We live in a world at a time where miracle and majesty are dismissed as fantasy and mundane. Our senses have been numbed by the constant barrage of the unbelievable and the bizarre to the point where we no longer see or believe in miracles. Our sight has become so diminished by optic overload from digitally-enhanced movies and video games that we have become blind to the awesome beauty and majesty of God’s creation. Our minds have been corrupted, filled with dark and forbidding images from books, films, and games that focus on evil rather than the good.

We have lost our moral compass, lost our capacity to feel, to understand the difference between right and wrong, moral and immoral, good versus evil. Heroes have been replaced by villains, evil wins over good, honor and decency are weaknesses, lies have replaced the truth, reality is no longer relevant, and faith and God are for the ignorant and uninformed. Today is 1984, nearly thirty years after the fact.

A few years ago a small group of teenage boys were attending a three-day confirmation retreat. The group was comprised mostly of inner-city youth who had never been far away from their neighborhoods; none had ever been to the pristine blue waters of the lake nestled high in the mountains.

On Saturday, shortly after lunch, they were led by a young priest to the shores of the lake, strewn with immense boulders worn smooth by the waters and the passage of time. Arriving at a point that provided a panoramic view of the lake and the mountains that surround it, the priest asked the boys to find a seat on the rocks. He had prepared a few remarks but upon looking around he paused and then told the group that rather than him talking he had decided to give up his time to God. He asked the boys, ages 13-15, full of youthful energy and restlessness, to spend thirty minutes in silence, quietly listening to what God might have to say to them.

There are miracles, big and small, that happen every day, all we have to do is open our eyes to see them and our hearts to experience them. That day was filled, filled with miracles, some ancient, some new. For thirty minutes there was silence. There was no movement other than quiet breathing and eyes absorbing the ancient majesty and the wondrous miracle of what God had created. Young rambunctious energetic teenagers were miraculously transformed as God spoke to each one of the miracle of His creation.

There was another miracle present that day although few recognized it or even knew of it. The priest that led that group of boys over those huge boulders had only one leg, having lost a leg in a gang fight when he was a teenager. Raised in the inner city, he had gravitated to the gang life at an early age.

He had lost his leg and nearly his life, but then God found him and he found God. He realized that God had given him an opportunity to replace what he had lost with something good. He became a priest, helping others to find God. That day, at the lake, in the mountains, God found him and those boys found God. And those were miracles.