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CHOSEN TO HEAL: NEW BOOK DESCRIBES MIRACLES WITH SIX ALLEGED 'HEALERS'

We live in a time when miracles are too often set aside -- far too often -- by a society that equates elite standing with scientific skepticism -- not scrutiny, which is terrific, not discernment, but negation.

We see this across the board and how it exerts an influence even on the Church.

To believe is somehow taken as an indicator of diminutive intellectuality.

It was this way with two of the Church's foremost "intellects": Saint Thomas Aquinas and Saint Augustine.

Toward the end of his life, however, Aquinas had a mystical experience (a glimpse of eternity) after which he intoned that everything he had written, in light of the experience, was "like straw."

Do many write (or blog) "straw" in our day?

As for Saint Augustine, as related by Laura Wright, in the new book, Chosen To Heal (which recounts six rather amazing current healers), "Early in his ministry Saint Augustine wrote in De Vera Religione ("On True Religion") that miracles like those recounted in the Bible had ended soon after Jesus' death, 'lest the mind should always seek visible things.'

"Saint Augustine dramatically changed his position when he personally encountered miraculous events. In City of God he writes about the miracle of Innocentia, a respected citizen and holy woman who doctors diagnosed with advanced breast cancer. Saint Augustine wrote that 'she turned for help to God alone, in prayer.' In a dream she was told to wait in the church for the first woman who came out after receiving Baptism, and to ask this woman to make the Sign of the Cross over her breast. Innocentia followed these instructions and was miraculously healed."

Augustine urged her -- and everyone -- who encounters an "astounding" event to make it known.

And so it should be in our own time!

Instead, we shove them, notes Wright, into a box that says "amazing things that happened in the past."

For those with eyes to see, with ears to hear, for those who actually journey to, for example, apparition sites (such as Betania, Kibeho, and Medjugorje), it is clear that what occurred centuries ago -- thousands of years ago -- still occurs in our own time (despite our best efforts at declaiming it).

The examples in this book show that -- and inspire.

With all healing, we always urge prayer and fasting before a laying-on-of-the-hands. Discernment, and protection, are important. Fasting potentiates prayer.

But we must balance that with faith.

When we do, the miraculous occurs.

There are three priests who are healers in this book. One, from India, had a near-death experience during which he met his guardian angel, as well (allegedly) as Jesus, Who told him, "I want you to go back to the world. In your second life you will be an instrument of peace and healing to my people. You will walk in a foreign land and you will speak a foreign tongue. Everything is possible for you with My Grace."

There is an Iraqi-born man, Tom Naemi, of Detroit.

He received his gift of healing -- again, we must always say, "alleged" healing (though not with cynicism) -- while he was doing a fifteen-year stint in prison for gang-related issues.

Tom too had dreams of Jesus -- "conversing with Him and telling Him which parts of the Bible he most loved to read."

Around this time, there was a Holy Spirit seminar that Tom participated in, and soon after, there behind bars, "Tom woke up and went about his normal prison routine -- he slapped peanut butter and honey on toast and poured some hot water for coffee. He put on his ear phones, turned on the news, and finished making his sandwich.

"He was only halfheartedly listening to the reporter who said the word 'God,'" writes Lauren.

"But at that moment, when 'God' was uttered, a strong wind accompanied by a loud buzzing sound rushed into Tom's cell. It felt as if it went right through him and his body temperature began to rise dramatically.

"Tom called out to his cellmate and friend, 'Ray! Jesus is in the house!"

We must balance scrutiny with faith.

When we're cynical, we close the door.