Miracles

Someone said to me a while ago that he thought that we needed more miracles. I agreed, and suggested that we needed to pray for more: you don't ask, you don't get, and it is "unfashionable" to pray for miracles in our rationalistic, sceptical age...

...and then, as the discussion continued, I realised that actually there are loads of miracles, if you are willing to see them. Ok, the vast majority will never be classed as "proper, authenticated miracles" by the Church (they're pretty difficult to prove, by the way... the Church is not the credulous, superstitious institution portrayed by the media!) but they are miracles to those who experience them nevertheless.

My escape from a car crash 18 months ago when I was smashed into (twice - back and front) by an articulated lorry, spun across the motorway, collided with the central reservation barrier, and flipped over onto my roof was pretty miraculous... at least, that's what the attendant emergency personnel thought... the insurance assessment engineer thought so too (in his experience, after viewing the damage to the car, the driver should have been "out of the picture"... so much so that he double-checked with the insurance company to see which bereaved relative he would be speaking to!!)

But there are other miracles out there too, for those who will accept them. The type of miracle which has been attested to by doctors and scientists (medical miracles are the easiest to prove, because there is the documentation for "Before" and "After") oh, and don't forget that the panel of experts includes not only non-Catholic and non-Christian experts, but atheistic ones as well.

There has been much criticism of John Paul the Great for his "saints factory" but you have to remember that each of those saints will have two fully attested and authenticated miracles ascribed to their intercession (one if the saint was martyred.) Given the hundreds of saints he canonised, we can't be short on miracles...