Posts

On the Feast of Our Lady of Fatima

Katherine Arcement, writing in the Washington Post two years ago today, which marked the centenary of the first Marian apparition in Fatima:

The Virgin Mary appeared to the children on May 13, 1917 as “a lady dressed in white, shining brighter than the sun, giving out rays of clear and intense light,” dos Santos wrote. She promised to come to the children on the 13th of each month.

Jacinta told her mother about it. While her siblings joked about the apparition, her alarmed mother hauled her in front of their parish priest to recant. She would not.

News of the visions spread by word of mouth, and the following month a small crowd waited with the children to witness the second apparition June 13. At the third sighting, on July 13, the children said the Virgin Mary revealed three secrets to them about the future.

Interest in what was happening in Fatima grew more intense.

On Aug. 13, the children were taken into custody by a state bureaucrat, who took them by car to Vila Nova de Ourem in hopes of getting them to recant their testimonies. Again, they would not.

Thousands of people began streaming to Cova da Iria, the site of the Virgin Mary apparitions. On Sept. 13, 30,000 people were present when dos Santos said the Virgin Mary told her, “In October I will perform a miracle so that all may believe.”

On that day, Oct. 13, 1917, the crowd of believers had swelled to 70,000.
About 2 p.m., some began to see what later became known in the Catholic Church as “the Miracle of the Sun.” The rains that had plagued the day ceased, and the sun emerged from behind clouds to spin and tremble for 10 minutes.

“Before the astonished eyes of the crowd, whose aspect was biblical as they stood bareheaded, eagerly searching the sky, the sun trembled, made sudden incredible movements outside all cosmic laws — the sun ‘danced’ according to the typical expression of the people,” reported O Seculo, a Lisbon newspaper.

The strange phenomena included odd colors.

“Looking at the sun, I noticed that everything was becoming darkened. I looked first at the nearest objects and then extended my glance further afield as far as the horizon. I saw everything had assumed an amethyst color. Objects around me, the sky and the atmosphere, were of the same color. Everything both near and far had changed, taking on the color of old yellow damask,” said José Maria de Almeida Garrett, a science professor from Coimbra, Portugal, who was at the scene.

Onlookers from as far as 25 miles away noted the strange phenomena in the sky.

Following this event, the crowd and grounds, which had been soaked by those heavy rains, were, suddenly, bone-dry.

Of course, purely naturalistic theories have been proffered for the Miracle of the Sun, like this one, which, depending on one’s point of view, might require more faith to believe than that an actual miracle had occurred. Theories like these assume extreme gullibility on the part of those in attendance, including the secular publications which reported on these phenomena.

It should also be noted that the children were also threatened with physical torture by authorities (being boiled in oil) in an attempt to get them to recant, which they did not.

At any rate, it should be noted that no Catholic is required to believe in any Marian apparition — even those, like Fatima, Lourdes, and Guadalupe, that have been approved by the Church as worthy of belief. Why? Because they fall under the category of private revelation, whereas Catholics are only bound to believe in public revelation. Despite the fact that there have been public aspects to the events at Lourdes (the existence of the spring and healings), Guadalupe (the miraculous tilma), and, of course, Fatima, the associated supernatural apparitions and revelations were made to certain individuals. (I happen to think that there is convincing evidence to believe in these apparitions, but I’m not troubled if friends remain, for now, unconvinced).

Speaking of centenaries, this coming Monday, May 18th, marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Pope St John Paul II, a towering figure of the 20th century who held that Our Lady of Fatima personally intervened to thwart the assassination attempt on his life made on this day in 1981. In fact, the Pontiff had the bullet, which came within millimetres of ending his life, placed within the crown of the statue of Our Lady of Fatima.

This frightening event was interpreted as the fulfillment of the “Third Secret” of Fatima which had been revealed to the children. The “First Secret” had to do with the end of WWI and the even greater destruction of WWII to follow; the “Second Secret” was a prophecy about the rise of Communism and the Soviet empire — an empire that John Paul II played a major role in dismantling.

/by

Advent and the Miraculous

Advent

We are now in Advent, preparing to celebrate the birth of Jesus at Christmas. Many modern secularists find it very difficult to believe in the possibility of miracles, such as the virginal conception of Jesus. They say that the ancients were quite gullible to believe this, and that modern humanity is far too “educated and enlightened” to fall for such “nonsense”. How can we respond to this?

At one level, this is nothing more than chronological snobbery. In a recent article, RZIM apologist Jill Carattini responds to this fallacious line of reasoning:

In his 1945 essay “Religion and Science,” C.S. Lewis exposed one of the most common false assumptions at the heart of the science/faith divide, particularly as it pertains to the nativity of Jesus. The assumption is that this “primitive” nativity was likewise filled with primitive thinkers devoid of any sort of knowledge of biology or natural reasoning. Here and elsewhere, Lewis saw that we hold our scientific advancements as something like demerits for prior generations, perpetuating the mentality that the only accurate thought is current thought, the only mind worth trusting is an enlightened one—of which I am conveniently a member.

The disciples…knew enough about the laws of physics to be completely terrified by the man walking on the water toward their boat. The crowd of mourners knew enough about death to laugh at Jesus when he insisted that the dead girl was only sleeping, and to walk away astonished when she came back to life. There were also the magi, astrologers who followed their scientific calculations to the child, Philip and Andrew who knew that the mathematics of two fish and a starving crowd were not going to divide well, Mary and Martha who knew that their brother’s death was the last word, and Thomas who knew the same after he watched Jesus crucified.

In each of these objections, I thankfully hear my own. So much so, that it would appear faith is not a turning of one’s back on the fixed laws of nature or physics or mathematics, but rather, a recognition in the very face of these laws we know and trust that something from outside the law must have reached into the picture. I find each of these scenes both remarkable and reasonable precisely because of the reactions of men and women with a grasp of natural law and the same objections that any of us would have offered had we been present. It would be blind faith indeed if we were receiving a story that wanted us at the onset to fully reject the laws of natural reasoning in replacement of something else. What we receive instead is a story filled with undeniable indications which suggest that something—or Someone—has startlingly stepped into the picture.

/by

On the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes

bernadette-incorruptI guess you could say this is a “Wayback Wednesday” post, on today’s Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. For whatever reason, an article I wrote a few years ago on Lourdes, Saint Bernadette (and her incorrupt body), and on the miraculous in general drew a lot of interest, and still does today. People remain utterly fascinated by the phenomenon at Lourdes, and, I think, by the possibility of the miraculous in general:

This February, we celebrate the feast day of a saint whose life was touched by myriad miracles, all of which give stunning testimony to Catholic truth. Saint Bernadette Soubirous (1844-1879), only 14, encountered the Blessed Virgin Mary in the grotto of Lourdes in the South of France on February 11, 1858, though at the time, she did not know who it was.

Bernadette was a poor peasant girl, not afforded formal religious education. When, on March 25, “the Lady” (as Bernadette called her) told her in the local dialect, “Que soy era Immaculada Conceptiou” (“I am the Immaculate Conception”), her pastor could hardly believe it. Four years earlier, the doctrine of Mary’s Immaculate Conception had been proclaimed by the Vatican. But Bernadette would have had no way of knowing, less understanding, what this meant.

Another impressive confirmation of God’s action at Lourdes was the miraculous stream unearthed by Bernadette at Mary’s behest. These waters have been the source of innumerable healings over the years, inexplicable by natural means.

You can read the rest of the article here: http://bit.ly/1uG9V06

What do you think about the Lourdes phenomenon, and about the possibility of miracles?

/by

Sacramental Healing

Jesus healing a blind manToday’s Gospel reading at Mass cites a unique incident from Jesus’ career: a two-stage healing.

When Jesus and his disciples arrived at Bethsaida,
people brought to him a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him.
He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village.
Putting spittle on his eyes he laid his hands on the man and asked,
“Do you see anything?”
Looking up the man replied, “I see people looking like trees and walking.”
Then he laid hands on the man’s eyes a second time and he saw clearly;
his sight was restored and he could see everything distinctly.
Then he sent him home and said, “Do not even go into the village” (Mark 8:22-26).

There are two things we can learn from this:

1. This is more historical proof of Jesus as a wonderworker. No Christian is going to make up an account about Jesus’ healing not quite “working” the first time, especially when so many of Jesus’ miraculous deeds (healings, exorcisms, nature miracles) happen instantaneously, at his word, even from a distance. This smacks of authenticity and eyewitness detail. Furthermore, this is more evidence that the evangelists didn’t feel free to “invent” incidents from the life of Christ, or feel free to “edit” accounts of Jesus’ life that were passed on by tradents and collected into the Gospels. If that were the case, this account would have almost certainly been “cleaned up” by the evangelist, with the healing working at once.

2. This is a “sacramental” healing. Jesus didn’t need to take spittle and use that to heal the man’s vision. But the fact that he did shows that God can use matter to communicate his grace – that is, his very life. This should be obvious when considering the Incarnation itself. The body of Christ communicated, and was the very vehicle, of the life of God on earth. And Christ continues to communicate his healing powers through the sacraments of the Catholic Church. The sacraments each take ordinary, physical materials – water, bread, wine, oil – and, in the case of marriage, the very bodies of the spouses themselves – to communicate the life-giving power of God. The Eucharist, of course, is the greatest of all sacraments, because, as Saint Thomas aquinas once said, in all the other sacraments, the power of Christ is present; in the Eucharist, Christ himself is present – Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity.

The sacraments of the Church bring the power to see life and eternity – all of reality – in ever clearer and sharper focus. Like the blind man, we don’t always see this clearly at first, even after receiving the sacraments. We have to go “outside the village” and never go back in, like Christ led out the blind man – we must leave our old ways behind. And, as Saint Jerome taught, the “spittle” of Christ, which represents his word, his teaching, must be applied to our lives – that is, obeyed – for the healing of our lives to be complete.

/2 Comments/by