Magic and Mystery
Eighteenth Sunday of the Year. Fr Richard Joseph Ounsworth considers the nature of Christ’s miracles.
I remember when the Harry Potter series of books and films became popular, there was some concern among Christians that they might be harmful to the faith of children, who could confuse magic with reality. It seems to me that, aside from raising unrealistic expectation of how clear their complexions might be as teenagers, these things present no risk to children, because it is not children who confuse magic and reality, it is adults.
In particular, we are at risk of mistaking the reality of God for magic. Our Gospel reading today follows the feeding of the five thousand, a truly spectacular and remarkable feat, one of the signs in St John’s Gospel that point towards the identity of Jesus, and to how that identity is made clearest on the Cross. But, as with the Cross, Jesus did not perform this sign of miraculous feeding in order to be admired or to impress. The motivation of this, as of all his signs, is compassion. This is why he turned water into wine at Cana, this is why he healed the man born blind, and this is why he raised his friend Lazarus from the dead. Love.
It is this love which is made manifest on the Cross. Remember how, at the end of last week’s reading, Jesus had to escape from the crowd, which sought to take him by force make him king. This same crowd will later bay for his blood, crying out ‘we have no king but Caesar’, and have him taken by force to Calvary. There, he will be portrayed as a mockery of kingship, crowned with thorns, and with the words ‘King of the Jews’ over his head.
Today we discover what kind of king the crowds wanted Jesus to be. ‘You are not looking for me because you have seen the signs but because you had all the bread you wanted to eat’, Jesus tells them. A sign is something that points beyond itself – in this case, to the Cross, and through the Cross to the love of God. The signs Christ does are mysteries, food for the soul as it makes its journey into the unfathomable reality of the divine life which is love. But these people just want more bread and fish, more water turned to wine, more amazing sights to feed the belly and thrill the eyes. They want magic, not mystery.
What are the differences? Firstly, I think magic is something you go and watch. It is about admiration, gasping in amazement as you sit passively in your seat. But then you go home, fundamentally unchanged. Mystery, by contrast, is not something for a passive audience but something in which we must actively engage and enter into. The bread from heaven that Christ gives us in the Eucharist is not sent to us to help us go on living, here and now, this earthly life, it is bread for a journey, like the manna in the desert. Except that this journey is into our heavenly home, to which Saint Paul calls us in our second reading. It is new food for our new nature, the divine nature that God shares with us in Christ.
Secondly, magic is made to impress, but mystery to seduce. Jesus’s first sign, the wedding at Cana, results in his disciples believing in him (John 2:11). Jesus calls with authority, not with powerful displays but with a word of command, and it is the authority of his teaching and the extraordinary power of his love that draw followers to him. Jesus’s disciples came to recognise that they had seen the clearest demonstration of his power when he was perfectly weak, on the Cross, and they too knew that it is when we are weak that we are strong, as God’s power works in us. The profoundly good news of the Gospel is that we do not have to be spectacular, we just have to believe.
This is because it is power that it at the heart of magic, the power to bend reality to one’s will. But this is not the nature of God’s power. God does not bend reality to his will, like a great cosmic spoonbender. He doesn’t change reality at all, he causes it, holds it in being at every moment. He is the creator, not the wizard in the sky, and the miracles of Jesus too are works of creation. The Eucharist is, we must insist, not magic bread but a new creation, and through God’s power and our participation in the Eucharist we too become a new creation. Jesus did not come to make us different but to make us new.
Of course, the final difference between mystery and magic is that magic is pretend. There is no harm in a little make-believe, a little escapism from time to time. But we come to Jesus not to escape from reality but to embrace it, as we come face to face with the mystery of God.
Readings: Exodus 16:2-4,12-15 | Ephesians 4:17,20-24 | John 6:24-35
Image: ‘Magic Book, the Door to the World of the Future, by AIArtShop, on deviantart.com (CC BY 3.0)
Michael
Thank you Richard – these are very helpful things you say for and great insights too.
Happy Feast day Brother!
Bethany Mulvey
I think this is interesting and the issues I am sure will become clearer and deeper as we find ourselves facing a Neo-pagan society where magic is no longer just entertainment in story books but one way pf pursuing occult spirituality. A glimpse can be gained by a brief search online. We can no longer take for granted a broadly Christian society where children were routinely baptised and taught at least basic Gospel stories. Many children today are unbaptised and reared in a pagan environment. When we have to face this I think Augustine’s ‘City of God’ and Aquinas teachings will be helpful – both had first hand experience of pagan society. A glimpse of Aquinas on some of the issues -Book I, Question 114, Article 4: Whether demons can lead men astray by means of real miracles?
Objection 1. It would seem that the demons cannot lead men astray by means of real miracles. For the activity of the demons will show itself especially in the works of Antichrist. But as the Apostle says (2 Thessalonians 2:9), his “coming is according to the working of Satan, in all power, and signs, and lying wonders.” Much more therefore at other times do the demons perform lying wonders.
Objection 2. Further, true miracles are wrought by some corporeal change. But demons are unable to change the nature of a body; for Augustine says (De Civ. Dei xviii, 18): “I cannot believe that the human body can receive the limbs of a beast by means of a demon’s art or power.” Therefore the demons cannot work real miracles.
Objection 3. Further, an argument is useless which may prove both ways. If therefore real miracles can be wrought by demons, to persuade one of what is false, they will be useless to confirm the teaching of the faith. This is unfitting; for it is written (Mark 16:20): “The Lord working withal, and confirming the word with signs that followed.”
On the contrary, Augustine says (83; [Lib. xxi, Sent. sent 4, among the supposititious works of St. Augustine): “Often by means of the magic art miracles are wrought like those which are wrought by the servants of God.”
I answer that, As is clear from what has been said above (Question 110, Article 4), if we take a miracle in the strict sense, the demons cannot work miracles, nor can any creature, but God alone: since in the strict sense a miracle is something done outside the order of the entire created nature, under which order every power of a creature is contained. But sometimes miracle may be taken in a wide sense, for whatever exceeds the human power and experience. And thus demons can work miracles, that is, things which rouse man’s astonishment, by reason of their being beyond his power and outside his sphere of knowledge. For even a man by doing what is beyond the power and knowledge of another, leads him to marvel at what he has done, so that in a way he seems to that man to have worked a miracle.
It is to be noted, however, that although these works of demons which appear marvelous to us are not real miracles, they are sometimes nevertheless something real. Thus the magicians of Pharaoh by the demons’ power produced real serpents and frogs. And “when fire came down from heaven and at one blow consumed Job’s servants and sheep; when the storm struck down his house and with it his children–these were the work of Satan, not phantoms”; as Augustine says (De Civ. Dei xx, 19).
Reply to Objection 1. As Augustine says in the same place, the works of Antichrist may be called lying wonders, “either because he will deceive men’s senses by means of phantoms, so that he will not really do what he will seem to do; or because, if he work real prodigies, they will lead those into falsehood who believe in him.”
Reply to Objection 2. As we have said above (Question 110, Article 2), corporeal matter does not obey either good or bad angels at their will, so that demons be able by their power to transmute matter from one form to another; but they can employ certain seeds that exist in the elements of the world, in order to produce these effects, as Augustine says (De Trin. iii, 8,9). Therefore it must be admitted that all the transformation of corporeal things which can be produced bycertain natural powers, to which we must assign the seeds above mentioned, can alike be produced by the operation of the demons, by the employment of these seeds; such as the transformation of certain things into serpents or frogs, which can be produced by putrefaction.
On the contrary, those transformations which cannot be produced by the power of nature, cannot in reality be effected by the operation of the demons; for instance, that the human body be changed into the body of a beast, or that the body of a dead man return to life. And if at times something of this sort seems to be effected by the operation of demons, it is not real but a mere semblance of reality.
Now this may happen in two ways.
Firstly, from within; in this way a demon can work on man’s imagination and even on his corporeal senses, so that something seems otherwise that it is, as explained above (111, 3,4). It is said indeed that this can be done sometimes by the power of certain bodies.
Secondly, from without: for just as he can from the air form a body of any form and shape, and assume it so as to appear in it visibly: so, in the same way he can clothe any corporeal thing with any corporeal form, so as to appear therein. This is what Augustine says (De Civ. Dei xviii, 18): “Man’s imagination, which whether thinking or dreaming, takes the forms of an innumerable number of things, appears to other men’s senses, as it were embodied in the semblance of some animal.” This not to be understood as though the imagination itself or the images formed therein were identified with that which appears embodied to the senses of another man: but that the demon, who forms an image in a man’s imagination, can offer the same picture to another man’s senses.
Reply to Objection 3. As Augustine says (QQ. 83, qu. 79): “When magicians do what holy men do, they do it for a different end and by a different right. The former do it for their own glory; the latter, for the glory of God: the former, by certain private compacts; the latter by the evident assistance and command of God, to Whom every creature is subject.”
Brian Bricker OP
Brilliant and thank you very much for such a strong and helpful message!
Your parishioners are blessed by such great preaching!