When I was a young kid, I remember asking my dad one day, “Why does it seem that there are no more miracles?” (Or something to that effect.) At the time I was thinking about all the great miracles that I had heard from the Bible. As a child, they did not seem to happen anymore and I was a bit puzzled by that. Unfortunately for the story, I do not remember how my father answered in reply. But this question comes back to me every few years, especially when I think of the parable of faith the size of a mustard seed in Matthew 17:20, or when we are told to, “ask and we will receive” earlier in Matthew 7:7-11. So I wonder sometimes, where are all the miracles?

A few years ago, during my senior year of college, I was walking to the Newman House (the place of campus ministries at Virginia Tech). While walking, my mind was moved to marvel at the wonderful gift of the Eucharist to the Church. What struck me, was not the gift of the Eucharist itself, but the fact that in the Church, every single day, in every place where the Holy Sacrifice is offered, a miracle happens. The miracle of bread and wine transformed into the body, blood, soul, and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. My mind was moved to marvel how, not only do we have miracles, but they are ordinary. Now I do not say ordinary to degrade the mystery or make the Holy Sacrament common. Instead, I noticed that we as a Church have the miracle that is the Eucharist (and really every sacrament) that happens regularly in addition to those extra-ordinary miracles beyond the sacraments (which we normally only consider when think about miracles).

This all came to mind once more during Mass today since the Gospel reading for yesterday and today is the bread of life discourse in John 6. The thing is, the understanding received in college does not fully answer why there are not miracles anymore. Or more directly the question really is, why do not we notice miracles anymore? It is an interesting question and some friends at the seminary and I were talking about that a couple of weeks ago. During our discussion there were two reasons that I thought of. The first has to do with our belief in the Eucharist and the second is our time spent in prayer.

There have been reports on belief in the true presence in the Eucharist and how a large percentage of American Catholics don’t believe in it. The Eucharist though is the most frequent miracle that we experience in our life. To not believe it to be Christ removes all these moments for us to recognize the great miracle before us. So why do some of us not see miracles? Because we are blind to the one most clear to us. But what about those that do believe? Well, as I said, it is an ordinary miracle; every day the miracle of the Eucharist happens. We can so easily fall into complacency and think that the confecting of the sacrament is a mechanical process. The priest says some magic words over the proper stuff and bam Jesus. This is the great spiritual danger for those of us who participate in the Holy Mass daily. We can become numb to the fact that we witness a miracle every day and so grow blind to all the other miracles that God works in our lives.

This is reinforced by how we pray and relate to Christ. If we do not pray, if we do not attune our ears to hear the Lord’s voice; then when He speaks or acts in our lives, we are not going to recognize Him. If we grow complacent in our relationship with Jesus, we will no longer recognize the miracles that He works as miracles. Instead these acts of His become something we think to be naturally due to us. Or we do not even look for miracles. We can also sometimes come to think that our God is a distant God, instead of our Father who longs to draw His “children together, as a hen gathers her young under her wings.” (Mt 23:37) Thinking He is far, we do not look for Him working and acting in our lives. Or we have become jaded and hardened by the world; any light that might shine forth in our lives, we corrupt and think there are hidden malevolent forces seeking to strike us. We look around and see darkness and do not believe the light that we do see.

So I suppose I can answer my question why there are not miracles in the world today. It is because I either lack belief or sight. Really belief and sight are one in the same. I close my eyes to the workings of the Lord and do not see Him present when He is. When the Lord opens my eyes and gives me faith that I might recognize Him, I can start to see the miracles around me. Now, they tend not to be grandiose things. Instead, objectively they tend to be small, easily missed things. But once seen, they become a great shining light. This is most readily demonstrated by the Eucharist. Simply from the worldly eyes, nothing really happens. Our senses fail us, but once we see the Eucharist for Whom it is, a great light shines forth.

There is another place that I regularly see miracles, albeit once more, seemingly small ones. During the past two years at the seminary, I have helped at events known as Mercy Nights. These events hosted by the Emmanuel Community and lead by a fellow seminarian Lynx Soliman. There are several components to a Mercy Night, but the core is that it is Eucharistic Adoration with songs of praise and small groups. There are two particular components that stand out to me as sources of miracles. The first is what is known as the Joy Box, which has various short scripture passages on pieces of paper and is placed before the Blessed Sacrament. The second is throughout the night individuals, as they are moved by the Holy Spirit, pick up a Bible and open it to a seemingly random verse and read a bit from it.

Without fail, every single Mercy Night that I have been to has had something miraculous happen through one of those two components. People who give a short witness after the night speak, often speak how they drew a passage from the Joy Box and it was as if God spoke to them because the passage matched exactly what they needed to hear or was feeling. Similarly, when someone reads from the scripture, so often it touches another person, somewhere else in the church as if it was spoken to them. For example, it has happened where a question that someone had just asked in a small group has then been answered by someone else across the church reading from the Bible.

Now you could just be cynical and say that this is all by random chance. I would answer that what I have witnessed it too regularly and too specificly to be mere chance. Also, such cynicism is that jadedness that I was referring earlier. These miracles seem small or even nothing significant if you are cynical or looking from the eyes of the world. However, if viewed with faith, that our Lord wants to reach out to us, then you almost cannot help but see the miraculous presence of God. May the Lord open our eyes and make our hearts of flesh that we might believe and see Him in our lives.