Expecting Miracles, the Conversion of Ronda Chervin

If you were to stop and reflect, I suspect you would be able to cite examples of impactful and miraculous things that have happened in your life.  Why does God allow miracles?  So that we may know that He is real, that He loves us, and that He wants to be in a relationship with us.

This fundamental knowledge is the cornerstone of experiencing miracles. Expecting miracles in our lives is faith in action.

One of the best Scripture examples of a faith that leads to miracles is the faith of the centurion in Matthew’s gospel.

When he entered Capernaum, a centurion approached him and appealed to him saying, ‘Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, suffering dreadfully.’ He said to him, ‘I will come and cure him.’ The centurion said in reply, ‘Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof; only say the word and my servant will be healed. For I too am a person subject to authority with soldiers subject to me. And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and to another ‘Come here,’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.’ When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, ‘Amen, I say to you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith.’…And Jesus said to the centurion, ‘You may go; as you have believed, let it be done for you.’ And at that very hour [his] servant was healed (Matthew 8: 5-10, 13).

The more faith we have, the more we understand miracles are everywhere, and we begin to expect them in everything. When God is the center of our lives, we realize He is constantly working miracles.

However, no matter how many miracles we may experience, we can quickly forget what God has done. We may begin to doubt and lose our trust in Him—that God can and will help us in our distress. Remembering our faith, we can again recognize that miracles are tools of love. They teach us of God’s love, and they happen in God’s way and in God’s time.

When we allow our Lord to use us in His miracles, we will experience miraculous events on a routine basis. John’s gospel reminds us that God chooses us.

It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you (John 15:16).

I look for God’s healing love every time I pray with someone. Many times, the primary purpose of the prayer is spiritual. Often it leads to physical healing.

A great example of God’s healing love is Matthew’s account of the paralytic.

And…people brought to him a paralytic lying on a stretcher. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Courage, child, your sins are forgiven…Which is easier, to say “Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk?’ But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins’—he then said to the paralytic, ‘Rise, pick up your stretcher, and go home.’ (Matthew 9: 2, 5-6).

When we pray over people and they are healed spiritually, mentally, emotionally or physically, that is a miracle. When we pray with someone and she turns to God through healing prayer, that is a miracle!

Amazingly, in the story of the paralytic, Jesus gives us instructions on how His miracles work. Jesus wants to heal us and he wants us to pray over the afflicted so they will recover. But Jesus first heals the paralytic spiritually, revealing that when we pray for the sick, the most important prayer is for their spiritual well-being.

The healing of God’s people demonstrates His great compassion for each of us. God loves us so much and desires for us to live life fully and abundantly.

Do we choose to surrender to His love today and every day? Do we ask for His healing spiritually, emotionally, mentally and physically? Do we expect God will heal us and do we believe in His miracles? Praise God, now and forever!

Ronda Chervin

The purpose of God’s miracles is to bring people to a conversion of the heart.  The following is the conversion story of Ronda Chervin, Ph.D.  Ronda is a professor of philosophy and spirituality, a dedicated widow, a great-grandmother, the author of many books about Catholic living and a presenter on Catholic radio and TV.

It has to be a miracle if an atheist with Communist parents (who became anti-Communist informers) becomes a Catholic!

My father’s ancestry included secret Jewish Masons. My mother’s ancestry included wild Russian Jewish anarchists.

But Jesus wanted me and my twin sister and other family members to become Catholics and here is how He did it.

In New York City in the 50s I started trying to find the meaning of life through philosophy. Since the professors were mostly atheist skeptics, I didn’t get far. By 21, I wanted to give up. I couldn’t find truth through philosophy and I couldn’t find love through love affairs, so why bother to live just to suffer?

One day, I was looking at an old tapestry of Rafael in the Vatican Museum called The Miraculous Catch of Fish. Suddenly the worn face of Jesus turned alive and looked at me. And the next day, the face of Pope Pius XII blessing the disabled people in St. Peter’s Square had the same expression as that of Jesus in the tapestry!

Soon after that occurred, the Holy Spirit nudged my mother to watch a TV show called The Catholic Hour. On this show were Alice and Dietrich von Hildebrand.  They talked about truth and love. I wrote them saying I wanted truth and love, could they help me?

Within half a year I was studying Catholic philosophy at Fordham University and experiencing the love of a remarkable community of loving daily Mass Catholics. By 21, I was baptized.

Thank you, God the Father, for all the miracles that led to my joy to be in the Catholic Church.