Thursday of the First Week in Lent
Our childhood imaginations open onto a world utterly different than this one, a world in which animals talk and people fly, a world of magic rings and lanterns you rub and get your wish. How obvious all this is to children! And how totally it all disappears as we lose faith in Santa Claus and the power of fairy dust –
And yet, we live in a world of “miracles.” We call them “scientific miracles” to be sure. But though most animals at least do not yet talk, people do fly, and much of the world –like the computer on which I am writing these words – would appear as nothing less than magical to our not so remote ancestors. And yet, and yet. We get used to this magic. I was blessed to fly across the Atlantic recently, but was shocked to find that in broad daylight, with the miracle of the world underneath us, the vast majority of windows were shut against that light so the passengers could keep watching the moving lights on the screens before them. How often does one get to see the mountains and snowfields of Greenland? The miracle of flight! Boring. It’s all boring, I suppose. We need more action on the screens before us! Miracles become banal –
But not true miracles, and not to the child’s heart, and it is only children that inherit the Kingdom of Heaven (Mt. 18:3). Miracles do happen, the saints speak to us. Not modern miracles, not medical miracles, not washday miracles: the children of the kingdom hope for miracles like perfect love, fidelity through death, the Kingdom of Heaven. A loving Father who forgives us all our wickedness through the wounds of His Son, our Brother. The hope of an eternity in perfect love. Let us ask and seek and knock until we are heard, and smilingly float above poor earth and its spurious miracles.