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From: jhpb@granjon.garage.att.com
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Do dead saints interact with us?
Message-ID: <Jan.27.03.09.51.1991.19121@athos.rutgers.edu>
Date: 27 Jan 91 08:09:53 GMT
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Barry Olson wrote:

    I have a tough time believing that the dead saints have any part in
    our growth or completion here on earth.

The following is from "The City of God", written by St. Augustine around
420 AD.  I got my (unabridged, it's over 800 pages) copy in a
Waldenbooks or B. Dalton for about $10.  St. Augustine was a bishop in
Hippo, North Africa.

In book 22, there are about a dozen pages of miracles of various sorts.
I will relate one in full:

    There was a fellow townsman of ours at Hippo, Florentius, an old
    man, religious and poor, who supported himself as a tailor.  Having
    lost his coat, and not having means to buy another, he prayed to the
    Twenty Martyrs, who have a very celebrated memorial shrine in our
    town, begging in a distinct voice that he might be clothed.  Some
    scoffing young men, who happened to be present, heard him, and
    followed him with their sarcasm as he went away, as if he had asked
    the martyrs for 50 pence to but a coat.  But he, walking on in
    silence, saw on the shore a great fish, gasping as if just cast up,
    and having secured it with the good-natured assistance of the
    youths, he sold it for curing to a cook of the name of Catosus, a
    good Christian man, telling him how he had come by it, and receiving
    for it 300 pence, which he laid out in wool, that his wife might
    exercise her skill upon, and make into a coat for him.

    But, on cuttting up the fish, the cook found a gold ring in its
    belly; and forthwith, moved with compassion, and influenced, too, by
    religious fear, gave it up to the man, saying, "See how the Twenty
    Martyrs have clothed you."

Here is a summary of all the miracles related to saints:

    A blind man is cured by the martyrs of Milan, Sts. Gervase and
    Protase, when St. Ambrose, bishop of Milan, discovers their tomb.
    (St. Ambrose was the instrument of St. Augustine's conversion.)

    A possessed man is cured in a shrine of the same martyrs, in North
    Africa.

    "Others also were cured there, but of them it were tedious to
    speak."

    A blind woman was cured by the relics of St. Stephen. [the deacon in
    Acts]

    A bishop was cured "while carrying in procession some relics of
    the same martyr."

    A priest is cured of the stone by the relics of St. Stephen.

    The same priest is later raised from the dead by laying a cloak
    from the oratory of St. Stephen on his corpse.

    A man with a great aversion to the Christian religion is converted
    by a relative who goes and prays at St. Stephen's shrine, and
    bringing back some flowers from it, lays them on his hed at night,
    while he sleeps.  "As long as he remained in life, these words were
    ever on his lips: 'Christ, receive my spirit,' though he was not
    aware that these were the last words of the most blessed Stephen
    when he was stoned by the Jews."

    two men cured of the gout at the same shrine

    A boy crushed by a wagon near another shrine of St. Stephen is
    miraculously healed when his mother immediately lays him at the feet
    of the martyr's shrine.

    a woman restored to life by a dress of hers brought from a shrine
    of St. Stephen

    another woman restored to life when her father, after praying for
    her fervently at St. Stephen's shrine, brings back a dress to her.
    [This seems to have been a custom, judging by what I'm reading
    here.]

    another young man restored to life by being "anointed with the oil
    of the same martyr."

    "Likewise Eleusinus, a man of tribunitian rank among us, laid his
    infant son, who had died, on the shrine of the martyr, which is in
    the suburb where he lived, and, after prayer, which he poured out
    there with many tears, he took up his child alive."  [How many
    shrines to St. Stephen did they have in the region of Hippo,
    anyway?]

    "For were I to be silent of all others, and to record the miracles
    of healing which were wrought in the district of Calama and of Hippo
    by means of this martyr -- I mean the most glorious Stephen -- they
    would fill many volumes."

    a women cured of a long-standing serious illness by the prayers of
    St. Stephen.

    "One miracle was wrought among ourselves, which, though no greater
    than those I have mentioned, was yet so signal and conspicuouis,
    that I suppose there is no inhabitant of Hippo who did not either
    see or hear of it, none who possibly could forget it."  A man and
    his sister, one of 7 children cursed by their mother, restored to
    health at the shrine of St. Stephen, amidst a great concourse of
    people.

Here is how St. Augustine closes on the subject.  I reproduce it because
it addresses the question "Who is working all these miracles?".

    To what do these miracles witness, but to this faith which preaches
    Christ risen in the flesh, and ascended with the same into heaven?
    For the martyrs themselves were martyrs, that is to say, witnesses
    of this faith, drawing upon themselves by their testimony the hatred
    of the world, and conquering the world not by resisting it, but by
    dying.  For this faith they died, and can now ask these benefits
    from the Lord in whose name they were slain.  For this faith their
    marvellous constancy was exercised, so that in miracles great power
    was manifested as a result.  For if the resurrection of the flesh to
    eternal life had not taken place in Christ, and were not to be
    accomplished in His people, as predicted by Christ, or by the
    prophets who foretold that Christ was to come, why do the martyrs
    who were slain for this faith which proclaims the resurrection
    possess such power?

    For whether God Himself wrought these miracles by that wonderful
    manner of working by which, though Himself eternal, He produces
    effects in time; or whether He wrought them by servants, and if so,
    whether He made use of the spirits of martyrs as He uses men who are
    still in the body, or effects all these marvels by means of angels,
    over whom He exerts an invisible, immutable, incorporeal sway, so
    what is said to be done by the martyrs is done not by their
    operation, but only by their prayer and request; or whether,
    finally, some things are done in one way, others in another, and so
    that man cannot at all comprehend them -- nevertheless these
    miracles attest this faith which preaches the resurrection of the
    flesh to eternal life.

Joe Buehler