Yesterday’s Gospel had the Pharisees asking Our Lord for a sign to prove that He was God. That Gospel ends noting that He and the Apostles left them and got into a boat. Then, in today’s Gospel, we hear that the Apostles “had forgotten to bring bread.” They must have been showing their disappointment and angst at the situation. Reason would stand that without enough bread, they’d go hungry. I say they must have been caught up thinking with their reason but not also their faith, because Jesus suddenly admonishes them. He has them recall miracles, miracles that Our Lord did and they saw. They had forgotten already. Their reason was not yet habitually seeing the faith that God become man was standing right there with them in the boat.
Jesus Heals the Man Born Blind
How does Jesus admonish them? By telling them to guard themselves against the leaven of the Pharisees or Caesar. It is that leaven which forces us to think only on the plane of the world. To forget the miracles of Christ. To forget that the power to convert St. Paul, or Constantine, or Augustine is right with us. We are His people. He is Our God. So, even when we are tempted to see no reasonable solution, no silver bullet, to a problem, we are to allow our faith in Him, Who can right wrong, Who can make miracles, to inform our reason with more possibility than Pharisees or Caesar can imagine.
Tomorrow’s Gospel will be Jesus miraculously healing the sight of a blind man. I hope He heals the sight of our reason, too. I am reading a lot of excellent analysis of the problems caused by the contraception mandate part of Obamacare, but I’m not hearing anyone who I’d expect to inspire the faithful with a plea for miracles say so. After last Friday, isn’t it clear that our government, President Obama, and Secretary Sebelius aren’t responding to reason? Isn’t it clear that we need a miracle?
No, much like the Apostles, after watching the Pharisees demand a miracle of Jesus, and seeing that they didn’t have enough food in the boat, we today are rallying worldy power to fight this error. Don’t get me wrong — we should make the clearest and most convincing arguments for the truth. Professor Rice’s article posted here on the WFF blog is excellent. Likewise, the lawsuits, legislative activity, and other statements made in public are right and warranted. Instead, I’m saying that in addition to those, shouldn’t there be a call from the Church to call these lost sheep to the home of right reason? To call them to the Truth?
St. Paul's Conversion
St. Paul wasn’t converted because he read the latest and greatest exegetical study of Patristics, bought a timeline, and attended a talk. It was because he encountered Christ in a miraculous way. Why isn’t anybody calling on us to pray for something like that to happen here? I’m doing it, but who am I? Isn’t this the matter of our shepherds?
Pray for a miracle. Pray for at least two: One, that Sebelius recover the faith she was given at her baptism and confirmation. The other should be for our President, who wants, by his own words, to be a devoted Christian. This mandate he has advanced as part of the Affordable Care Act, forces people to pay for drugs that cause death. As John Paul II wrote in Evangelium Vitae, at paragraph 89, causing death is not health care. Pray that Christ dispel the error clouding this mandate with a miracle.
Why don’t we have clear and precise prayer intentions at Mass that ask for such a miracle? Instead of the vague, misty eyed, and frankly ambiguous prayer intentions, why isn’t there one that is clear. For instance, “That the Lord Jesus dispel the demons spreading clouds of error that are causing our government to impose us to pay for abortion causing drugs, we pray to the Lord.” Or, “That the Blessed Mother will intercede for us at the hand of her Son to cast down the demons sowing error in our leaders, and show His mercy to them that they would know the truth, we pray to the Lord.” Why don’t we have prayers like that?
We pray before a bishop blesses us that Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made the heavens and the earth. We’ve all heard those words. But, as St. Paul will tell us in tomorrow’s epistle, we need to be doers of the word, not just hearers. “Doing,” as Jesus admonished the Apostles, is having faith that He can and will do miracles. Do you believe it? Do you believe Our Lord could cause a miraculous conversion? Act like it!
Our God Can Make Them See
This article, We Need a Miracle to Solve the Obamacare Mandates is a post from The Bellarmine Forum.
https://bellarmineforum.org/we-need-a-miracle-to-solve-the-obamacare-mandates/
Do not repost the entire article without written permission. Reasonable excerpts may be reposted so long as it is linked to this page.