Last night Ana and I went to see “The Glowing Lady” at Vicka’s Old Home site here in Medjugorje (click here to get more information). We were finally led into a small room where there is a statue of Our Lady of Lourdes. The door is closed, the lights go out, and the Statue glows, very similar (though not as green) as the picture in the link above.
There are voices in the Medjugorge community and outside urging caution around this phenomena. So far the messages at Medjugorje are similar to those at Lourdes and Fatima – delivered to children, calling for some pretty traditional values: prayer, peace, etc. However, many who come to Medjugorje are looking to find something super-natural or magical or whatever you want to call it. They are an interesting lot: there are some who find the super-natural as some sort of validation of their own life system, there are some who are just fascinated with the possibility of seeing or being close to something super-natural. The question remains as to whether this place will create within these people “sustainable” (apologies to my green friends) changes in their life.
It does raise a much larger question: what stimulates real faith? Does a human decision, however convuluted and twisted it is, to follow a given set of values and life principles, need the super-natural to validate it? Or is that a bit of an oxymoron: if one experiences the supernatural, how can it be faith?
Curiously the Gospel for this Sunday (Luke 16:19-31) has an interesting passage about faith. It is the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus. At the conclusion, Abrahama says to the Rich Man, who is begging for a miracle to show his brothers the evil of their ways:
If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead.
Or for that matter, a statue that glows in the dark.