On faith and miracles

My good friend, Kirk Kanzelberger, is father of five lively children, Senior Software Engineer at NETRICS, Inc., and is writing a PhD dissertation in philosophy on the side for Fordham University just to keep himself from getting bored. Kirk just sent me a really insightful reflection on Luke 16:27-31 that I'd like to share with you.

Luke 16:27-31, of course, is the passage about Dives, the rich man in hell who asks Abraham to send Lazarus from heaven to warn his five brothers (still living) so they don't end up, like Dives, in hell. The text reads as follows:

"And [Dives] said, 'Then I beg you, father, to send [Lazarus] to my father's house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.' But Abraham said, 'They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.' And he said, 'No, father Abraham; but if some one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.' He said to him, 'If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if some one should rise from the dead.'"

Kirk writes about this passage:

This saying of our Lord has a particular lesson for modern people, I'm convinced. Rationalists are fond of saying that faith is an irresponsible leap in the dark, but miracles would convince them, if only there were any. (Apparently they haven't heard of things like the Medical Bureau at Lourdes.) Sometimes even those of us who aren't rationalists are inclined to think this way (at least I am).

Our Lord would seem to be saying that if a person will not accept divine testimony by faith (granting that faith itself is a gift of God), then miracles wouldn't convince him either. In other words, we only think there could be something superior in this life to faith. There isn't-- faith is strictly necessary. And it's a gift that God will give, if we are disposed to receive it. If you have that disposition, then you don't need miracles. At best, miracles are only "motives of credibility," as the Church calls them. Faith still rests upon a free choice, assisted by grace.

I'm reminded of Alexis Carrel (pictured right), the Nobel Prize winner in medicine who witnessed two miracles at Lourdes (a tumor vanishing, and a blind person instantaneously recovering sight). He converted.... decades later on his deathbed, finally winning the struggle against incredulity. Seeing a miracle didn't remove the need for faith.

So ... Whaddaya think o' them apples? The stuff of a good sermon, wouldn't ya think?