It’s true, when most people go on a pilgrimage, at least historically, they’re seeking a miracle.
You go to the tomb of such and such saint who cures infertility. You hike to a holy well that promises a happy marriage. You seek out a certain relic that promises long life and vibrancy in old age. Or maybe you’re one of the nearly three million people who flock to Lourdes, France each year in search of a cure.
And there have been miracles at that holy place where a young girl named Bernadette had visions of the Virgin Mary in 1858. Indeed, over 7,000 people have asked to have their cases declared as miraculous cures. But only 67 been verified by both the Church and the Lourdes Medical Bureau1 as being cures with no scientific explanation.
Though 67 diseases cured with absolutely no medical explanation is nothing to scoff at, this still means there are a lot of people going to Lourdes having their prayers unanswered. Millions upon millions in fact.
This is the grim reality that the characters in the 2023 movie The Miracle Club are forced to reckon with.
“You don't come to Lourdes for a miracle ... You come for the strength to go on when there is no miracle.”
Father Dermot Byrne, The Miracle Club
This pleasant2 film takes us to 1967 Dublin, where a motley crew of parishioners are each seeking their own kind of cure on a pilgrimage to Lourdes. The all-star cast (Laura Linney, Maggie Smith, Kathy Bates) sometimes falter a bit in their Irish brogues3, but never in their sincerity. Maggie Smith plays Lily, a woman of deep faith who is also quite convinced God is punishing her for the hard-hearted actions of her youth. Kathy Bates plays Eileen, the rough-edged but loving mother of many who feels much more deeply than she lets on. And Laura Linney plays Chrissie, the odd-woman out, the prodigal daughter returned after her mother’s death, with buried secrets and a whole host of painful memories to expunge.
Though the pilgrimage starts out tense, with too many sad and unsaid things in the air, the story ends not with the miraculous cures the characters had been hoping for, but with much more ‘everyday’ miracles - forgiveness, hope, and friendship.
This seems a little cliche. Maybe it is. But it doesn’t make it less true or carry less force when these are the realities that play out in our own lives.
Because the thing about Christianity is you really can’t escape the miracles. As C.S. Lewis said, you can’t take the absolutely miraculous part of Christianity out without losing what Christianity really is all about. You get a lot of people nowadays wanting to simplify Christ into a nice rabbi with some palatable words about nonviolence and kindness. But that isn’t who he was. He was a temple table-overturning end-times believing wandering nomad who spoke in strange parables and told his followers that when they heard him speak they heard God himself. As Lewis says -
“A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
―C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
The New Testament is a miracle account, not just in the foundational miracle of the Incarnation, but the mere facts of Jesus’ ministry. Walking on water, curing the blind, making the lame walk, loaves and fishes multiplied to feed 5,000, water into wine, raising a man from the dead. So, the modern man asks, where are our miracles?
Certainly, it’s undeniable, we seem to have less flashy miracles. And the atheist sighs, at ease here. Of course - we have science now. The modern myth of progress states that religion was an explanation for all the things we did not understand. There are many, many scientific explanations for the miracles of ages past - we just didn’t understand them yet. And so modern man leans back in his smug and un-magical world.
But let me pause here to define a miracle: “n. a surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divine agency.”
Though we tend to look for the flashy miracles - the overnight medical cures, etc. (and those do happen) - the very real miracles of our lives are just as true now as they were a 156 years ago when a peasant girl was told by a vision of the Virgin Mary to dig in dry dirt where there was no water, only to find a gushing spring, and 2,000 years ago when a baby was born and changed the entire course of history.
One of my favorite Audrey Hepburn quotes is, “anyone who does not believe in miracles is not a realist.” Because how many miracles do we encounter, ‘surprising, welcome,’ that simply go beyond ‘natural, scientific laws?’
Inestimable.
Who’s to say the real miracles of Jesus’ life weren’t the adoring kisses he received from his mother? Or the times he sat and ate bread and drank wine with his friends? Or the time he told the woman at the well ‘everything [she] ever did’ (and loved her anyway)?
The Miracle Club, a surprisingly earnest movie in a time of ‘statements’ and ‘agendas,’ may seem trite, but in a world starved for wonder, it has a message we need.
We live in the miracle, if we have the eyes to see it.
I have prayed for miracles and I have received them. I have also said novenas and dipped my hand in holy water and watched the days go by, prayers unanswered.
As Garth Brooks sang, ‘some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.’
I have had enough time go by to be able to look back and see the wisdom of unanswered prayers. But there are many I still don’t understand. I can only hope I may someday, perhaps at the departure from this life, see the grand design, like finishing a novel where the final page reveals the reason for it all.
Perhaps there is rest in this. You are seeking answers. You are seeking cures and miracles. But you are also being sought.
“God will find you,” said the priest quietly. “Stay calm and do not flee from Him who has been seeking you before you even existed in your mother’s womb.”
— Sigrid Undset, Kristin Lavransdatter
All we can do is allow ourselves to be found. Maybe that is miracle enough.
“Why, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.To me the sea is a continual miracle,
The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—the
ships with men in them,
What stranger miracles are there?”— Walt Whitman, Miracles
I can’t promise you miracles, but I can promise you that you will find what you are looking for (even if you don’t yet know what that is)! Come join me and
in October 2024 as we explore the saint-scattered hills of Ireland. We’ll be hiking St. Patrick’s Holy Mountain, visiting the Rock of Cashel, praying at our Lady of Knock, drinking whiskey at the oldest distillery in the world, toasting on literary pub crawls, having High Tea at a castle, seeing the Book of Kells and Trinity Library, jigging to fiddle music, and most importantly living a real joyful embodied life.Come with us!
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“Pilgrimage is a symbol of life. It makes us think of life as walking, as a path. If a person does not walk, but instead stays still, this is not useful; it accomplishes nothing. Think of water: when water is not in the river, it does not course, but instead it remains still and stagnates. A soul that does not walk in life doing good, doing many things that one must do for society, to assist others, or who does not walk through life seeking God and inspiration from the Holy Spirit, is a soul that finishes in mediocrity and in spiritual poverty.
Please: do not stand still in life!”
— Pope Francis
Pope Saint Pius X established the Lourdes Medical Bureau to investigate cases of medical miracles. This Medical Bureau is a medical institution and not under Church supervision.
an apt description from the NYT review - ‘a pleasant pilgrimage’
Linney’s character actually has an American accent though she seems to do a little lilt at times, as if to nod to the fact that Chrissie was born and raised in Ireland. Anyway, the accents aren’t really the point.
“I have had enough time go by to be able to look back and see the wisdom of unanswered prayers. But there are many I still don’t understand. I can only hope I may someday, perhaps at the departure from this life, see the grand design, like finishing a novel where the final page reveals the reason for it all”.
Loved this post so much Katie! ✨
So true. This article reminded me of the mother of Lucia of Fatima. She couldn't understand why so many people made such a fuss about the possibility that the Virgin Mary appeared in a field when Christ was always there in the tabernacle every single day. She had a point. Maybe there aren't so many big miracles anymore because we've forgotten how to see the small ones.