The Humor of Miracles

The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, Rembrandt (1632)
The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, Rembrandt (1632)
The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, Rembrandt (1632)

When reading about the time Jesus awoke from His nap, calmed the stormy sea, and chastened His disciples for being afraid (Matthew 8:23-27), one just has to suppress a grin. Picture the scene: the disciples mortally alarmed in their storm-tossed craft; God in human form slumbering peacefully astern (maybe snoring, even), and then the Creator of the universe wakes up from His forty winks and casually sorts everything out, grumbling at His creatures for their understandable yet ultimately groundless fear.

One sees this divine humor again and again throughout the accounts of miracles down the ages. A favorite saint of mine is Saint Gregory Thaumaturgus, i.e. the Wonder-Worker, patron against earthquakes.

During the construction of a church for his growing flock, the builders ran into a problem with a huge buried boulder. Gregory ordered the rock to move out of the way of his church; it did.

When returning from the wilderness, Gregory had to seek shelter from a sudden and violent storm. The only structure nearby was a pagan temple. Gregory made the sign of the cross to purify the place, then spent the night there in prayer, waiting out the storm. The next morning, the pagan priest arrived to receive his morning oracles. The demons who had been masquerading as pagan gods advised him that they could not stay in the purified temple or near the holy man. The priest threatened to summon the anti-Christian authorities to arrest Gregory. The bishop wrote out a note reading, “Gregory to Satan: Enter.” With this “permission slip” in hand, the pagan priest was able to summon his demons again.

The same pagan priest, realizing that his gods unquestioningly obeyed Gregory’s single God, found the bishop and asked how it was done. Gregory taught the priest the truth of Christianity. Lacking faith, the priest asked for a sign of God’s power. Gregory ordered a large rock to move from one place to another; it did. The priest immediately abandoned his old life, and eventually became a deacon under bishop Gregory. This ordering about of boulders led to Gregory’s patronage against earthquakes.

(CatholicSaints.Info: notes about your extended family in heaven)

Here’s a story from Asia:

Condemned on 26 July 1644, and executed the next day, Andrew was the first Vietnamese martyr.

Father de Rhodes retrieved the body and shipped it to Macao for burial. When the transport ship was attacked by pirates, it struck a rock, and a hole was torn in the hull. A large stone rolled into the gap, held out the water, and the ship was able to deliver its cargo.

(“Blessed Andrew the Catechist”, CatholicSaints.Info)

And a recent one:

During his coma, he remembers waking up in the house he shared with his friends, and hearing someone downstairs. That was odd; he says he’s always the first one up. He investigated, and in the living room he found a young man he didn’t know.

Who are you?”

I’m George, your new roommate.”

That can’t be. I already have two roommates.”

They aren’t around anymore.”

Oh.”

He then spent a long timeless day with George. An ardent soccer player who hates staying indoors, Kevin kept trying to leave the house but George wouldn’t let him go. They fought about it, as if they were brothers, but George was adamant. He encouraged him to be patient. Kevin remembers passing the time by doing schoolwork—which he says would surprise anyone who knew him before his accident—and sitting on the couch with George playing a soccer video game called “FIFA.”

Eventually he awoke in the hospital.

(Will Duquette, “Stunning story: Miraculous recovery attributed to Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati”, Aleteia)

Who in high Heaven would think of sticking the soul of a comatose patient in an ethereal house with Pier Giorgio Frassati while healing his broken body?

What kind of a God allows a ship bearing the body of His saint to be attacked by pirates, then plugs the resultant hole with a boulder? Why not preserve the ship from the pirates in the first place?

Jesus in His divine nature surely knew His disciples were panicking while He was deep in slumber, but He waited until the right moment to display His dominion over the winds and the waves.

God has perfect timing. Comic timing, even. But always perfect. Like Gandalf, He is never late, nor early; He arrives precisely when He means to.

Looking back over my life, I could have avoided a lot of worry, heartache, and stress if I had simply trusted in Him completely.

One time I did trust God completely was when my father had a stroke when I was 10. The nurse didn’t want to let me into the ICU because she was afraid I was too little to handle seeing my father in such a sorry state. But throughout his struggle for recovery, I was impervious to worry, just knowing somehow that he would be fine. (My mother had to bear the brunt of the stress.)

God’s ways are not our ways; He teaches us something each time He makes us wait, each time He allows something calamitous to occur. Through everything, He is there with us, and He will be there in the end.

God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn’t.
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

And as I close this chaotic volume I open again the strange small book from which all Christianity came; and I am again haunted by a kind of confirmation. The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall. His pathos was natural, almost casual. The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed His tears; He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native city. Yet He concealed something. Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger. He never restrained His anger. He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple, and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell. Yet He restrained something. I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness. There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.
― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Jean Elizabeth Seah

Jean Elizabeth Seah

Jean Elizabeth Seah is a Singaporean living in Australia. She has had several adventures with Our Lord and Our Lady, including running away to join a convent after university. The journey is tough and the path ahead is foggy, but she knows that as long as you hold firmly onto Our Lady’s hand, you’ll make it through! She has also written at Aleteia, MercatorNet and The Daily Declaration.

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