Sudden illumination

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Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe

John 4: 48


Everyone wants a miracle. How much easier our faith would be if we could only be shown a wondrous sign, to have our prayers answered and know beyond doubt that what we want to believe is true. Jesus shows that he understands this instinctively, when he meets the official whose son is dying. ‘Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe,’ he tells him.

When I was about 12, I went on a school trip to the south of France, and we visited Lourdes. We were taken to the cave where Our Lady appeared to Bernadette. A priest told us about all the people who had been miraculously cured by the healing waters of the spring that Bernadette had found there. So being a curious, perhaps slightly cynical 12-year-old, I asked him how many people had been cured. And when his reply came, that only the Lord knows, I remember feeling extremely disappointed! (Wikipedia actually says that last year, the 70th miracle healing was officially recognized by the Church. From the point of view of my faith, was it a good thing that Wikipedia didn’t exist at the time??) 

The second miracle in Cana is, among other things, a story about someone only fully understanding the meaning of an event after it has taken place. The father only discovers that his dying son is in fact recovering the day after he meets Jesus, and that the child’s recovery started at the moment when Jesus told him he would live.

In his poem the Four Quartets, TS Elliot describes moments of happiness as ‘sudden illumination.’ Many such moments pass us by because we fail to recognise them. “We had the experience but missed the meaning.” I supposed I missed the meaning of Lourdes when I was there. You’re probably not going to witness someone being magically healed, although you may see extraordinary devotion. But things do happen in our lives that we don’t fully understand at the time, which may come to have miraculous meanings, if we can only find them.


A reflection written by Simon Martelli, a parishioner of St Augustine's Hammersmith, London


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