Receiving God’s Miracles, Messages, and Manifestations
In the Gospel of John, 2:1-12, our Holy Virgin Mary asks her son Jesus to provide more wine for the wedding at Cana. After all, wine gladdens the heart (Psalm 103 [104]:15) and the party had run dry. Christ then instructs the steward to fill the six stone jars with water. When the water was transformed into the finest wine, the disciples marveled. This beginning of signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory; and His disciples believed in Him. (2:11)
So why did Jesus perform miracles?
1. To show compassion and heal human suffering.
2. To affirm His true identity and power as the Son of God.
3. To point to His Kingdom to come, “where there is neither sickness, nor sorrow, nor sighing, but life everlasting.”
The disciples were able to recognize the signs of Christ as pointing to the greater reality of His divine nature, yet not everyone saw them that way.
Different people reacted in different ways when they witnessed Christ’s miracles. Many accepted them rightly and glorified God. Some accepted them, but doubted that God was involved (attributing them to a misapprehension, or to the acts of demons).
Very few, if any, denied the occurrence of the miracles, as many do today. People back then were very aware of spiritual activity and engaged with it directly. So why didn’t they see the miracles of Christ for what they were – a testimony to God’s presence, power, and goodness?
Because they didn’t really know God; they didn’t have a real relationship with Him; and they didn’t desire to know His will and the truth of things. They just wanted more spiritual “fireworks.”
After Christ healed the sick and fed the multitudes, the crowd still wanted more, as we read in St. John 6:30: Therefore they said to Him, “What sign will You perform then, that we may see it and believe You? What work will You do?” And later, in St. John 10:24-26, they asked: “If You are the Christ, tell us plainly.” Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in My Father’s name, they bear witness of Me. But you do not believe, because you are not of My sheep….”
But what about us today? Are we open to the spiritual reality all around us? Indeed, many of us in the Bible study have described experiences and encounters with the spiritual world. Many of us have prayed for, and have witnessed, healings, messages, miraculous synchronicities and coincidences. We glorify God for touching us in these ways, by His grace and great mercy!
Yet we are aware and careful about illusions and hallucinations, and cautious about “lying wonders.” Still others avoid the topic altogether, preferring to focus on the world of the five senses, not needing to witness any wonders, and not needing such “proof.”
Christ tells us to be cautious about false prophets, signs, and wonders, and demonic deception (St. Mark 13:22). St. John writes in his first epistle: Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God…” (4:1).
In the 1982 film, The Year of Living Dangerously – about the political upheaval in 1965 Jakarta, Indonesia – a local photographer, Billy Kwan, tells his Australian journalist colleague, Guy Hamilton, that: “There is a spirit here. I hear him outside at night. He came inside one night and spilled some bottles of developer.”
Guy: “Do you really believe that stuff?”
Billy: “Absolutely, old man. The unseen is all around us... particularly here in Java.” †
Not all spiritual forces are benign. They can be mischievous, dark, and destructive. When people are overly interested in seeking spellbinding signs, they are more open to deception. Many have been deceived by evil spirits manifesting as angels of God.
Being aware of their existence, we can shield ourselves from them, practicing our faith in Christ, and utilising the protections of our Church (the Holy Eucharist, Holy Confession, exorcism prayers by a priest, holy oil, holy water, prayer and fasting).
Our aim is to keep open our spiritual eyes and ears to God.
In Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1983 film Nostalghia, we see the protagonist writer, Andrei Gorchakov, lost in his brooding and regrets. In a scene, he walks across the nave of a crumbling convent in Italy and we hear the Holy Virgin Mary’s voice asking the LORD: “Say something to him.”
The LORD: “But what would happen if he heard my voice?” *
The Holy Virgin Mary: “Let him feel your presence.”
The LORD: “I always do, but he’s not aware of it.” †
[* When Christ heard the Father glorify His Name audibly, some explained it away as thunder. – St. John 12:29]
The LORD speaks to us all the time, but can we hear Him? He reveals His presence to us constantly, but do we have eyes to see? God can tell us what to do, and how to live, but if we lack the faith and discipline to see and hear, we’ll miss His message.
St. John Chrysostom paraphrases Christ in this way: “Rid yourselves of wickedness: the anger, the envy, and the hatred which have arisen in your hearts, without provocation, against Me. Then you will have no difficulty in realizing that My words are actually those of God. As it is, these passions darken your understanding and distort sound judgement. If you remove these passions, you will no longer be afflicted in this way.”
In St. John 8:48, and in the other Gospels, we see how some people, caught up in their passions, interpreted the many miracles of Christ – especially those done on the Sabbath – as of coming from the devil: “Do we not say rightly that You are a Samaritan and have a demon?”
Indeed, in St. Matthew 11:23, we read how Christ negatively compares the wicked unbelief of Capernaum with that of Sodom: “For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day.”
Even some of Christ’s close followers, even after they witnessed the many miracles, divine manifestations, and messages of Christ, fell away. In St. John 6:63-64, 65-66, we read Christ’s words: “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life. But there are some of you who do not believe… Therefore I have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father.” From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more.
Yet others received Christ’s signs favourably, as recorded in St. John 7:31: And many of the people believed in Him, and said, “When the Christ comes, will He do more signs than these which this Man has done?”
In today’s world, we are the “products” of the Enlightenment. In contrast to other cultures of the world, our Western culture largely rejects transcendent reality. Apart from pop culture horror movies of ghosts and demons and “aliens,” there is no real consideration for the angels and saints, and “things of God.” Manifestations of God are routinely dismissed as freak occurrences of nature, illusions, or hallucinations.
Then there are those who claim that if they would only see a miracle, then they would believe and come to Church. This is not true! When people don’t have faith in “ordinary” times, they will not be “drawn in by the Father” (St. John 6:44) when miracles happen.
The bottom line is that miracles don’t necessarily bring people back to Church, neither do they make people more loving and forgiving.
Though we may never see a real miracle, we acknowledge that God is everywhere present, and fills all things. If we can’t sense Him, that’s because of our own obliviousness.
The truth is that we cannot receive God’s signs and wonders properly, unless we are willing to kneel down and sacrifice something – starting with our pride and passions. We must be willing to die to ourselves so that we can be born again (St. John 3:1-8), believing in Christ and receiving his words and works.
† We use movie references in anticipation of starting a movie club for our parish community.
Email us at biblestudy@all-saints.ca if you’re interested.