For a good part of the United States, the middle of March brings with it the NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament. The halls of Saint Ignatius are no different: the boys have completed their brackets and the arguments about which teams were unfairly snubbed and who will advance to the Final Four have begun. Back when I was teaching in Loyola Hall, I was amazed at the dramatic rise in what could only have been urinary tract infections among my students this time of year, as huge numbers of them would be in constant need of the restroom (coincidentally located by the senior lounge and its TV) during afternoon classes.
They don’t call it “March Madness” for nothing.
There is another tournament beginning alongside the NCAAs at the corner of 30th and Lorain: “Miracle Madness.” The brainchild of Tom Healey ’77 sometime during the “lather-rinse” cycle of his morning shower, MIracle Madness has become a favorite part of the Paschal Mystery class seniors are required to take during their second semester. It is a unit wherein students are assigned one of the miracles Jesus performed during His life and their job is to convince the class why that sign had a greater importance to His message and ministry than the others He did.
I’ve been able to sit on on the lesson: it is a wonder to behold second-semester seniors debating whether the healing of the centurion’s servant (Mt. 8:5-13) tops Jesus’s walking on water (Mt. 14:22-33) or whether His calming of the storm at sea (Mk. 4:35-41) bests the healing of the woman with a hemorrhage (Lk. 8:43-48). What is even more impressive (and inspiring) is that they argue with the ferocity usually only seen when young men “discuss” the greatest basketball player or pro football team of all time.
As they make their cases, the boys uncover the purpose behind these extraordinary acts of Jesus: to strengthen the faith of His followers and to remind them that God is present here and now in our lives. As the Catechism teaches:
Jesus accompanies His words with many ‘mighty works and wonders and signs,’ which manifest that the kingdom is present in Him and attest that He was the promised Messiah…The signs worked by Jesus attest that the Father has sent Him. They invite belief in Him. To those who turn to Him in faith, He grants what they ask. So miracles strengthen faith in the One who does His Father’s works; they bear witness that He is the Son of God. (CCC 547-548)
We struggle with the reality of the miraculous. If the crucifixion was “...a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” (1 Cor. 1:23), miracles are “silliness” for many moderns. Even those of us who are believers often downplay their reality and therefore are unable to recognize them when they occur.
In some quarters during the ‘70s and ‘80s (and even today), it was fashionable to “explain away” the biblical miracles of Jesus by offering natural “solutions” to the accounts. For example, we were told the description of Jesus feeding the 5000 with two loaves of bread and five fish wasn’t really about the Son of God, (the One through Whom “all things came to be” [John 1:3]) transcending the laws of nature He established; rather, it was the “miracle” of people being moved by the generosity of a young boy, overcoming their selfishness, and sharing what food they had been hoarding with each other.
Such a reading might make the account more palatable to modern, post-Enlightenment readers. If that was what had gone down, it would certainly have been impressive—even exceptional—but it would most most decidedly not have been a miracle. Similarly, sunsets, the birth of babies, and the laughter of children are not miracles either. Sacramental signs of God’s providential love, to be sure, but not miracles. Miracles, the Catechism in its glossary reminds us, are “signs or wonders…which can only be attributed to divine power.”
Nonetheless, G.K. Chesterton once remarked that “the most incredible thing about miracles is that they happen.” They do. Rarely. But they happen.
Our Catholic Christian Faith is founded on one. The one not debated in the Miracle Madness bracket: the most important one, the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead. So important was the Resurrection (“...[I]f Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain [1 Cor. 15:17]), that Jesus, the Teacher, par excellence, performed His earlier wonders—from changing water into wine (Jn. 2:1-11) through raising Lazarus from the dead (Jn. 11:1-44) to prepare His disciples for it.
The same time the senior teachers are discussing miracles with their charges, we teachers of juniors are unpacking the sacrament of Confirmation and the Gifts of the Holy Spirit. Looking at Pentecost (the proto-“Confirmation”), we remind the students that the gifts of the Spirit empowered the Apostles to quite literally change history. In our Confirmations, we receive the exact same gifts and therefore are empowered to achieve what the Apostles did. We just have to have their faith.
And when it comes to seeing the miraculous in our world, we need to have their vision.
Perhaps this is what Jesus was doing when He gave sight to so many blind people.
A.M.D.G. / B.V.M.H.