father here on Earth (Matthew 1:18-25).  God saw to it that the Word Become Flesh would have both a mother and father in this world, each playing a specific role.  Wouldn't we be wise to follow his lead?

Grant,

we pray, Almighty God,

that by Saint Joseph's intercession

your Church may watch over

the unfolding of the mysteries of human salvation,

whose beginnings you entrusted to his watchful care.

Through Our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son,

Who lives and reigns with You in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God, forever and ever.

Amen.

(See also "Fatherhood and the Litany of St. Joseph" on Nisi Dominus)

Moses, Pharaoh, and Why We Preach the Gospel

(An earlier version of this Thursday Throwback was first published on 27 February 2015)

       One of the most vivid images from the Old Testament is Moses standing before Pharaoh, the King of Egypt, and demanding "Let my people go!"  It's a powerful image for its own sake, but also for what it says about our own role in proclaiming the Word of God in the face of an unbelieving world.  

    We can find the depiction of Moses' confrontation with Pharaoh in the Book of Exodus, verses 6:28 through 7:25.  Here we see Moses and Aaron going to Pharaoh in order to ask him to release the Hebrews from bondage in Egypt.  Pharaoh is unwilling, and so the Hebrew leaders use miraculous signs in an effort to convince him:  Aaron throws down his staff and it turns into a snake, but Pharaoh’s magicians turn their staffs into snakes as well; even after Aaron’s snake devours the others, Pharaoh is unpersuaded.  Next, Moses turns all the water in Egypt into blood,

But the magicians of Egypt did the same by their secret arts; so Pharaoh’s heart remained hardened, and he would not listen to them [i.e., Moses and Aaron], as the Lord had said. Pharaoh turned and went into his house, and he did not lay even this to heart. (Exodus 7:22-23)

We should not be surprised that Pharaoh so easily dismissed Moses and his miracles, because God had “hardened his heart” (Exodus 7:3), and someone whose heart is hardened toward God will always be able to explain away any evidence we can offer, any arguments (however sound), and even miraculous events.  We cannot by either proof or persuasion change a mind that does not want to be changed.

Why Preach?

Am I saying, then, that it is futile to for us to contend with atheists and agnostics in a contest of ideas? By no means.  If a hard heart is the obstacle, then a softening of the heart can make change possible.   This softening only happens through the work of the Holy Spirit, but our words and actions can either help or hinder the process.  More significantly, we can plant seeds (if I may switch metaphors) that might take root in the soil prepared by the Spirit, and even somebody who is not willing to listen today may at a more fertile time remember what we have said.  The atheist philosopher Anthony Flew is one example, who late in life was finally ready to be convinced by arguments he had been rejecting for decades, and willing to embrace the reality of a Creator.  We see something similar in the case of another atheist philosopher, the Jewish-born Edith Stein, who later became a Carmelite nun and was murdered by the Nazis; we now know her as St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross.

What we say is important.  How we live our lives and treat other people (expressly including those with whom we are debating) is even more important, because the good example of Christians has led to many conversions (and conversely, the bad example of Christians has chased not a few away).  Let’s return to Pharaoh for a moment.  He eventually relented and released the Hebrews after the events of the first Passover, when the lives of the first-born sons of the Egyptians were taken.  For many of us, the Holy Spirit softens our hard hearts through  suffering or misfortune.  In the Twelve Steps (the recovery program of Alcoholics Anonymous, which has now been applied in many other areas) this is known as “hitting rock bottom”: life has become so difficult, so intolerable, that a person is finally driven to consider possibilities that had been unthinkable before.   If a person who has reached such a point sees Christians living peaceful and joyful lives, he or she is likely to ask “why can’t I have that?”  Such a person is ready for conversion.  If he sees Christians who are back-biting hypocrites, on the other hand, he will probably start looking elsewhere, and the opportunity that the Holy Spirit has created will be lost.

Knowing Our Own Part

Apart from the person or persons with whom we are in direct dialogue, we also need to be aware of others who might be listening to our discussion.  Who knows where they are in their faith journey?  They might be wavering, and looking for reasons not to give up on God, or they could be someone for whom the soil has been prepared, and they are waiting for just the right seeds.  Even if the person to whom we think we are speaking never comes to conversion, what we say, and how we say it, can have a profound impact on bystanders.

    Finally, we have been commissioned to preach the Gospel by Jesus Christ Himself (Mark 16:15 -16: "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation.  He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned").  It seems that our Lord wants to use us as his instruments, even though it is His power that changes hearts.  Perhaps that’s why he sends Moses, who says “since I am a poor speaker, how is it possible that Pharaoh will listen to me” (Exodus 6:30), so that it is clear that it is God, and not Moses’ eloquence, that wins freedom for the Hebrews.

Seeing our proper role here is the key.  Mother Theresa used to remark that she was called not to be successful, but faithful.  This is a good reminder for all of us, because we tend to take upon ourselves responsibility for the results, when all that is under our control is the effort.  Exodus reminds us that if we do what our Lord asks us to do, He can take care of the rest.

Mozart Requiem Introitus & Kyrie

From the manuscript of the Requiem, in Mozart's hand

     While it's not strictly speaking a Lenten composition, Mozart's Requiem Mass, which he was still composing at the time of his death, powerfully lends itself to the penitential nature of the liturgical season. 
     For more than two centuries a lively debate has gone on, and continues today, concerning who composed what parts of the Requiem and the somewhat murky circumstances of its commissioning and completion.  Notwithstanding the controversies both scholarly and fanciful (as in, for instance, the play and film Amadeus), Mozart's final work is a magnificent and moving composition.  
    The clip below, from a performance in St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna conducted by Sir Georg Solti, includes the Introit and the Kyrie.  When Mozart died he had finished the Introit; we have the composer's own notation for the vocal parts and portions of the orchestration for the Kyrie, which seems to have been put into its finished form by the composer's student Franz Joseph Süssmayr.

What We Are Is More Important Than What We Have

     Which is more important, "is" or "has"?  In Gaudium et Spes,  the Constitution on the Church in the Modern World from the Second Vatican Council, we find the following: "Man's worth is greater because of what he is than because of what he has." This line grabbed my attention immediately, because it casts light on something that has stood out in my ongoing discussions ("Hey folks, let's dialogue!") with atheists and others who take a materialist view of reality.

     An interesting feature of these conversations with materialists is the fact that their worldview doesn't permit them to discuss what we are: their philosophical outlook only admits the importance of what we have. We have bodies, for instance, which have needs, and so on, but in this conception of the universe all we can be is matter, no different, in essence, than the matter that makes up a dog, a rock, or anything else; after all, if matter is all there is, how can we assign any value to an abstraction like "human worth"?  In the materialist world view, human worth is a mere sentiment (if such a thing itself can be said to exist), nothing more.

     In the Catholic Christian world view, on the other hand, humanity is something special, both because we are made in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:27), but also because Christ sanctified humanity through the incarnation. As St. John Paul the Great said in his 1995 address to the United Nations:

As a Christian, my hope and trust are centered on Jesus Christ . . . Jesus Christ is for us God made man, and made part of the history of humanity. Precisely for this reason, Christian hope for the world and its future extends to every human person. Because of the radiant humanity of Christ, nothing genuinely human fails to touch the hearts of Christians.

     The materialists want to pull us down to the level of mere things; Jesus Christ promises to lift us up to fellowship with God.  That is why the future of humanity belongs, not to the champions of "matter", but to Christ and His Church.

(An earlier version of this Throwback post was published on 8 February 2015)

Hey, Bob Dylan!

Is "Blowin' In The Wind" what the answer is, or where the answer is?  This has been bugging me for almost fifty years . . .

Seen Any Miracles Lately?

Glory be to God for dappled things –

 For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

    For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

 Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;

     And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

 Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

    With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise him.       - “Pied Beauty”, by Gerard Manley Hopkins

God Is Everywhere

   Believing Catholics see the presence of God everywhere. We see Him (Who created all things and holds them in existence) even in things as ordinary as “trout that swim” and “finches’ wings”.  Sometimes, however, our Lord seems to speak to us through more extraordinary means, through the events we call miracles. The word "miracle" might first make us think of those dramatic Miracles formally recognized as such by the Church, as, for example, those entered as evidence toward the canonization of saints.  These are relatively rare, as the Church has very strict standards of evidence, and insists that there be no available natural explanation.  But there is also a steady stream of less well-attested occurrences in the life of every believer that may not meet the strict standards that official Miracles demand, but still serve as powerful reminders that God’s Providence surrounds us .  . . at least for eyes to see that can.  Even the greatest Miracles, on the other hand, are not enough to sway those who simply don’t want to see.

Miracles in the News

    I came across a couple reports of apparent miracles in today’s news, and they got me thinking.  First, there is this story about a Bible that emerged almost unscathed from a car that rolled over and burst into flame:

The burning car, the Bible that survived (firstcoastnews.com photo)

 The entire interior, except the Good Book, was consumed in flame (I also heard a report on Catholic radio of a similar occurrence in Brazil, in which a statue of Our Lady of Aparecida was found unscathed in a building that had been gutted in a fire, but I haven’t been able to find any news report about this case online).  Then there is this story, about one of the victims of a serial murderer in Kalamazoo, Michigan.  According to the original news story the 14-year-old girl was pronounced brain dead after she arrived at the hospital, and

the hospital was in the process of preparing her organs for donation when the girl squeezed her mother’s hand . . .

The mother then asked her daughter to squeeze her hand again if she could hear her, and she did . . . The doctor asked the girl to give a thumbs up if she could hear him, and she gave two thumbs up . . .

The hospital then immediately started prepping the 14-year-old for surgery, the lieutenant said.

The girl is in critical condition today, her family said in a statement, saying, "Our daughter’s prognosis is uncertain as she continues fighting for her life."

     The doctors have since claimed that there was never a formal declaration of brain death, so this case would not qualify as an official Miracle using the standards of canonizations or of Lourdes; nevertheless, it still seems to the family that the Lord has brought back to them a child who was gone.  In the case of the un-burned Bible, it could be that there is some natural explanation: perhaps there was something in the car’s interior that protected it  . . . although the article tells us it was simply on the front seat.  It is, at the very least, a nice reminder that God’s is present and active in our world.  Eugene McNiel, for instance, the Good Samaritan who rescued the driver of the burning car, has a very simple, straight-forward explanation for the survival of the Bible: “That is God.”  To which he adds: "You don't believe? (Then) I don't know what to say."

Seeing Isn't Always Believing

   Therein lies a curious fact about miracles great and small.  They seem most often to strengthen and reward the faith of those who already believe, or to encourage those who are willing to believe, but have not quite committed themselves.  Those who refuse to believe, on the other hand, can explain away even the most dramatic miracles.  A classic example is the case of the 19th century French novelist Emile Zola.  Zola was a sceptic who was particularly obsessed with the Shrine at Lourdes, where there had been a number of miraculous cures since the Blessed Mother had appeared to young Bernadette Soubirous there in 1858.  The writer went to the Marian Shrine where, as George Sim Johnston writes in Crisis magazine [full article here], he witnessed:

an 18-year-old girl named Marie Lemarchand who was afflicted with three seemingly incurable diseases: an advanced stage of lupus, pulmonary tuberculosis, and leg ulcerations the size of an adult’s hand. Zola describes the girl’s face on the way to Lourdes as being eaten away by the lupus: “The whole was a frightful distorted mass of matter and oozing blood.” The girl went into the baths and emerged completely cured . . . Zola was there when she came out of the baths. He had said, “I only want to see a cut finger dipped in water and come out healed.” The President of the Medical Bureau, Dr. Boissarie, was standing beside him. “Ah, Monsieur Zola, behold the case of your dreams!” “I don’t want to look at her,” replied Zola. “To me she is still ugly.” And he walked away.

Photo of the Grotto at Lourdes in the 1890's, crutches of healed pilgrims
can be seen hanging in the upper left corner of the picture.

Zola was more fortunate than most of even the most devout pilgrims: there have been less than one hundred officially confirmed miraculous cures at Lourdes in the past one and a half centuries (although there have been many more unconfirmed cures), and most visitors don't see even one of these. The unbelieving author, however, was allowed to witness two:

Zola subsequently witnessed a second cure at Lourdes, that of a Mlle. Lebranchu, who was suffering from the final stages of tuberculosis. He told Dr. Boissarie, “Were I to see all the sick at Lourdes cured, I would not believe in a miracle.” He put the second cure in his novel Lourdes (1894), but depicted the woman as relapsing into her former condition on her way home, the implication being that the cure was neither permanent nor supernatural, but rather a case of autosuggestion in an hysterical religious atmosphere.

But Zola, who remained in communication with the woman long after her recovery, was perfectly aware that there had been no relapse. When Dr. Boissarie questioned him as to the honesty of his account, pointing out that Zola had said that he had come to Lourdes to make an impartial investigation, Zola replied that he was an artist and could do whatever he liked with his material.

   Miracles have no effect on the Zolas of this world, because such people simply don’t want to believe; they fasten upon any possible technicality, and when all else fails they simply invoke the Science Of The Gaps defense: “Of course there’s a natural explanation, we just don’t know what it is”.  Scripture warns us that there will be intransigent blindness of this sort:

. . .  and coming to his own country he taught them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished, and said, "Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brethren James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all this?" And they took offense at him. But Jesus said to them, "A prophet is not without honor except in his own country and in his own house." And he did not do many mighty works there, because of their unbelief. (Matthew 13:54-58)

Pass It On

   Those who have already given their hearts to the Lord, on the other hand, see his fingerprints everywhere, not only in the miraculous, but in every detail of creation (as described in Gerard Manley Hopkins’s Pied Beauty, above).   It may seem strange that God showers favors on those who, apparently, need them the least, but Scripture helps us out here, as well.  St. Paul says:

We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.  For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren.     (Romans 8: 28-29)

Any gift God gives us (i.e., Grace) is not for us alone, but is for us to share in our turn, for the benefit of others.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains:

Grace is first and foremost the gift of the Spirit who justifies and sanctifies us. But grace also includes the gifts that the Spirit grants us to associate us with his work, to enable us to collaborate in the salvation of others and in the growth of the Body of Christ, the Church. There are sacramental graces, gifts proper to the different sacraments. There are furthermore special graces, also called charisms after the Greek term used by St. Paul and meaning "favor," "gratuitous gift," "benefit." Whatever their character - sometimes it is extraordinary, such as the gift of miracles or of tongues - charisms are oriented toward sanctifying grace and are intended for the common good of the Church. They are at the service of charity which builds up the Church. (CCC 2003, my bold, italics in original)

Fr. Rob Lupo (Portland Press Herald photo)

The Son is the image of the Father and we are to be conformed to the image of the Son ( see Romans 12:2); God’s interventions great and small can help form us in that image, if we let them. Those who refuse to see more direct manifestations of God’s power are sometimes willing to recognize it reflected in his adopted sons and daughters, or are at least willing to be more open to it if they see that it has changed our lives.  It's often the case that people formerly hostile to the Church open their hearts because of the Grace they see in the lives of believers. Fr. Rob Lupo, for example, formerly an angry, anti-Catholic atheist, gradually let go of his hostility because of the example of a good Catholic friend, and today is not only a believer, but a priest in the Diocese of Portland, Maine [article here].  I’ve heard it suggested that perhaps even St. Paul himself was more ready to listen to the voice of Christ on the Road to Damascus after witnessing the faith and courage of the Christians he had been persecuting.

Miracles In All Shapes And Sizes

Most of us never witness first-hand the most dramatic miracles, but not all miracles are of teh dramatic sort. In his Summa Contra Gentiles St. Thomas Aquinas describes three different kinds of miracles [full excerpt here]. There are 1st degree miracles, truly miraculous events which are things which “nature can never do”, such as the miracle of the Sun at Fatima. God seems to reserve these for very special occasions.  2nd degree miracles are things which  “nature can do, but not in the same order”; someone who was dead coming back to life, for instance: it is natural for a human being to live, unlike the Sun dancing in the sky, but in the natural order of things we stay dead once we have died.  Finally, third degree miracles are

what is wont to be done by the operation of nature, but without the operation of the natural principles: for instance when by the power of God a man is cured of a fever that nature is able to cure; or when it rains without the operation of the principles of nature.

These are miracles, in other words, in which things develop in an apparently natural way, but whose course is determined by God. The 180 degree reversal in the life of former atheist Rob Lupo, who is now Fr. Lupo, is an example of a 3rd degree miracle.

    I doubt there is any one of us who hasn't had some experience of these 3rd degree miracles, the unlikely events that push us closer to God, or the seemingly impossible favors that follow closely after our prayer (this seems to happen to my wife a lot, most recently yesterday). We shouldn't be deterred by the fact others aren't persuaded; when Christ comes again in Glory I'm sure there will be some who try to dismiss it as a mass hallucination. Faith, however, tells us that God is constantly working to form us in his image, even in the smallest things: "He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him."