Need help verifying a recent miracle

[CollegeStinks]

I don't know what you study ethereality, but I study biochemistry. In my opinion the very fact that we exist is a miracle.

[LovePatience]

Originally Posted by ethereality

I'm beginning to think that there is no God due to the absence of His actions on earth. The Old Testament condemns false gods as false because, being statues, they cannot walk unless someone carries them, cannot pick themselves back up if they fall down, etc. I see a striking parallel with the Eucharist -- we're told to believe that the Sacred Host and the Precious Blood is the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, and therefore the person of Jesus Christ, i.e. your receiving the Sacred Host is you receiving Jesus Christ, that the Sacred Host is Jesus Christ. (Is not this all correct?)

But then Jesus Christ doesn't stop himself from falling to the floor, being spilt down someone's shirt, stolen and nailed to a wall in someone's university office, being vomited back up, etc? I.e. we can manipulate Jesus Christ as if he were one of these statues, except dealing with the appearance of bread instead of the appearance of a statue? (Or does Jesus prevent atheists from stealing Himself by preventing them from attending Holy Mass? Who can say?) You see the temptation to think that the Sacred Host is not really Jesus. So it is difficult for me to believe that God is on earth with us now.

So I then turn to miracles. The Miracle of the Sun, the miracles associated with St. Faustina, Our Lady of Guadalupe, Our Lady of Lourdes (I know basically nothing about Lourdes) ... but I cannot find any conclusive evidence -- no news stories, no scientific investigation -- where do I look? What books do I read? Please give me some literature verifying recent miracles that I can read, believe, and share with even more cynical associates at my graduate school. I'm at the University of Pennsylvania, so if their libraries do not have the references, they can most likely borrow a copy from another library.

Here are three. If you share with those at your graduate school, please let us know how it turns out. If you need help on getting the resources, drop a line.

The apparitions of the Virgin Mary prior to the Rwanda genocide. http://www.nytimes.com/1999/04/08/wo...lood-bath.html

The tilma of Our Lady of Guadalupe examined by Dr. Jose Aste Tonsmann, Ph D, who graduated from Cornell University with a degree in environmental engineering, while working in IBM. When Though the dimensions are microscopic, the iris and the pupils of the image’s eyes have imprinted on them a highly detailed picture of at least 13 people, Tonsmann said. The same people are present in both the left and right eyes, in different proportions, as would happen when human eyes reflect the objects before them.
http://www.examiner.com/roman-cathol...ic-explanation. The people are 1. Juan Diego unfolding his tilma & wearing a native hat of the period. 2. Bishop Zumarraga, staring at the tilma. 3. An Aztec servant of the bishop sitting in the style of an Indian. 4. A Spaniard of the bishop's staff. 5. A Spaniard who learned the indigenoous language & served as the bishop's translator. 6. A black African female servant girl -- documentary evidence shows in fact, that the bishop did have an African female servant. 7. Seven members of an indigenous family -- a mother carrying a baby on her back, a father, a grandmother and grandfather, and two young children. [CITATION] Los ojos de la Virgen de Guadalupe
JA Tonsmann - 1981 - Editorial Diana (Can be found on google scholar)

The Eucharistic Miracle of Lanciano surviving to this day, and studied in a journal recognized by the US National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health. Quad Sclavo Diagn. 1971 Sep;7(3):661-74.
[Histological, immunological and biochemiccal studies on the flesh and blood of the eucharistic miracle of Lanciano (8th century)]. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4950729

Happy to help!

[AlanFromWichita]

I wanted to make another option, but then I realized that would take a miracle in itself. So I checked "yes" but I'm afraid that will give the wrong impression.

We tend to think of the "will of God" as God wishes something in particular to be done, which implies He hasn't done it already. So God had no clue what a will was until will created a universe in which God could experience Himself via his human connections. This way, He can experience all of us, which can strangely be called "none of us" or even "Illinois" depending on the whim of (the) God creating the words.

So really, the will of God is no will at all, and that's why humans can never be God ... because if they were exactly God, then they would have to create their own universes from their own consciousnesses where God actually has a will, which means we've defined and thus limited God to being with or without a will, when in fact He doesn't care to the extent the He doesn't even know.

Think God can will to forget something? Of course! I I were omnipotent, then I can't be omniscient. This is a cute puzzle that humans have created for God's amusement -- battling out the details of how to define in human terms, the fact that God considers Himself neither omnipotent or omniscient, because God doesn't judge Himself because there is nothing to judge since there is no right and wrong... well there is, but at the same time there isn't, and that's why Jesus had to come along and set us straight. He knew that it would be a very long time, but He didn't know whether it would be 100 years, 10,000 years, or what. Those who protest and say, "but God KNOWS absolute truth, so of course He knows ... well that's another reason we exist, is so that God will understand Himself all the way from the alpha to the omega, so each little god that wanted a human body became born of parents of its choosing (why do you think Jesus picked Mary? He knew she would be perfect) would have a limited perspective for no other reasons that there is free will, so no part of God can "control" another part, although they have a certain relationship that causes themselves to be played out as this universe.

But the question is, how could Jesus have both made and perfected the soul of Mary, when He wasn't born yet when a) she was born and b) He was conceived.

The answer is simple. It's a trick question. Asking a spirit whether the chicken or the egg came first will influence the spirit, and the chicken/egg dichotomy. There was no question until it was asked.

It's almost like we make up a nonsense word, say, "parts," and then asking how many parts there are in a gallon of water.

Alan

[Neden]

We have to also remember that faith is a gift from God. It is one of those theological virtues along with hope and charity. It is always good to pray for faith. I believe that faith is a quality rather than a quantity. (It only takes a mustard seed!).

I have peace in knowing that there are a lot of Sacred Mysteries in the Church. The Eucharist is one of them (a big one!).

Neden