How can you believe in miracles?

Dear Rev. Know it all,
I have friends who are not Christians and they are challenging me about my religion. They ask, “how can I believe in a religion that has talking donkeys and talking bushes that burn and prophets popping out of fish and giant boats full of animals?”  Can you explain all this?
Yours,

Albert “Al” Bondigas
 
Dear Al,

Of course I can explain it. I am, after all, the Rev. Know it all. First of all, the stories you are talking about are in the Bible. If you treat the Bible as a history book, you are going to run into things that are patently absurd.  Even if you treat it as a book, you are going to run into trouble. It isn’t a book. It’s a library. There are 73 books all collected in the anthology. There is poetry, parables, proverbs, visions, law, history and much, much more.

The first Catholics understood this. Take St. Augustine (354-430 AD), Bishop of Hippo, for instance. Augustine taught that the Biblical text was sometimes to be taken metaphorically, not literally, when it contradicted science and reason. St. Ambrose before him taught the same thing. Catholics have never believed that the Bible was intended to be used as history except in those accounts which are clearly historical. They do not necessarily give us history, but the Holy Spirit’s explanation of history.

Let’s start with the book of Genesis. There are three primary stories in the first 11 chapters of Genesis. They are 1) the divine origins of humanity and all creation, and humanity’s subsequent fall from grace, 2) the tower of Babel, and the subsequent divisions of humanity, and 3) the great flood. Every culture has its origin stories.  A lot of cultures have a flood story. It seems that at some point, somewhere there was a flood. Clearly the world and human beings exist and are separated by language and ethnicity. 

The Bible doesn’t tell you how these things happened, as much as it tells you the meaning of these realities. They can be summed up very simply by saying that the world is not a random creation, but willed by God, the Supreme Being.  Humanity is not composed of lesser and greater races, as some nonsensical racial theories propose. We are all descended from the same ancestors, no matter our ethnicity, language or skin color. It was disobedience that deprived us of our relationship with God and towering pride that deprived us of our relationship with each other, but we are still one human family. The Bible taught this long before genetics proved it.  These allegories are not so much history as they are God’s statement about history and the human situation.

“So they aren’t real?” I can hear you asking. Oh yes, they are real. They are as real as a love-struck poet telling the object of his desire that her eyes are pools of light, her hair a torrent of gold. Where the poet sees light and gold, the chemist sees a carbon based life form. Both are right, but most of us would rather chat with the poet than the chemist (though I have met some very poetic chemists and some very boring poets.) 

In the 11th chapter of Genesis, we enter a kind of history more in keeping with the tedious standards of our age. Still, it is filled with poetry and meaning. What about all those numbers, like Methuselah living for a gazillion years? Numbers have word meanings in certain cultures. The older the person, the closer to the Garden of Eden. It is a statement that the fall from grace continued in the worsening condition of humanity. I suspect that it’s poetry. “So it’s just poetry?” I can hear you ask. No, it’s not just poetry, it’s poetry about real events and real people in stories that have been told for thousands of years. It conveys not only real history, but God’s commentary on that history.

“Well, what about the talking donkeys and burning bushes and the parting of seas and all that? I’ve never seen anything like that. Is it just mythology? How come it happened thousands of years ago and it doesn’t happen now?”  What do you mean it doesn’t happen now?  Miracles are real and exist to remind us that this short and sorry life is not all there is. I dare you to do a web search on a few things.

Look up the miracle of Fatima. That was 1917. The sun appeared to fall from the sky in Fatima, Portugal. The event changed history and eventually brought down European Marxism. Not only was it seen in Portugal but all over Europe. My old pastor saw it and the father of a friend of mine who was a soldier in the trenches of World War I saw it.

What about talking donkeys? I don’t know about talking donkeys, but my grandmother knew a saint who could talk to insects. True story. Venerable Solanus Casey, a Franciscan Friar from Wisconsin, came up to a bunch of friars who were being chased by bees. Father Solanus walked into the cloud of  bees, went up to the hive, reached in and wrapped a queen bee in his handkerchief, talking calmly to her all the time. The bees calmed down and returned to their hive. He explained to the friars that there had been two queens in the hive. Father Solanus wasn’t stung or hurt in any way. I knew a Franciscan friar who was there when it happened. As for voices, whether they happen in the ears or in the heart, who knows? God whispers to us all the time if we are quiet enough to hear and, like Solanus’s bees, smart enough to pay attention.

How about this? Do a web search for Marie Lebranchu or Marie LeMarchand or Sophie Couteau, who became a Little Sister of the Assumption taking the name of Sister Agnes Marie.  Emile Zola, the great French novelist new all three and met them when they were at the point of death, and visibly, even repulsively sick. They were instantly cured at Lourdes. Zola saw them both the day before they were healed and the day after. He went on to lie about the whole thing. In his novel “Lourdes,” he changed the facts. He renamed Marie Lebranchu, calling her La Grivotte, and said that she died on the train home. On the contrary! She lived in perfect health until 1920! As for Marie Le Marchand whom he called Elisa, whom he also killed off in the novel, she married and had 8 children. Sophie went on to become a nun and lived many years after her healing. The great journalist/novelist Zola preferred to lie rather than face a fact that would have changed his life.

Okay, that was long ago and far away. What about here and now? How about four people I know well, two of whom you know as well as I do. My brother-in-law was stricken with polio in the early fifties. He was taken to the healing shrine of St. Anne de Beaupre. He was in line in a wheel chair, waiting for prayer. A severely handicapped girl was taken past him to the front of the church. As she struggled past, their eyes met. There was a commotion at the altar and a few moments later the young woman strode down the main aisle in perfect health. As she passed my brother-in-law, their eyes met again and in that moment he knew he would never be healed, but that God would be with him and provide for him all his life and so He did. 

Then there was my cousin who, when she was a little girl, had a mastoid bone infection in the days before antibiotics. She was in such agony the night before her surgery that they packed her off in the middle of the night to see Father Solanus, of bee-calming fame. Father Solanus talked to her parents for a bit and stroked the little girl’s hair and told them to take her home. She would be fine. The little girl, my cousin, felt better and slept. The next day, the doctor who was to operate couldn’t understand why the little girl was even there. She had no infection. That was 70 years ago, and she is fine to this day.

You actually know the next two people I want to talk about. You worked with one years ago helping to feed the poor.  Your friend went for a routine check up and they found blood where blood shouldn’t be. The results of the test were slow in coming, and the doctor delayed things, but suddenly our mutual friend was told he had cancer of the bladder. He went for prayer and as a prayer group prayed for him he felt the cancer leave him. He went back and subsequent tests showed that he was cancer free. Perhaps the doctors were wrong. Perhaps they misread the tests…..perhaps...explain it away just like Zola would. Our friend knew that God had given him a miracle.

The last story I have to tell is about a woman you know very well. I knew her when she was a girl. I met her the night she was healed. She was carried into church, unable to walk because she was heavily sedated. She had epilepsy.  She suffered numerous grand mal seizures daily and was so ill that she couldn’t attend school. By the end of the prayer meeting she was running up and down the side aisle of the church and has never had a seizure since.

“Well,” I can hear you ask, “if God can cure the sick and speak through bushes and donkeys, why doesn’t he do it for everyone?” He does do it for everyone. Each breath is miracle, each sunrise a vision. Every breeze and each singing bird is a prophecy. “No!” you say, “They are just breezes and sunrises and birds.” For those who believe, no miracle is necessary. For those who, like Emile Zola and perhaps your friends, no miracle is possible. Jesus promised that He would never turn away anyone who called on Him. He may not give you the miracle you want, but I promise you, He will give you the miracle you need.

Always and faithfully yours,

Rev. Know-it-all   

What's with this "Holy Fire" nonsense?

Dear Rev. Know-it-all;

We heard some loon on the radio going on and on about something called the "Holy Fire" at the Church of the Resurrection (Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem) I had to google it to try and find more information on it. Absurd! What nonsense. Thank goodness not too many Catholic websites will acknowledge this phenomenon... could you comment? Is this a Greek Orthodox tradition? Beware of Greeks lighting fires. Isn’t that in the Bible somewhere?

Yours,

Mr. &Mrs. Phil & Sophie Majors

Dear Mr. & Mrs. Majors,

For those less aware than you, let me explain the Holy Fire. Every Easter, that is Easter according to the Greek Orthodox calendar, the Greeks claim that fire spontaneously lights the candles held by the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem as he prays alone in the tomb of Christ. That sort of thing seems a bit much to swallow. After all, we are living in scientific times and know that such displays of the supernatural are nonsense. (It is interesting that the comment “Nonsense!” (leiros) does appear once in the New Testament. It is the reaction of the disciples to the women’s tale of the Resurrection on Easter Sunday morning.) All moderately well educated moderns know that the Holy Fire must be a fraud. The interesting thing is that if it is a fraud, it goes back at least 1,625 years.

The Holy Fire is first mentioned in documents dating from the 4th century. One of them, Eusebius of Caesarea’s “History of the Church,” talks about something similar in 188 AD, when Narcissus was Bishop of Jerusalem. It seems that there was no oil for the lamps for the Easter Vigil and water miraculously burned in the oil lamps. This may or may not be a reference to the Holy Fire, but it certainly could not have happened in the tomb itself. The tomb had been buried by the Emperor Hadrian in 135 and remained buried under a temple to the goddess Venus until 325 when the vigil services probably resumed at the Holy Sepulchre which had never been forgotten by the Christians of Jerusalem.

The next mention comes from that era and is much clearer. Around 385, Egeria, a Celtic noble woman from Spain, traveled to the Holy Land. In the account of her journey, she speaks of a ceremony at the Holy Sepulchre of Christ, where a light comes forth from the small chapel enclosing the tomb, by which the entire church is filled with an infinite light. St. John Damascene mentions the phenomenon in 780.

Things become even more explicit in an itinerary written by a western monk named Bernhard after his journey to Jerusalem in the year 865. He describes an angel who came down after the singing of the "Kyrie Eleison" and ignited the lamps hanging over the burial slab of Christ, whereupon the Patriarch passed the flame to the bishops and to everyone else in the church. This description matches what happens to this day. Bernard writes: " It is worth saying what happens on Holy Saturday, in the church of the Holy Sepulchre at Easter. In the morning the divine office begins in this church. Then, when it is over they sing the Kyrie Eleison 'til an angel comes and kindles light in the lamps which hang above the Sepulchre. The patriarch passes some of this light to the bishops and the rest of the people, and each one has light where he is standing. "

On October 18, 1009, Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, (also known as Hakim the Crazy) ordered the complete destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Tomb of Christ as well as random arrests and executions of the Christians of Jerusalem. This is the event that started the Crusades. Al-Hakim "...was aggrieved by the scale of the Easter pilgrimage to Jerusalem, which was caused specially by the annual miracle of the Holy Fire within the Sepulchre.”

In 1096, Pope Urban begged Christians to save the Holy Land and restore the tomb of Christ. In his appeal to Christendom, Pope Urban spoke of the Holy Fire . “Of holy Jerusalem, ...This very city, in which, as you all know, Christ Himself suffered for us, because our sins demanded ...in that place ...He died for us; there He was buried. How precious would be the longed for, incomparable place of the Lord's burial, even if God failed there to perform the yearly miracle! For in the days of His Passion (Holy Week) all the lights in the Sepulchre and round about in the church, which have been extinguished, are relighted by divine command. Whose heart is so stony, brethren, that it is not touched by so great a miracle? Believe me, that man is ...senseless whose heart such divinely manifest grace does not move to faith!”

In fact, the Holy Fire still falls in our time in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in much the same manner as early Christian and medieval sources report. If it is a fraud, that would mean that every Bishop of Jerusalem who has participated in this ceremony for almost 2,000 years has taken his cue from his predecessor and hoodwinked another generation of the gullible.

Let me describe the ceremony. The tomb is searched and sealed, formerly by the Muslim Turks, by the Israeli police presently. The patriarch is similarly searched. He enters the tomb and prays while the congregation chants “Lord have mercy.” A recent Greek patriarch, Diodorus who died in 2000 describes what happens. "I enter the tomb and kneel in holy fear in front of the place where Christ lay after His death and where He rose again from the dead... I find my way through the darkness towards the inner chamber in which I fall on my knees. Here I say certain prayers that have been handed down to us through the centuries and, having said them, I wait. Sometimes I may wait a few minutes, but normally the miracle happens immediately after I have said the prayers. From the core of the very stone on which Jesus lay an indefinable light pours forth. It usually has a blue tint, but the color may change and take many different hues. It cannot be described in human terms. The light rises out of the stone as mist may rise out of a lake. It almost looks as if the stone is covered by a moist cloud, but it is light. This light each year behaves differently. Sometimes it covers just the stone, while other times it gives light to the whole Sepulchre, so that people who stand outside the tomb and look into it will see it filled with light. The light does not burn. I have never had my beard burnt in all the sixteen years I have been Patriarch in Jerusalem and have received the Holy Fire. The light is of a different consistency than normal fire that burns in an oil lamp... At a certain point the light rises and forms a column in which the fire is of a different nature, so that I am able to light my candles from it. When I thus have received the flame on my candles, I go out and give the fire first to the Armenian Patriarch and then to the Coptic. Then I give the flame to all present in the Church."

The Holy Light is not only distributed by the Patriarch, but spreads by itself. It is emitted from the Holy Sepulchre with a hue completely different from natural light. The blue flame appears in different places in the Church. Believers claim that sometimes this miraculous light spontaneously ignites candles, which they hold in their hands. It flashes like lightning, and sometimes flies around the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and lights the oil lamps in front of the tomb. It flies from one end of the church to the other. Sometimes it lights the lamps in the upper chapel of Calvary. For about a half an hour after the Holy Fire appears, it is a cool flame that does not burn the face, or beards or the hands. People “wash” themselves with the cool flame. You can find video of the event on You Tube. There is one fascinating video in which a large ball of fire explodes from the tomb, darts through the crown and strikes a pillar which lights up and then the light is gone.

Here's a fascinating 30 minute documentary "Holy Light in Jerusalem: Proofs & Testimonies" with English subtitles (originally produced in Greece). Apparently non-believers are in on the fraud, too.

Some Greeks claim that the Holy Fire proves they are the True Church. However, the Fire is given to the Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, not the Patriarch of Constantinople. Catholics believe that Greek Orthodox are "true Church." By our lights, they reject the ministry of the apostle Peter, but they are still "true Church." Sometimes some of them don't like us Latins very much and historically we have sometimes returned the favor, but God is generous with His miracles. They have the Holy Fire and Our Lady of Zeitoun. We have the Shroud and Our Lady of Fatima. My personal belief is that the Holy Fire was given to the first (Jewish ) Christians of the Holy Land and the history of this community involves the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem. They have custody of the tomb of Christ, though we Westerners have access to it. God loves them and us very much. I believe that the Holy Fire is not about who is right. God loves us all, East and West, North and South. However, the sad schism of the Church has limited the awareness of the miracle for perhaps 600 years. Perhaps an increasing awareness of this miracle will draw us into the miracle of deeper unity.

“Nonsense!”, you say? Well, hasn’t the Bible lots of nonsense? Remember the bush that burned but was not consumed? Remember Elijah’s chariot of fire? Remember the pillar of fire that led the people of Israel through the wilderness? Remember when the sun danced at Fatima and fire fell, changing the 20^th century because of our blessed Mother’s love for Orthodox Russia? Remember the fire that fell on the disciples and the Blessed Mother at Pentecost? It didn’t burn them, but sent them to the ends of the earth. Remember the fire that burned the burial shroud of Jesus and left His image scorched on the linen? John and Peter saw and believed! Didn’t Jesus Himself say, “I have come to throw fire on the earth and how I wish that it was already lit.” (Luke 12:9)? Don’t you say every Sunday that “He is light from light, true God from true God?” The Bible is full of fire, from the angel’s sword in Eden to the fire that exploded in the holy and deathless tomb, the empty tomb on Saturday just a few weeks ago, when an old man, a bishop, an unworthy servant of God knelt to pray. Look at the video on YouTube. The passing of the fire, the clanging of the bells. Isn’t this exactly what we reenact on Holy Saturday in our Vigil service? Look at the video and then read the Exultet. It is the Holy Fire that we celebrate even in the West, His wonders are ever new, but the fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” There is an old song:

and when the waves of anger again the earth shall fill with fire, the ark shall ride the sea of fire and rest on Zion’s hill.

May it soon be so! Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus!

Rev. Know-it-all