Tuesday, March 19, AD 2024 3:23am

Pentecost and Other Miracles

 

So ever the king had a custom that at the feast of Pentecost in especial, afore other feasts in the year, he would not go that day to meat until he had heard or seen of a great marvel.

 

When my children were small as the family drove to Mass, I offered the kids a dollar for the first one to sight the Questing Beast, tying the Arthurian legend with the great feast.  When my son died on Pentecost two years ago, the bright spot on that bleak Pentecost was when my bride gave voice to a thought that had occurred to me:  Larry has gone after the Questing Beast.

The birthday of the Church, inaugurated with the great miracles of the coming of the Holy Spirit and the tongues of fire underlining the universal nature of the mission of the Church, at Pentecost has always reminded me that since the coming of Christ we live in an age of miracles, if we only have the wit and the faith to see them.  I know this from personal experience:   since the death of Larry I have received a small miracle to assure me of his love from the other side.

We live in a time in the West of great cultural pessimism and spiritual sickness that has infected the Church.  We forget that over 2000 turbulent years Christ has never failed us and that we Christians should never give way to despair.  We do battle with Principalities and Powers, and not merely misguided or evil fellow men, and Christ is ever ready to aid us if we call on Him in humility and love.

Thirty two years ago Solzhenitsyn had this striking passage in his Templeton Address:

More than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.

Since then I have spent well-nigh fifty years working on the history of our Revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.

God is not a matter of platitudes and boring sermons.  He is The Way, The Truth and The Life.  Our hearts have grown cold and our faith weak and that is why the enemies of Christ today can taste victory.  More fools they!  God will be victorious if all of humanity were to turn against Him.  Now is a time for repentance and a renewed taking up of the Great Commission.  It is a time to convert the whole world to Christ, starting with ourselves.  Let this Pentecost in the year 2015 mark a new rebirth of the Church.  Miracles will aid us if we request them, and if we aid them with our action and faith, faith in God in a human soul always being the greatest of miracles.

 

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Philip
Philip
Sunday, May 24, AD 2015 4:00am

Great birthday gift to our Church, your eloquent words, Mr. McClarey.

I’m reminded of the fair warning’s given to us at times when men were walking away from God. These warnings are miracle’s as well.

Our Lady of Lasalette.
Our Lady of Fatima.
Our Lady of Akita.

The multitudes of Gods holy ones that serve Him in Heaven rejoice beyond imagination when one sinner repents, and your call to conversions is THE icing on this pentecost cake 2015.

All for Gods glory.

Patricia
Patricia
Sunday, May 24, AD 2015 7:38am

The Shroud of Turin: studied by scientists who determine that this cloth bears more than science alone can explain. Jesus’ blood type and His human appearance!
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Diego’s tilma from Guadalupe is another miracle. The springtime regrowth – the same plant can do infinitely different kinds of blooms depending on care and environmental conditions, the watchful eyes of nesting birds, migrations, all the movement of the elements, day and night, creation in general, He did it all for us. The horrors are what man under powers or principalities do to beauty and goodness.
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The spiritual sickness is what I pray that the Church will clearly address when speaking of the ‘poor’ – so that men will connect the dots; Solzhenitsyn did so, the above haunting lyrics do so. The illness has Divinely inspired cure in black and white.
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The “omg” slang is something for the users to ponder, as if a starting point of return – as if frozen on speaking the “g” and hearing the Word.

‘Up with the good, and down with the bad’ – a phrase of my mother’s when she still used staircases.

Pinky
Pinky
Sunday, May 24, AD 2015 4:53pm

The blood of the martyrs is another miracle. Yesterday, Archbishop Oscar Romero was beatified. I have little patience for a certain crowd who was attracted to his story, but I rejoice at the knowledge that he attained Heaven.

We are always prone to forgetting God. Chesterton wrote that we may still be in Eden, and that it is only our eyes that have changed. He also wrote that the Church always seems to be dying, but was founded by One who could defeat death. The good news is still good, and it is still new. It’s right that we take (at least) one day a year to admire this brand-new 2000-year-old Church.

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