and sow you will have the same result of your labor as I have had. You must know that above in heaven there is an Almighty God, who can do much more than we two can understand. And the peasant would be perfectly right. We daily see miracles performed by nature before our eyes, but we cease to wonder at them on account of their frequency and our long experience of them. And because we cannot understand how they are done, must we therefore deny their existence, and say that they are mere deceptions, ocular illusions? No; our common sense for bids us to say that! If, then, we must acknowledge that our poor, weak intellect is unable to cope with mere natural phenomena of daily occurrence, how much more readily should we not submit our reason in things that the Author of nature has undertaken to perform by His almighty power in the last days of the world?
God has wrought many miracles we do not understand; it will be just as easy for Him to raise the dead to life. And to stick to our subject, do you wish to learn the wonderful might of the voice of the Son of God over the dead? Then go in thought to the dead daughter of the ruler of the synagogue, to the widow’s son of Naim, to Lazarus, whose body had already begun to decay in the grave. The first of these Jesus took by the hand while He was still in the mortal body: “And taking the damsel by the hand, he saith to her: Damsel (I say to thee) arise.”[1] The second case cost Him just as few words: “And He came near and touched the bier. And He said: Young man, I say to thee, arise.”[2] In the third case He only spoke somewhat louder: “He cried with a loud voice: Lazarus, come forth.”[3] The command of this voice was enough to bring back the souls and unite them with the bodies they had left, and they who were dead became alive again in the presence of many spectators. Of the ruler’s daughter St. Mark says: “And immediately the damsel rose up, and walked.”[4] Of the young man St. Luke says: “And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak.”[5] Of Lazarus St. John says: “And presently he that had been dead came forth.”[6] At the death and resurrection of Christ did not many bodies of the saints, which had already long crumbled into dust, and whose ashes had been scattered over the earth, come out of their graves and appear living in the city of Jerusalem?
- ↑ Et tenens manum puellæ, ait illi: Puella (tibi dico), surge.—Mark v. 41.
- ↑ Accessit, et tetigit loculum. Et ait: Adolescens, tibi dico, surge.—Luke vii. 14.
- ↑ Voce magna clamavit: Lazare, veni foras.—John xi. 43.
- ↑ Et confestim surrexit puella, et ambulabat.—Mark v. 42.
- ↑ Et resedit qui erat mortuus, et cœpit loqui.—Luke vii. 15.
- ↑ Et statim prodiit qui fuerat mortuus.—John xi. 44.
