On Mon, 16 Oct 2000, Cecilia Gaposchkin wrote:
>
> Dear learned ones- I'm hoping someone might help me out or a memory
> lapse. I have in my notes (for a lecture on saints) an example of Becket
> showing himself particularly petty in one of his miralces. But I forget
> the story, and I can't find it in the book I thought I got it from.
I'm not sure if it counts as petty; perhaps TB had good reason for this
response. But in one miracle a crippled boy who sleeps on top of TB's
tomb awaiting a miracle is wakened by the saint who says, "Why are you
lying on me? You certainly will not be healed. Go away. I'll do nothing
for you." The rejected boy has himself "taken elsewhere" to be healed.
This is from Book II, ch. 16 of the miracles. I'm quoting from E. A.
Abbott's translation, _St. Thomas of Canterbury, His Life and Miracles_
(1898).
There's another case (I don't have the reference at hand) where a
Christian woman who practices healing enters the house of a Jewish woman
to treat her bad foot with a bucket of water sanctified at TB's tomb.
But the bucket shatters into 3 pieces as soon as she sets foot in the
door, and she realizes that she should no longer be on friendly terms with
the woman. Likewise seems rather petty!
John S.
____________________________________________________________________________
John Shinners e-mail:[log in to unmask]
Professor Phone: (office): (219) 284-4494
Humanistic Studies Program Phone (dept.): (219) 284-4501
Saint Mary's College Fax: (219) 284-4716
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|