Miracles

My parents, whom I loved deeply, both passed away after I had moved to the USA, so I didn't have a chance to say good-by. My father, however, came to visit after my mother died, when he was almost ninety years old. We used to sit on the porch together, talking about her. A few years later, after his death, I found myself sitting on that porch all by myself, overwhelmed with anxiety. My problems were keeping me awake at night in spite of the medications, and the lack of sleep was driving me crazy. I thought that I was loosing my mind.
All of a sudden I felt my father's presence. It was a very matter-of-fact feeling, almost emotionless. He was simply there, as if he were sitting behind me so that I couldn't see him. He stayed for a while and, although I couldn't hear his voice, he told me that I shouldn't worry.
That night I slept well, and I haven't had major sleeping problems since then.
At that timeI wasn't a believer, yet I had to admit that something out of the ordinary had happened to me. I had been healed.

When years later I started reading about Jesus, the first thing I tried to understand was the claim that He had been a miracle worker. I decided to read A Marginal Jew, an ambitious historical investigation in three volumes written by a catholic priest, the historian John P. Meier. At the risk of annoying you, who are Christians and don't need any convincing, I would like to write briefly about what I learned, because it was so fascinating to me at the time, and it still is.
Today the word "miracle" is for many synonymous to the word hoax, but that wasn't the case in the ancient world. Back then people took for granted that God would intervene in earthly matters and sometimes even change the laws of nature. On the other hand, they weren't more gullible than a lot of 21 first century people are, for they weren't prone to accept an exceptional event as truthful on the basis of a rumor.
A great number of modern scholars admit that we can only explain the huge impact that Jesus had on the crowds if we reckon that he performed deeds for which there was no natural explanation. His miracles played an important role in His fate, for they differentiated Him from the other itinerant prophets of His time. Because of his deeds, He appeared more dangerous to the authorities and more appealing to the people.

In the ancient world, extreme ascetism was identified everywhere with the acquirement of supernatural powers. The path of renunciation was well-established among Buddhists and Hindu yogis long before the rise of Christianity and its saints. Silence, solitude and self-denial were the three imperatives of the ascetic, who had to achieve spiritual discernment to learn what comes from God and what from the devil. But the outpouring of miracles in the Gospels outnumbers by far the amount of miracles performed by any other religious figure in history. The Gospels say that Jesus was charged with being in league with the devil, and it's highly improbable that the Church would have deliberately added such a claim if it wasn't true. Therefore, He must have been performing remarkable deeds.
Some historians maintain that the evangelists aimed at making certain theological points when they wrote their accounts of Jesus' miracles, but this is true especially in John and concerns in particular the nature miracles, namely the stilling of the storm, the cursing of the fig tree, the walking on water, the catching of fish, the changing of water into wine and the feeding of the multitudes.

However, the words used by the Gospels writers to describe Jesus' deeds are not correctly translated with the English word "miracle", which carry the idea of the supernatural. Rather, they imply that something unexpected happened within the natural world that made it more "whole". Jesus' healings were not performed to impress or prove His divinity, but to bestow the gift of wholeness to those who lacked it. In ancient Israel, to carry a physical imperfection was considered a shame, and those who were already suffering because of their illnesses or deformities were also marginalized by the Jewish society. Jesus restored their integrity and welcomed them into the new Israel He was professing.
The exorcisms have a specific meaning because, except for King Solomon, they are not part of the Old Testament tradition. Jesus alone was engaged in a battle with the devil, and he was winning:

"If I by the finger of God cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you."

Meier made use of scholarly criteria to establish the historicity of Jesus' miracles, but also to extract the historical Jesus from the Gospels' narratives. Here are the most important ones:

The criterion of discontinuity: It focuses on the originality of the Gospels narratives. For example, the ancient texts don't talk much about exorcisms, so it makes sense to conclude that something that was understood as casting out demons was really happening rather than being an invention of the Church.
It also focuses on words or deeds of Jesus that cannot be derived from Judaism or from the early Church, but rather contradict them. For example, the prohibition of divorce, the rejection of fasting on Sabbath and so on.

The criterion of embarrassment: It focuses on actions or sayings of Jesus that would have created difficulty for the early Church. There are several examples that fall into this category. Among others: Jesus' baptism by John the Baptist, Judah's betrayal, Peter's denial, the women as the first witnesses of the resurrection (women were not considered reliable).

The criterion of multiple attestations: It focuses on those sayings or deeds of Jesus that are attested to in more than one source or genre. This criterion abundantly satisfy the attestation of His miracles, for they are mentioned in more than one Gospel and in general in Josephus, an historian of the time of Jesus who did not believed in His divinity but described Him as a powerful miracle worker.
　

An overwhelming majority of people believe that miracles still happen. Meier writes:
"…hence, the academic creed of 'no modern person can believe in miracles' should be consigned to the dumpster of empirically falsified hypotheses, After all, that is what is done when other hypotheses are empirically falsified by the social science. I fail to see why this particular creed, however passionately held, can apply for a special exemption, simply because so many academics keep reciting it".
The cures that take place in Lourdes serve to testify that what was claimed to happen by the hands of Jesus is still claimed to happen today in a religious setting and is thoroughly investigated by the International Medical Committee, therefore the miracles stories in the Gospels deserve to be historically investigated. To dismiss them as a creation of the evangelists because "they couldn't possibly occur" is a faulty procedure.

As for me, needless to say, I've come to believe in miracles. Sometimes I think that my entire life is a miracle. I used to enjoy living dangerously, and I could have ended up in big trouble. I thank Jesus every day for His mercy. And my father too, for loving me.

Padre Pio

A few days ago it was the feast of Padre Pio.
Apparently, some devotees believe that he would do just about anything from up there to celebrate the occasion. For example, today I saw a guy on TV enthusiastically holding his picture in front of the camera after Naples's soccer team won a game against Villa Real Spanish team.

I was born in Naples, and although I've never met Padre Pio, I've heard a lot about him. My mother went to visit him when I was a young girl, and I remember her returning home in a state of shock: He had refused to give her the absolution. I wonder why. He was known for his ability to see into people's heart. She never went back, which makes me think that he saw something in her that she couldn't easily change. My mother and I had a wonderful relationship, but she didn't get along with all the members of our family. Perhaps Padre Pio condemned her temper, or saw that she couldn't love her neighbor as she loved herself.

My husband met Padre Pio at the age of five. He remembers that, before celebrating Mass, he kicked two women out of the church because they were dressed inappropriately. That was scary. But later he took him on his lap and talked to him in Neapolitan dialect, and that was sweet. My husband is not a believer, yet Padre Pio's picture has been sitting on his night-stand since we moved to the USA.

Padre Pio was a man who strived towards perfection and wanted others to do the same. Like St. John of the Cross, he tried to achieve purification of the senses and suffered the Night of the Spirit. He wrote:
"I find myself enveloped in a profound night and no matter how I turn and toss I cannot find the light. How then can I walk before the Lord?"
And somewhere else, like Mother Theresa:
"My Father, how difficult it is to believe!"
Many saints have experienced interior darkness. Theology attributes this phenomenon to the increasing closeness of the saint to Jesus, who also suffered the absence of God on the cross. The saint will remain obedient to God even during years of darkness.
Another explanation could be that mystics perceive the evil nature of temptation more deeply than ordinary people. Maybe Padre Pio was horrified at the kind of thoughts that would simply remind us that we are human and therefore subject to temptation.

But of course Padre Pio had an insight of the truth: The devil's most cherished activity is to mess up with our minds. For decades I did not realize that I was, so to speak, a toy in his dirty hands. Then one night, a few weeks into the process of returning to the faith, I fell pray of an unusual sensation. I was sleeping on my side, and I felt as if someone was pressing hard on my chest and on my back at the same time. I woke up more than once because of the discomfort, realizing every time that it wasn't caused by stomach pain. Exhausted, I fell asleep again and again.
The morning after I rushed to church and asked for the priest. He was a thin, dignified man with snow white hair. I was embarrassed. "This is ridiculous!" I thought. But I told him my story and he took me seriously. He advised me to keep a crucifix next to me the following night.
"Father," I said, "I don't own anything of that sort. I'm not a religious person."
"Nothing at all?" he exclaimed. "Well, no wonder…Wait here, I'll get you what you need."
I went back home with two crucifixes and a Bible, and they have been in my bedroom ever since.

It is said that Padre Pio had physical confrontations with the devil. I certainly don't envy him. Yet, sometimes I do welcome temptations, because they allow me to recognize Jesus' power against the Big Liar. What can I say? Every so often I need to see Jesus in action.
Jesus engaged in his own private battle with Satan, whom he understood as the real cause for the wickedness of Rome. He couldn't be the kind of Messiah who would fight Rome in a war, because the one thing that God can't do is to go against His nature. Jesus couldn't fight evil with the devil's weapons, but only with the love he had for his people. So he went to the cross. He was afraid, but he trusted His Father, and Christianity won against the evil empire of Rome

Words and Flowers

This post is a follow up to the previous one, so please, if you are new to my blog, read "Simply Art" first. It's about Paul, the sweet old man who likes to draw flowers. Today Francis, his roommate, told me something I didn't know: When they are at home, Paul spends all his time drawing his little flowers, from morning to night.
"We use up note-books pretty quickly in our home!" she said.
That got me thinking. Paul doesn't seem to draw because he suffers from a compulsive disorder. When he picks up his pen, he's at peace with himself. He draws flowers because that makes him happy. He likes to be told how pretty they are, but he finds pleasure in the simple act of drawing them. In one word, he has a healthy relationship with his flowers, probably one of the few healthy relationships he has ever had in his troubled life. That is how any artist should relate to his art, including me. Old Paul is teaching me a lesson.

As far as painting goes, very rarely I have painted for the sake of it. I've always had a second goal in mind, such as getting good grades, learning a new technique or making money. And I've never been completely satisfied with the result. I always expected something more from myself, or something different. This attitude has prevented me from finding real joy in my work. I don't want to make the same mistakes with writing.

When I was working on my book, I felt more "whole" than I had ever felt while painting. Nevertheless, when I was finished I put my manuscript away and never wrote again until I started this blog. Why? Because I though of it as an "unproductive" activity. But then I learned that even my little stories can speak to the depth of the human soul. A friend of mine told me that she made it up with her son, to whom she hadn't talked for years, after listening to my "Witness for CL" (check the page on this blog), and that made my day. Still, when after writing the first two posts I saw that no one was leaving comments, I was tempted to stop again. Why writing if nobody is reading me? Because, I should answer, it's good for me. It helps me reflect upon things that would otherwise go unnoticed. It brings me closer to my "I" and to Christ. It gives me joy. But, if you are reading me and don't feel like leaving a comment, please click on one of the boxes below. Like Paul, I too need a little encouragement!

Maybe I find writing more fulfilling than painting also because I believe that words are at the root of everything.
"In the beginning was the Word…"
Our universe is made of words, for we couldn't describe what we see without them. Like God, we create our world through words. Yet, Paul's flowers are the product of a humble creative act performed in the sacredness of silence. I couldn't tell you about them without resorting on words; that much is true, but those flowers speak directly to my heart. I asked him to give me one of his drawings and I put it on my desk, to remind myself that beauty can be found in the smallest and simplest things, if one looks closely enough. Then I volunteered to show him how to draw a butterfly. He smiled and accepted the offer. I'll let you know how it goes.

These are some of my paintings, gouaches in the 18th century style. They express my longing for a world that I would have loved to inhabit and it's now lost.