We act in faith - and miracles occur. In consequence, we are tempted to make the miracles the ground of our faith. The cost of such weakness is that we lose the confidence of faith. Faith is, faith creates, faith carries. It is not derived from, nor created, nor carried by anything except its own reality.
--Dag Hammarskjöld,
This is a great paradox. People who make miracles the basis for their faith run the risk of encountering all sorts of skepticism, doubt, and even theological problems. Faith can’t be about miracles, because it springs from a higher certainly. Miracles are gifts, but the greatest gift is faith. I have, myself, witnessed probable miracles on a few occasions, given the definition that a miracle is an event that entails divine intervention in the suspension of natural physical law. But what is that compared to faith; to the relationship with God from which true faith is derived? What does faith need but the love of the Other, the person that one has faith in?
St. Alonzo Rodriguez (in his Autobiography) said of his own supernatural
experiences: “So great is my aversion to such things that I would prefer not to
speak or write about them and that no one should know of them. For they bring
more danger than profit and the world esteems them highly, though there is
little light in them, when it should make much of solid virtues. Sanctity
consists in the love of God and of one’s neighbor, and in profound humility,
patience, obedience, and resignation, and the Imitation of Christ our Lord.”
In his Das Allgemeine Brouillon (a title which I borrowed when I
give this space a name), Novalis said, “All faith is wondrous and
wonder-working.”
