Miracles and faith

Here's some more straight thinking on miracles and faith from the blog Again and Again…

Serbian Orthodox Bishop Porfirije of Jegar said… Oftentimes we expect miracles to occur to support our faith, that is, to almost give proof of our faith in God, when in reality it’s our faith which produces miracles and not the other way around.

He mentioned how he had recently met a woman who visited his monastery in Kovilj who told the monastics there how she had traveled from one monastery to another, far from her parish church, with her problems and troubles looking for wonderworkers and healers. This was his response…

Healing is in the church and there is no need for Christians to search for wonderworkers and healers outside of their parish. There, in the local church, in one’s own parish is the fullness of salvation and all gifts of the Holy Spirit are present there. And every form of healing is present there. Of course, when a parishioner comes to their parish priest the priest can send that person to go to another priest for counseling. And this all with the blessing of the bishop. Together with the parish priest the person can be sent to someone the parish priest considers to be more spiritually developed. But, again, not to expect that other spiritual father to solve their problems in a hocus-pocus, magical method.

Everything that happens in our lives happens by God’s will, and this applies to our temptations and problems, and when we pray that we might defeat our temptations, for our spiritual well being, we always end our prayer with the words ‘may it be as the Lord wills for He knows better than we do what is good for us.’ And so… let us pray that God grant unto us a pure faith which, above all, means that we might place our trust in Him and His Church and those who have been appointed by the Church to concern themselves with our spiritual well being.