Wednesday, November 17, 2004

The Feast of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, Widow
is today. There is information on her here.
It is also the feast of the Jesuit Martyrs of Paraguay, St. Hugh of Lincoln, O. Cart., Bishop, and St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, Bishop. While he was still an Anglican, Venerable Newman wrote two essays on miracles , one of which, among other things, defended the miracles wrought by the intercession of the last-named, as mentioned in the works of St. Gregory of Nyssa,Bishop .

Further, Nyssen not only lived too near the times to allow of a spurious tradition fastening itself on the history, whether of the tree or of the people, but he was a native and inhabitant of that part of Asia Minor, and his family before him. His grandmother, Macrina, was brought up at Neocæsarea, Gregory's see, by his immediate disciples. Should the account be false, it will be somewhat of a parallel to suppose a person, at this day, in high ecclesiastical station, born and educated and writing in the Isle of Man, and assuring us that Bishop Wilson once laid a storm in behalf of the fishermen, and that a lighthouse was built at the time, and still remains, in commemoration of the event; and writers, moreover, of this day, in England, Scotland, and Ireland, confirming the testimony, by incidentally observing, without allusion to the particular story, that Bishop Wilson had the gift of miracles. We should say it was impossible that such evidence could be offered in behalf of a fiction now; and why not say the same of a similar case then? "But a fiction was possible then," it may be argued, "because the age was more superstitious than now." I answer, "And so was a miracle possible, because Christendom was more Catholic and Apostolic."

Venerable John Henry Newman, Two Essays on Biblical and Ecclesiastical Miracles











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