Fourteenth Sunday of the Year 2018

Dear Friends in Christ, 

It isn’t really possible to be a believer of Jesus and not believe in miracles – the Gospels are full of them. The four Evangelists were authentic witnesses: they didn’t make things up; they testified to what they saw and heard with their own eyes.

In any event, we struggle with miracles – and many people do – we should know that the Church doesn’t: it believes in miracles. We know, of course, that in order for someone to be declared Blessed (Beatus) a miracle needs to occur as a result of their intercession and for someone to be canonised, made a saint, two miraculous interventions need to occur as a result of their intercession. Mother Teresa and Pope John XXIII were declared saints and John Henry Newman was declared Blessed because the Church was able to verify miracles had occurred through their intercession. Lourdes especially is a place or miracles, and these wonderful miracles have occurred through the intercession of Our Blessed Lady. And, to top them all, every time we celebrate the Eucharist, through the miracle of grace, the priest is able (by a miracle of grace) to change the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ.

Not only do we believe in miracles but we are People of Miracles. True, we don’t hear reports of signs, wonders and miracles emerging from our parishes after Sunday Mass, but maybe that’s because we aren’t expectant of them. Maybe when a loved one is seriously sick or ill, our first thought isn’t to make available to them the anointing of the sick, the healing and therefore the miraculous sacrament of the Church

If you don’t believe in miracles, change the way you think. Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you that miracles are the way of the Church. Blessed John Henry Newman said: ‘The incarnation is the most stupendous event which ever can take place on earth; and after it and henceforth, I do not see how we can scruple at any miracle on the mere grounds that it is unlikely to happen.’ Perhaps today we might make a simple proclamation for faith by saying, ‘I believe in miracles.’