Notes

New Zealand Tablet, 18 December 1913, Page 34

Notes

To Correspondents The usual Christmas congestion, arising chiefly from the receipt of school prize lists, lists of musical successes, and reports of school break-up functions, is already with us, and will make itself felt for the next few weeks. Correspondents, therefore, whose communications do not appear as early as the senders anticipated, will understand the reason why. With, regard to school reports, these will be printed strictly in the order in which they reach this office. Father Bernard Vaughan on the Lourdes Miracles Father Bernard Vaughan must have been in excellent form when interviewed at Edinburgh the other day on the subject of the Lourdes miracles. In the course of some pithy and common-sense remarks, lie said: ' What a surgeon can do with his knife you must allow God can do without it, and if some bodily ill will yield to a physician's treatment, it may yield with even greater facility to the word of the Great Physician, but before I can pronounce upon any individual case I must first of all investigate the matter. I must know the nature and character of the disease as it was; before the patient went to Lourdes and pleaded before the Blessed Mother's shrine. If the Divine Son did at the mere intimation of a wish change water into wine, why cannot He change bad blood into good, with plenty of red corpuscles in if? Any individual case must stand the test of evidence, without which imagination,, superstition, and credulity may play a masterly partPersonally, I believe many miracles have been wrought at Lourdes, and in every part of the Church, and 1,. during my time of ministry, have come across quite a. large number of cases among our Catholic poor which. I have no hesitation in setting down to God's special kindness to them, going out of His way, so to speak, to step in and heal where the doctor has failed. We cannot deny that God has the power. Who would care to deny that He ever has the will? He is kinder than you or I, and loves to bestow the largesse of His healing smile among His aristocracy, the poor in our slumdoms.' * Asked if he would go a great distance to see a. miracle, the Jesuit Father made the striking, thoughtful, and, in Its concluding sentences, beautiful reply: 1 Personally, I would not go across the street to see a. miracle. They would be of no help to me. For instance, if our Lord, in the Blessed Sacrament, were to-

come forth and show Himself in human form and offer to reinstate me in the vigor and elasticity of youth, I would rather He did it not. I know He is living Body, Soul, and Divinity behind the tabernacle door, and if I am to work for Him, and not be dazed and paralysed by His beauty and His glory, He must stay hidden from my sight till the evening of life, when the curtains of night shall be rolled back, and we shall be like Him because we shall see Him as Ho is.’