There is nothing more appealing to me than a good – that is, a GOOD – miracle movie as taken from fact. This was not always the case. In my mind, they swirl about me in memories in black and white, with too much acting and too little action-hero action, but that was when I was a child and did not understand. Why would I? The world was then an odd place of miracles and God-knows-what, so who cared about another miracle movie which was not as cool as John Wayne once again winning a war.
Today it is far different. As much as I would like to, I do not readily believe in miracles, let alone that life is a miracle. No, I am too grown-up and world-weary to be snookered by the likes of Rev. Jim Jones in Kool-Aid, Guiana, or his more benign movie version, Elmer Gantry. But, yes, I would like to believe, because I have good reason to: it is a world of miracles. It is clear to me that I have just closed my mind to this.
That is why I like miracle movies, and with some research, have come to appreciate them so much more. They depict the real things, witnessed by hundreds if not by thousands, and there is no reasonable position to take against their reality. And if they are real, so can be many other things, including God himself.
So it was that on a sultry, too-hot day a weekend or two ago, I recalled that a new Fatima movie had been recommended to me by several people. We looked for it on Netflix, and there we had it – popcorn-time in a house with air conditioning whose constant whir would conceal any calls from outside to “get to work now, the weeds are taking over!” Ah, such joy.
The movie is called, simply, “Fatima” (2020), concerning the well-known miracle at Fatima, Portugal in 1917, where tens of thousands, including Marxist skeptics, saw and, stunningly, believed, at the ‘Miracle of the Sun.’ There was much more to Fatima than that solo climax, and in this take, the movie moves us through the events of the three children and their visions through the probing of a professor in the 1980’s or 90’s as he interviews the most famous of the children, the by-then very old nun by the name of Sister Lucia (now Saint Lucia).
The professor’s presence is a good device. He voices many of the skeptics’ criticism (in hind-sight), including the misplacement of the stigmata – the blood wounds of the crucifixion – that St. Lucia was brought to bear. Why, asks the professor, are the stigmata on the palms of the hands, when it is well-known that the nails were put through the wrists so that the body would not tear lose? Answers Lucia calmly, “Professor, I do not pretend to understand everything. I can only tell you what I know has happened.”
With that simple statement, she puts the problem to the fore: what happened really happened, even if it cannot be explained. What we are talking about is a reality that is different from normal reality, but every bit as real – if not, as all the visionaries say, more real than real. If those like the professor do not wish to believe, that is their business.
That, in a nutshell, is also the business of the quotidian world, which frames the problem that we as a species have had since well-before formal history (if paleo-archeology can tell us anything). What we see with the meeting of the professor and St Lucia is the meeting of our daily world with the greater world highlighted by miracles. In this, two problems are brought forth: one, that we cannot see the miracle of daily life, and two, that when life is undeniably brought into the realm of extra-ordinary miracles, that some, perhaps most, people will simply not believe in them anyway, no matter what.
At the time of the death of Christ, the Holy of Holies –where God’s presence was supposed to reside, and did at the time of the Ark of the Covenant – was traditionally separated from the rest of the Temple in Jerusalem by a large, thick curtain. Only a very specific Jewish priest could pass through that curtain, and only at a certain time of year after strenuous preparation. Otherwise, to stand in the presence of the Lord meant instant death (see “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Hey, it had to have some truth in it). After Jesus gave up his last breath, it was reported that a great earthquake shook the city and caused the curtain to tear in two. The idea, for the disciples and later Christians, was that through Christ, the separation of Man from God could now be bridged by all. The curtain was no longer impenetrable.
It was this that is exemplified in the movie. The curtain has been removed (temporarily) through the miracles, but still we refuse to see. Special miracles, ones meant to defy natural laws, have been and are sent to us to let us know that the door, or curtain, to God lays open if we only allow ourselves to see. The professor has all the information on the miracles, including the Miracle of the Sun, as well as the most famous among the children visionaries at his disposable. In her he finds a woman that is not only sane, but especially clear-headed, even brilliant, despite (or especially because of) her lack of formal learning. She is sincere, lives in cloistered poverty, and has absolutely nothing to gain through her telling of her experiences. Yet he still remains not only skeptical, but unmovable. He will never believe.
So it was that Doubting Thomas became a lesson to us all, because he, after seeing the miracles of Jesus in his life and having lived with his fellow disciple for three years, would not trust that they had seen the resurrected Jesus. At some point, this episode of the Gospels tells us, we must rely on the observations of others. Most of us will not experience extraordinary miracles just as most of us will not fly to the moon, but at some point, we must give in to trust. When this trust regards the supernatural, our trust becomes what is called ‘faith.’
With that, with this trust, the whole world could change, and I speak not only of Christian themes. What we have here is something universal: the presence of a veil in our minds that keeps almost all of us from seeing not only special miracles, but the miracle of daily existence. As Wordsworth reminds us in his poem “Intimations of Immortality”, we are born with the curtain partially drawn, but with the development of mature thinking, this curtain is almost completely closed. The Apostles, we are told, were to have minds as open as children even as they were to be wise as serpents – that is, they were not to be fooled by the Elmer Gantries of the world, but still remain open to the infinite wonders of God in all creation.
So it is in part why supernatural miracles still occur to this day – and for Catholics, they are occurring more and more frequently by the decade. This is a good thing, in that we understand that the God of All is still interested in us, but also a bad thing, as it highlights our need for miracles because of our increasing resistance to the miracle of life. We are desperately in need of innocent openness to believe and are being offered ever greater opportunities to do so, even as we increasingly refuse to believe. If it was so hard for Thomas, how much more for us?
When I was in the Marian miracle town of Medjugorje in Bosnia-Herzegovina, I not only witnessed minor miracles, such as rainbows around the sun and the sudden burst of the scent of roses, but was also given a locution – a verbal message – that seemed to come from Christ himself on the night before we left for America. In this, I heard, “It is so hard for you to believe now. How much harder when you are gone?” Which could have ended, “How much harder when I (Jesus) am gone?,” a message clearly directed to the doubting Thomas within me. Like Agent Mulder of “The X Files,” I want to believe, but like his skeptical partner Scully, I cannot ever fully do so, regardless. The miracles come again and again, as they come to us all in one way or another throughout our lives, but still we are trapped behind the curtain. For Christians, the way through the door is belief in Christ; for all of us, the way starts with a belief in a greater reality beyond the curtain.
We all had this vision once. We can all have it again. For me the prodding to reopen my eyes often comes through miracles, the more the merrier. The more I need, however, the less merry it shows that I really am, but I am willing to concede my spiritual poverty in order to gain it back.
Close the curtains, then, and turn on the miracle movies, so that someday the curtain may be opened and the need to see them will vanish in the light.
There is nothing more appealing to me than a good – that is, a GOOD – miracle movie as taken from fact. This was not always the case. In my mind, they swirl about me in memories in black and white, with too much acting and too little action-hero action, but that was when I was a child and did not understand. Why would I? The world was then an odd place of miracles and God-knows-what, so who cared about another miracle movie which was not as cool as John Wayne once again winning a war.
Today it is far different. As much as I would like to, I do not readily believe in miracles, let alone that life is a miracle. No, I am too grown-up and world-weary to be snookered by the likes of Rev. Jim Jones in Kool-Aid, Guiana, or his more benign movie version, Elmer Gantry. But, yes, I would like to believe, because I have good reason to: it is a world of miracles. It is clear to me that I have just closed my mind to this.
That is why I like miracle movies, and with some research, have come to appreciate them so much more. They depict the real things, witnessed by hundreds if not by thousands, and there is no reasonable position to take against their reality. And if they are real, so can be many other things, including God himself.
So it was that on a sultry, too-hot day a weekend or two ago, I recalled that a new Fatima movie had been recommended to me by several people. We looked for it on Netflix, and there we had it – popcorn-time in a house with air conditioning whose constant whir would conceal any calls from outside to “get to work now, the weeds are taking over!” Ah, such joy.
The movie is called, simply, “Fatima” (2020), concerning the well-known miracle at Fatima, Portugal in 1917, where tens of thousands, including Marxist skeptics, saw and, stunningly, believed, at the ‘Miracle of the Sun.’ There was much more to Fatima than that solo climax, and in this take, the movie moves us through the events of the three children and their visions through the probing of a professor in the 1980’s or 90’s as he interviews the most famous of the children, the by-then very old nun by the name of Sister Lucia (now Saint Lucia).
The professor’s presence is a good device. He voices many of the skeptics’ criticism (in hind-sight), including the misplacement of the stigmata – the blood wounds of the crucifixion – that St. Lucia was brought to bear. Why, asks the professor, are the stigmata on the palms of the hands, when it is well-known that the nails were put through the wrists so that the body would not tear lose? Answers Lucia calmly, “Professor, I do not pretend to understand everything. I can only tell you what I know has happened.”
With that simple statement, she puts the problem to the fore: what happened really happened, even if it cannot be explained. What we are talking about is a reality that is different from normal reality, but every bit as real – if not, as all the visionaries say, more real than real. If those like the professor do not wish to believe, that is their business.
That, in a nutshell, is also the business of the quotidian world, which frames the problem that we as a species have had since well-before formal history (if paleo-archeology can tell us anything). What we see with the meeting of the professor and St Lucia is the meeting of our daily world with the greater world highlighted by miracles. In this, two problems are brought forth: one, that we cannot see the miracle of daily life, and two, that when life is undeniably brought into the realm of extra-ordinary miracles, that some, perhaps most, people will simply not believe in them anyway, no matter what.
At the time of the death of Christ, the Holy of Holies –where God’s presence was supposed to reside, and did at the time of the Ark of the Covenant – was traditionally separated from the rest of the Temple in Jerusalem by a large, thick curtain. Only a very specific Jewish priest could pass through that curtain, and only at a certain time of year after strenuous preparation. Otherwise, to stand in the presence of the Lord meant instant death (see “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Hey, it had to have some truth in it). After Jesus gave up his last breath, it was reported that a great earthquake shook the city and caused the curtain to tear in two. The idea, for the disciples and later Christians, was that through Christ, the separation of Man from God could now be bridged by all. The curtain was no longer impenetrable.
It was this that is exemplified in the movie. The curtain has been removed (temporarily) through the miracles, but still we refuse to see. Special miracles, ones meant to defy natural laws, have been and are sent to us to let us know that the door, or curtain, to God lays open if we only allow ourselves to see. The professor has all the information on the miracles, including the Miracle of the Sun, as well as the most famous among the children visionaries at his disposable. In her he finds a woman that is not only sane, but especially clear-headed, even brilliant, despite (or especially because of) her lack of formal learning. She is sincere, lives in cloistered poverty, and has absolutely nothing to gain through her telling of her experiences. Yet he still remains not only skeptical, but unmovable. He will never believe.
So it was that Doubting Thomas became a lesson to us all, because he, after seeing the miracles of Jesus in his life and having lived with his fellow disciple for three years, would not trust that they had seen the resurrected Jesus. At some point, this episode of the Gospels tells us, we must rely on the observations of others. Most of us will not experience extraordinary miracles just as most of us will not fly to the moon, but at some point, we must give in to trust. When this trust regards the supernatural, our trust becomes what is called ‘faith.’
With that, with this trust, the whole world could change, and I speak not only of Christian themes. What we have here is something universal: the presence of a veil in our minds that keeps almost all of us from seeing not only special miracles, but the miracle of daily existence. As Wordsworth reminds us in his poem “Intimations of Immortality”, we are born with the curtain partially drawn, but with the development of mature thinking, this curtain is almost completely closed. The Apostles, we are told, were to have minds as open as children even as they were to be wise as serpents – that is, they were not to be fooled by the Elmer Gantries of the world, but still remain open to the infinite wonders of God in all creation.
So it is in part why supernatural miracles still occur to this day – and for Catholics, they are occurring more and more frequently by the decade. This is a good thing, in that we understand that the God of All is still interested in us, but also a bad thing, as it highlights our need for miracles because of our increasing resistance to the miracle of life. We are desperately in need of innocent openness to believe and are being offered ever greater opportunities to do so, even as we increasingly refuse to believe. If it was so hard for Thomas, how much more for us?
When I was in the Marian miracle town of Medjugorje in Bosnia-Herzegovina, I not only witnessed minor miracles, such as rainbows around the sun and the sudden burst of the scent of roses, but was also given a locution – a verbal message – that seemed to come from Christ himself on the night before we left for America. In this, I heard, “It is so hard for you to believe now. How much harder when you are gone?” Which could have ended, “How much harder when I (Jesus) am gone?,” a message clearly directed to the doubting Thomas within me. Like Agent Mulder of “The X Files,” I want to believe, but like his skeptical partner Scully, I cannot ever fully do so, regardless. The miracles come again and again, as they come to us all in one way or another throughout our lives, but still we are trapped behind the curtain. For Christians, the way through the door is belief in Christ; for all of us, the way starts with a belief in a greater reality beyond the curtain.
We all had this vision once. We can all have it again. For me the prodding to reopen my eyes often comes through miracles, the more the merrier. The more I need, however, the less merry it shows that I really am, but I am willing to concede my spiritual poverty in order to gain it back.
Close the curtains, then, and turn on the miracle movies, so that someday the curtain may be opened and the need to see them will vanish in the light.
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