On the apprehension of the miraculous

The antiphon on the Invitatory today reminds us of the context of the world we inhabit:

Come, let us worship God who holds the world and its wonders in his creating hand.

Sheri S. Tepper, in her excellent book, The Family Tree, offers an interesting spin to our current apprehension of the miraculous.

"Consider, Prince Izakar: in the universe of all things that could happen, there are some events with vanishingly small probability of happening. Still, occasionally, things do happen which have a very small probability, and these things are called miracles. Some of them are quite nice, like instantaneous cures for incurable diseases or escapes from certain death. Some are quite nasty, like rains of frogs."

"Obviously, since the probabilities are so limited, the supply of natural miracles is always small. Magic is a system for tapping into the miraculous, that is, of changing the probability that certain things will occur, of bending certain natural forces in order to influence probability itself."

"As time goes on, however, people learn that things they thought were impossible are, in fact, merely improbable and they learn to make improbable things happen through technology, until the time comes when no one believes in magic anymore because all the improbable things are being done by machines."

The Roman Ritual (1964) provided an order for the blessing of a Telegraph Office which included this prayer:

God, who ride on the wings of the wind, and who alone work wonders; just as you have empowered this metal to carry messages to-and-fro more quickly than a lightning flash; so also grant that we, inspired by these new inventions and aided by your bounteous grace, may in a similar way come more swiftly and easily to you; through Christ our Lord. Amen.

God created and sustains the entirety of the universe we live in. Our abilities to apprehend that creation and to make use of its forces is part of the miracle of creation, not an argument for a purely accidental universe. We should not allow our love-affair with technology to alienate us from the universe, the Lord of Creation, or our neighbors.