MIRACLES ARE SO MEDIEVAL. OR ARE THEY...?

We move in a world bursting with conflicts. Between rich & poor...black & white...West & Islam. However, perhaps the most persistent conflict is the ancient one between belief & doubt!

We of today's technological age of wonders, wonder how the medieval peasant could wonder about perfectly explainable phenomenon, then call them "miracles." After all, once the magician's trick has been duplicated by the audience, the audience should now know better.

And so, once again, the so-called miraculous Shroud of Turin has come center stage in this belief vs doubt debate. Italian chemist Luigi Garlaschelli reports he has been able to "duplicate the trick by simply using the materials available at the time the Shroud was discovered in 1360." For him, and other scientists, this finally nails it. Anything man can make is no miracle!

But of course this nails nothing. It only parts another veil. If the Professor's premise is true -- anything man can make is no miracle -- then we are left to wonder about other "miracles" scattered throughout history. Consider all the times people survive a crisis plunge from the sky or into the ocean, live through a fatal disease, beat impossible military odds, salvage broken bodies and marriages, save ghettoed lives, repair shattered families, prevail over defeat, love an irreparably damaged child. How does one find the authentic definition for such remarkables?

Professor Garlaschelli may be able to duplicate step by step the very human ways in which these very human moments were achieved. Thus his very correct summation would be: Nowhere the hand of God! However, if this summation is correct, its conclusion is intriguingly inconclusive. For if making these various impossibles possible is not a kind of human miracle, then surely the word must be once and forever retired from our dictionaries.

To return to the good professor -- who works in the Italian city from where my mother's family originated -- he might be asked this followup question: Even if the image was made by man, what other name than "miracle" would you attribute to the millions who have been so deeply moved and motivated these last 700 years?

Yes, the professor might call upon names like: coincidence...serendipity...mass hysteria...and other quite proper terms. And at first blush, few if any could dispute them. Well, except those same millions who over those same centuries have drawn from this "miracle" what they have believed were answers, insights, comforts, cures and enormous joys. None of which are forthcoming from most chemistry labs.

My grandmother used to tell of her great, great grandfather from Turin who almost died in his childhood of epilepsy. He offered prayers to the God of the Shroud, and he lived beyond the expectations of his doctors. He called it a "miracle!" The Professor would call it coincidence! I -- well, I would have to call it one of the reasons my grandmother happened. And therefore why I happened.

Now I realize this is not a definitive hypothesis. But to me -- and my three children and three grandchildren -- that's "miracle" enough, Professor.