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There was a Dominican nun who was the head of guidance in that high school where I taught. She was the nun who made sure that the seniors got into college, if they wanted to go to college, that they got their applications in on time, that they kept their marks up. She was a great guidance counselor, Sister Nancy. And over her desk she had a sign, “Yeah, but....”.. So I asked her, “What does that sign mean?” And she said, “Well, you know kids. I’ll tell them, ‘You’ve got to get this application in...’” “Yeah, but Sister, I’m in love. I can’t concentrate. Yeah, but Sister, I don’t like Physics. Yeah, but Sister I had a fight with my father. Yeah, but....” She was great. She got them into college if they wanted to get to college.

“Yeah, but...” is often a reaction to miracles, to healing, even among some of us. In 1958, I was granted a miracle. I swear I am not going to give you some tedious, lachrymous story of my unhappy childhood. But in 1958, a member of my family was in big trouble for possession of narcotics. And I was cleaning a pot with Brillo, 1958, this day, well yesterday, February 11th. And there was a trial coming up and the Catholic lawyer came in and he said, “You better resign yourself. Your brother is going to jail.” I said, “No, he’s not. I just asked for a miracle.” And the lawyer said, “Yeah, but come on. This judge is a monster. This is not the first offense of possessing a drug. You better just resign yourself. I’ve talked it over with many other lawyers.” I said, “NO. I ‘m going to get a miracle.” “...Yeah, but come on. Be real.” Yeah, but..... I got the miracle. I did. To this day, that judge who is now in his late eighties, is still scratching his head. It was no coincidence. It really was an amazing kind of a miracle.

I believe in them. Now, I know we’re not supposed to cling to the miraculous. Even the Church doesn’t publicize a whole lot of things because the Church is so embarrassed. You know what I mean? “Weeping Madonna seen in Wet Moccasin, Idaho!” And the next day you open the newspaper and she was weeping because of some chemistry in the plaster. “Bleeding Jesus seen floating over the trees in Knickers Bowl, Kansas!” It turned out to be a little toy from a child. I know you know what I mean. The Church is so reticent about appearing foolish and naive. And so we don’t get too many stories about miracles, modern miracles. But I would like to talk about one place where they occur.

But first, the Gospel! I made a promise, by the way, in 1958, that, if I were ever ordained a priest, I would talk about Our Lady of Lourdes, because that was the day. I am going to keep that promise, but, about the Gospel... Our Lord tells the man, “Don’t go around talking about this.” First of all, the man was a leper. In those days, the Jewish people thought if you had a physical deformity, such as a terrible skin disease, God was punishing you for a sin. So sad, and they had to stay outside the town and ring a bell, “Unclean!” And then you kind of throw food at them. You couldn’t touch them, and they were not allowed in the synagogue. They were not allowed at home. They were not allowed to get a job. And if you touched them, you became “unclean.” And Jesus touches him, and immediately, Our Lord is legally unclean. Doesn’t stop Christ. He touches him, and then he says to the guy, “Don’t go around telling this story,” the reason being, as the Scripture scholars instruct us, that Our Lord didn’t want to just be known as Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey this weekend, as a wonder-worker. “Oh, let’s get tickets. He’s really doing wonders over there!” But it doesn’t stop the guy. The guy runs out and talks all about it. If there were talk shows, he would get on a talk show. And if it were I, I would say, “Well now that the leprosy is cured, I’ll run back to Jesus, ‘Restore my hair!’” Make a big deal about that. But Our Lord is trying to concentrate on the one miracle. That’s what all our Catholic Bible Scholars tell us. The one great miracle is his message. The one great miracle (And you don’t want to get lost in all kinds of fireworks and wonders.) is agony and death on a cross, suffering on a cross, transmuted into a Resurrection, his and yours and mine. That ‘s a miracle, physical resurrection after the pain of this life. So he says, “Keep your mouth shut” to the guy. He runs off and talks. “Yeah, but....” he probably says to himself. “Yeah, but I got to tell my family.” OK.

Now the second and last part is about modern miracles. I have in my hand a book, “The Miracle of Lourdes.” Lourdes is a town in southern France. You don’t hear much about it nowadays. But in Lourdes in southern France, there have been, since 1858, roughly over two thousand miraculous healings. Now, the Catholic Church won’t accept two thousand, although all the doctors at the Medical Bureau say, “We can. The only word for this is a miracle.” The Catholic Church only accepts about sixty. Isn’t that funny? You would think the Church would run out and say, “WOW! Another miracle. Hit the Chronicle.” No, the Church is very reticent, you know because of weeping madonnas and floating Jesuses. And the Church has examined all these thousands of miracles and the Church has picked about sixty that meet every demand. Now, part of us, part of me, if I were sitting out there, would be, “Well, you know. Who cares? I am worried about a job and kids and rent....” But some of us need a certain steadying of faith, that the finger of God is still operating. I don’t know why he picked a little town in France. I don’t know why everybody isn’t cured. I don’t know why Jesus came as a Jewish carpenter to a third rate Semitic tribe. He should have come back as Mr. America or the Emperor of Rome. But wonderful things happen there.

There ‘s an International Medical Bureau at Lourdes. I’ll just give you a few facts and we will move on. It’s the best Medical Bureau in Europe. It is staffed, not by pious Catholics, but by atheists and agnostics and first-rate empirical laboratory scholars. If you claim a miracle, you’ve got to bring a stack of x-rays and doctors’ affadavits. The cure has to be permanent and complete, until death. And then they examine it again, and again. This is a book of documentation. The lady who wrote it was a Protestant, well kind of an agnostic. She went there to expose it as a fraud. She stayed. She documented. She looked at all the medical bureau and she said, “I believe.” She became a Catholic. “The Miracle of Lourdes” by Cranston. It’s a great book. It’s not a pious journal. And it tells about incredible miracles. For example, there was a gentleman from Scotland who was an atheist and his leg had been completely shattered, bone, cartilage, flesh, blood vessels. Great hunks of it gone. And he went to Lourdes because his wife propelled him. She was a Catholic, very devout. And this angry Scottish gentleman was sitting in the wheelchair, yelling and cursing. He hated the “whole farce!” And, as the priest was walking by, carrying the Blessed Sacrament in a monstrance (Remember?), this Scottish grouch (How can I put this delicately on a Sunday?) gave to the procession an inappropriate gesture, in his rage. And at that moment (This is documented. This is one of the sixty that is accepted by the Church as a genuine miracle.), in an instant, the leg was restored, bone, flesh, cartilage, blood vessels.

Now, a lot of “Yeah, but’s...” have occurred about miracles, even with me. I think especially with priests. “Well, let’s just.... Yeah, but what happens is the wind blows down over the Pyrenees Mountains. And it brings marvelous molecules that have some kind of medicinal value...” No, they have examined the winds from the Pyrenees Mountains since 1858. “Yeah, but it’s the water. You see, there is something in those little pools of water at Lourdes that have incredibly, curative, medicinal chlorine..... something.” No. They have examined the water with the best microscopes in Europe. “Well, yeah, but it’s autosuggestion. The people that go there. They really believe they are going to be cured and then they’re cured.” No. How do you have autosuggestion restore bone, cartilage, flesh, blood vessel? “Yeah. We don’t know, but it’s not a miracle.” OK! OK! You want to have a cup of coffee? OK!

Fortune Magazine (Fortune Magazine!) sent its staff to examine Lourdes many years back. The best thing I ever read on Lourdes and miracles was written in Fortune Magazine, where the writers come back and say, “Something’s going on there. Something miraculous!” And finally, C.S. Lewis has written a book, “Miracles.” He even tackles the Virgin Birth, about which some educated Catholics whom I have known say, “ Well, the Virgin Birth.... They have taken Roman or Greek mythological stories and imposed them on a Jewish girl....” Read C.S. Lewis. Read him. He talks about all kinds of miracles including a young Jewish girl having a baby without a man. And you read it and you say, “Oh.... Oh, yeah. It could be.” Yeah, but....

Finally, modern healings. (This is the end.) There is an organization in the world called AA, or the Twelve Steps. Now, when I was on that sabbatical we had scholars flown in from Europe and Asia, first rate Roman Catholic professors, men and women. Ethics, Moral Theology, New Scripture Studies, Church History. They were super brains and there were forty of us priests sitting there. It was great, a three month sabbatical! We had about twenty-four scholars. Three of the scholars who didn’t even know each other, who came and went in different airplanes from Europe, talking about Ethics or Church History, whatever ... Three of them put down their clipboards at different times and said, “You know the greatest spiritual breakthrough is the miracle of the Twelve Step Program.” And the forty of us priests sitting there thought, “Oh, Oh! These are three drunks.” They weren’t. None of them was an alcoholic or a stoner, but they were scientists of the mind and of the body and of the spirit. One of them said, “The Twelve Steps is meant for the entire human race, not just drunks or drug addicts.” Another said, “It’s the best breakthrough since Jesus Christ.” And the third one said, “It’s the best breakthrough for human nature.” Now, I go to AA meetings. You can go to open meetings. Closed meetings, you are supposed to have the affliction. Open meetings, you can sit. Well, I’ve been doing it since ‘89. There are miracles sitting around that room. And they say that. Some of them have spiked hair and tatoos. And others, back in New York, were world-famous movie stars and athletes. And they look around the room, after years of addiction to booze and heroin and cocaine, and they say, “We’re walking miracles” because everybody despaired of them, group therapy and twenty thousand years of shrinks. And, all of a sudden, a man came along and said, “There’s a higher power. Don’t quit before the miracle. You can’t do it by shrinks and you can’t do it by group therapy and you can’t even do it by prayer, not just prayer alone. You need to help each other.” And a higher power. Now, I am sitting there as a priest, disguised. I am thinking, “We have the higher power and we don’t have to give that ambiguous name. Jesus Christ, he is working miracles all over the place, miracles of healing where doctors and psychiatrists and families have said, “Yeah, but.... They’re lost. Let’s just pray they die young.”

Anyhow, I have fibrillations of faith. You know what a fibrillation of the heart is. A doctor once said that to me, “Why, you have chaotic fibrillations.” I loved it. It was so dramatic. Fibrillations means the heart goes da... da... and then blip and da.... da... and then blip.... Some of us have fibrillations of faith. And some of us, whose faith needs bolstering, love to see miraculous healing. Is there anyone you want healed, like that Scottish lady who was praying for her husband? Don’t quit before the miracle. That’s a famous saying from Twelve Step people. Don’t quit before the miracle!

Final anecdote: Tom Malone was a senior whom I taught. He was legally blind at seventeen. For years now, he has been totally blind. Summer after summer, for twenty years, he goes to Lourdes. Of course, he is looking for a cure. He’s not cured. And the winter before he goes to Lourdes, every year, his sister Beth, who works at Harvard, (I drop that name to let you know this is all highly intellectual!) says, “Tommy is so disagreeable in the winter, every year for twenty... He is so grouchy. He’s mad at God, and it’s awful. And then he goes to Lourdes in the early Spring, and he comes back after a month and we have such a wonderful Summer and Autumn. Tommy is beaming. He is not visioned again. He is still blind. But he spent months memorizing the steps that lead down to the water, learning very carefully how to carry children down, even though he is blind, weeks and weeks of helping other people and he comes back smiling.” And Beth adds, “P.S. That’s the miracle of Lourdes.” Don’t quit before the miracle! And, if some of you are still a little sceptical, and I always have a sceptical buzzard over here (pointing to his shoulder), at least for today, at least for today no more “Yeah, but’s....”