29 July 2018
17th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
Some people thought it was the end of the world. The flames shot hundreds of feet into the air
all around them, and the smoke was so dense they couldn’t always see who they
were trying to rescue. Over 1,200 people
lost their lives. It was the worst wildfire
in U.S. history—the Great Peshtigo fire of October 8, 1871—just an hour north
of here.
The fire extended into three counties: Oconto, Door, and Kewaunee
Counties, on both sides of the bay of Green Bay. It was a massive inferno: 1.2 million acres
and over 2 billion trees were reduced to ash.
But, in the midst of that, a small area in Door County remained
untouched. It was around the chapel
where the Blessed Virgin Mary had appeared to Sr. Adele Brise twelve years
before. The grass was as green after the
fire as it had been before.
There’s no logical, scientific, or natural reason why the
fire should’ve stopped at the edge of the chapel grounds. But it did. By all accounts, it was a miracle.
And we have another story of a miracle in the gospel today:
the multiplication of loaves and fish.
There’s no rationale to explain how Jesus was able to feed (fully) over
5,000 people with just five loaves and two fish. It defies explanation—other than to call it a
miracle.
And miracles are great things. They’re signs to us that there’s more to life
than meets the eye. There’s more going
on than we can know or understand. And
they also help to shore up our faith when it gets shaky. Miracles invite people to believe in Jesus—to
believe in who he is and what he says.
And so, miracles are good—and even necessary—things.
The problem with these kinds of miracles is that, of course,
they don’t happen all the time. You
know, it’s great that the Peshtigo Fire didn’t consume the chapel and all those
who took refuge there. But wouldn’t it
have been a greater miracle if the fire had been stopped before it even started? Or with the feeding of the 5,000, it’s great
that they were fed. But why do people
still go hungry and starve today? If God
can do these miracles, then why not do them all the time?
And the answer is actually pretty simple: Our faith isn’t supposed
to be in what we can see and understand, our faith is in what we cannot see and
cannot understand—namely, God. Miracles help
to feed our need for “proof” that God exists, that God is not bound by the same
limitations of time, space, and physics that we are. They’re reminders that while there’s “heaven
and earth,” there’s also “a new heaven and a new earth” we’re looking forward
to—in faith.
The entire “agenda” of Jesus in the Gospel of John is to move
his people from faith in signs (and miracles are one of those signs) to faith
in him—without the signs. Now, he still does miracles—even today,
because all of us are on a journey of faith.
We still need miracles to help us have faith. But it’s as Jesus said to Thomas: “Have you
believed because you have seen me?
Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe” [John
20:29].
So, miracles are good, and wonderful, and amazing—it’s why
they’re called miracles. But, at the
same time, Jesus is pushing us to be amazed by what we cannot see, or by what strikes
us being…ordinary. And, of course, the
Eucharist (and all the sacraments) fit that description.
Every time we celebrate the Mass, we’re in the presence of a
miracle. Bread becomes the Flesh of Christ. Wine becomes the Blood of Christ. Not a symbol of Jesus, not a reminder of his
presence among us, but his actual presence.
It’s a miracle—it defies the laws of physics, the laws of science; it
defies nature. The Eucharist—according to
all we know about the world and how it works—shouldn’t be here. But it is.
And this type of miracle is different than the miraculous
feeding of 5,000 people, and the miracle of the Peshtigo Fire. The Eucharist is a miracle we cannot see. And, even with the Eucharistic miracles that do
exist—miracles where the host becomes physical flesh and the wine becomes
physical blood, proven as such under the microscope—even with those Eucharistic
miracles, there still isn’t an explanation how it happened—mechanically speaking.
Now, we know how it happened.
The miracle happens because God sends down the Holy Spirit, and the
priest (standing in the person of Jesus) speaks those same words of Jesus at
the Last Supper. Jesus is the Word of
God, the same God who created the world “in the beginning.” And God said, “Let there be light,” and there
was light. God’s spoken word makes
things happen. The miracle of the Eucharist
happens because Jesus the Word of God said (and continues to say), “This is my
Body, this is my Blood.” Jesus’ words
are transformative. So we know how the bread
and wine are changed.
But, again, the Eucharist is a miracle we don’t ordinarily
see with our eyes. We can only approach
it with faith. But that doesn’t make it
any less of a miracle. What’s one reason
to come to Mass? Well, to encounter a
miracle; a sign that God—after all these ages—is still with his people, wanting
his life and ours to be one.
So there’s the Peshtigo Fire, the feeding of the 5,000, and
the Eucharist—all amazing miracles. But
then there are the “forgotten miracles,” the miracles of ordinary life that we
have to remember are miracles—and defy science and the laws of nature. And I’ll mention just two.
The first is human life.
But I don’t necessarily mean just birth and death; I mean human life in
its entirety. There’s a law of nature
which Charles Darwin picked up on, and he saw it “survival of the fit;” the
idea that only the strongest survive. It’s
foundational to the theory of evolution, and it’s observable all over the
place. But with human life, this
particular law of nature is far exceeded.
We humans don’t need to be as intelligent as we are in order
to “survive.” We human don’t need the
complex structures of society and commerce we have in order to “survive.” The human ability to take raw materials from
the earth and transform into something totally different is far beyond the need
to “survive.” The miracle of human life
is that we’re made not just to “survive,” we’re made to “have dominion over the
earth”—as it says in Genesis—and to “thrive,” not just “survive.”
Human life is a miracle.
Based on the laws of nature, human beings don’t need to exist, and we
shouldn’t exist. But we do. Our very existence is a miracle—something to
be amazed by.
And, second, is the miracle of faith. No other creature in the known universe has
the sense of a world beyond this one. No
other creature looks to the heavens for answers, or for consolation or
inspiration. We’re certainly members of
the animal kingdom. But there’s no
animal out there like us, who has a conscience, a sense of “self,” a sense of the
mysterious “other”—the “gods” who are part of our lives.
That awareness of “something greater” is the miracle of
faith. Science can’t explain it. The laws of nature maybe only hint at
it. There’s no rationale for us to have
faith, or to look to the heavens. But we
do, as human beings have done for all of recorded history. Faith itself is weird and amazing. Faith is a miracle, like human life. But we sometimes (maybe oftentimes) overlook
it as being any extraordinary, or “out of this world.”
Protection from a blazing fire, the feeding of 5,000 people,
the Eucharist, human life, faith itself—they’re all miracles. They’re all things that shouldn’t exist—according
to the laws of science and nature. But
they do. And they exist as invitations
for us to believe in something greater than ourselves. Consider the miracles you’re aware of—even those
“ordinary” ones—and how the Lord is calling you…to have faith in him.