The E-catechism: July 1999
	Charity Archives	Miracles

		Each month the team working on this catechism presents you with two texts, and we hope that with your help and cooperation they will improve. Any suggestions you may have would be most welcome, as would ideas on subject matter. We look forward to hearing from you. Charity Charity is the object of bad feeling to the public. A word used for centuries seems to have shifted in its meaning. In some street demonstrations one can see written on a banner: "We don't want Charity , we want Justice". Then Charity is seen as putting some one down, as having pity for the people. One has his own poor. One pays attention to them by offering them crumbs, to help ones own guilty conscience. By doing this, wounds might be healed but poverty is maintained without acting on the source. With Justice, rights are preserved by acting on the source of poverty. Without waiting for an other understanding of what Charity means, people prefer to speak of solidarity, this is better received and it has no religious context. Solidarity underlines horizontal links between people whatever their cultures, beliefs or philosophical points of view. Solidarity goes for fundamental equality between human beings. Even if a wrong doing behaviour unfortunately may relate to solidarity, this word is most of the time positively received by many. Charity itself means love which is in God. God is love. This love is put in ourselves to go and meet the others. Charity cannot be made, it is received. His source is in God. It is why he who loves, is born from God according to St. John. It is a vertical link to God and it underlines the importance of Jesus' commandment: " Love each others as I loved you", this is an essential feature of a Christian. Charity has no limit. It has to grow indefinitely, it is creative, patient, able to overcome obstacles and to withstand a lot of suffering. Marked with the sign of the cross, it can do every thing. Jesus said: "There is no greater love than to give ones life for those you love" John said; "We know that we have gone from death to life when we love our brothers"
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		Miracles In every day life, miracle is a frequent expression. Young ones speak about the result of the football World Cup championship as a miracle. When some thing quite unusual and unexpected happens, we spontaneously say, it's a miracle. We have to take account of this fact and it is a sign that we do not want to surround to a technical world where every thing can be predicted. All in a human life cannot be explained. We speak willingly about the miracle of love. To love some body, to be loved by him or her, gives us strength and put us out of a dead end. Even if every thing seems to go well or go wrong, being loved gives us a new start, so that what seemed impossible becomes possible. I count for some body. With love, life takes on a new meaning, it is not blocked up, it stays open to the unknown, to the future. However all is not granted, it is always desirable to take charge of ourselves. Miracle does not mean lack of responsibility, otherwise it would be perverted, it would be wrong to speak about miracles. In this context we have to accept that with time miracles have become an everyday saying. However we can look back to the original meaning of the word miracle by Jesus and in the Christian tradition. For the Church, miracle is linked to God and more precisely to Jesus. Let us read this passage of the Gospel which is related to the mission of Jesus:<" John, who was in prison, heard what Jesus was doing, and sent his own disciples to put this question to him: "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to expect someone else?" Jesus answered, "Go and report to John what you hear and see: the blind recover their sight, the lame walk, lepers are made clean, the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life, the poor are brought good news"...> Miracle is a call, an invitation to do more. In Jesus there is so much an excess of love that each one of us is pushed to do its best. It is why we say that the miracle, it is first of all Jesus himself, his life, his death and his resurrection. Why every thing did not stop after the death of Jesus? Why are women and men believing in him to a point that by looking in the life of Jesus, they find a way to live free and happy, to fight against their own draw back and to be able to transform fate into history? Some cannot manage to believe in miracles, as reported in the Gospel or at Lourdes for instance. If we take miracles as some thing extraordinary, not yet seen, then miracles will not show up in every day life, and people will say they have never seen a miracle. What is it essential, what is it amazing in our life?.., it is what is happening to me. We have to be trustful and let Jesus questions us, let Jesus be a living person who asks you: " ... who am I for you"?
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		Archives E-catechism June 99, Suicide, The ministers in the Church E-catechism May 99, Meeting the agnostic and atheistic world, The mystery of evil E-catechism April 99, The initiation rites, But what is Faith? E-catechism March 99, The sacrament of marriage, Eternal life E-catechism February 99, Sacraments, Time of Lent E-catechism January 99, Eutahanasia, Citizenship E-catechism Dec. 98, Christmass, Racism E-catechism November 98 E-catechism October 98 E-catechism September 98 E-catechism August 98 E-catechism July 98 E-catechism June 98 E-catechism May 98 E-catechism April 98 E-catechism March 98 E-catechism February 98 E-catechism January 98
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