An Atheist Meets a Miracle
Emile Zola (1840-1902) was a prominent French novelist and an atheist.
He hated Catholicism.
He particularly hated the claim that Mary had appeared to a peasant girl in Lourdes in 1858.
Lourdes became a place of pilgrimage. And there were reports of healings.
Zola determined to prove it was all a fake.
On the train down to Lourdes, he saw a young girl named Marie, age 16, who had three diseases for which there was no cure at that time: advanced lupus, TB, and huge ulcerations on her legs.
Her face was eaten away, distorted by the lupus, and “oozing blood.”
Zola decided then and there she would be his test case. And he was standing by, along with a doctor, when Marie entered the baths.
She came out changed.
Her face looked normal.
It was clear that she was healed.
The doctor said, “Ah, Monsieur Zola, behold the case of your dreams.”
Zola said, “I do not want to look at her; she is still ugly to me.”
The doctor accompanied her to the hospital. Her lungs were clear. She had no medical problems. And she remained healthy many years later.
Zola said, “Were I to see all the sick at Lourdes healed, I would not believe in miracles.”
I include a couple of healing stories in the book I am still working on, Discovering God.
Such accounts are not hard to find, even accounts verified by doctors.
But where do you stand on this? Does a God who heals fit in with your theology?
Let me know.
Write to me at the e-mail address below.
Does God heal?
I love hearing from you.
revmaxb@tx.rr.com
A Priest working at Lourdes was once asked to explain the healings taking place there. His reply was “The Healing begins when they get on the plane to come here”. The woman who was healed by touching the hem of Jesus’s robe: The power was not in the robe, but in her mind and her strong belief and desire. Jesus felt the power flow through him and said “Who touched me?” He was being jostled by several people at the time. The healing matrix is always plugged in but, like electricity, must be energized by the emotions of desire and faith. We are potentially our own best healers. We just need to be reminded that we are worthy because God loves us so much.