When I got to my inbox this morning, there was an email informing me that Fr. Jim Kiernan had died. One could write several books about Fr. Kiernan. He had a folksy way of delivering a homily, no doubt a product of the Irish appreciation for telling a story. Before I head out my door this morning, I’ll share one I remember.

“When I taught at St. Albert’s, sometimes the kids would ask me, ‘Father, how come there are no miracles anymore?’

I would tell them I don’t know. Maybe God at one time thought we needed miracles, and He simply doesn’t now. Maybe it was how He talked with us once, but now He talks in a different way. But naybe it has nothing to do with God at all.

Imagine, if you would, a world where everything was brown. Now, I don’t know the science behind that, I don’t know how such a world would work, but imagine it, in your mind, a world where everything was brown.

One day, here in Iowa, right in your own backyard, something green begins to grow. Can you even imagine that? A color no one had ever seen before begins to emerge right there, behind your house, in the midst of all that brown. Why think of how excited you kids would be.

Now you may live in the country, but you know how the news would travel. Your neighbors would come over first, and then those neighboring towns, and then bigger places like Council Bluffs and Omaha, all coming to your place to see what was growing in your yard.

Reporters would show up from the local paper and the local news channels. Once their stories hit, why it wouldn’t be long before the national press descended right there at your home, with an assortment of microphones in your face, their news trucks in your driveway, and helicopters hovering over your yard, trying to get a glimpse of this sprig of green.

Yes, sir. That would be big news for St Albert’s. How long, do you suppose, it would take for someone to utter, ‘It’s a miracle.’?

But you know what? It happens everyday, the whole world over, and no one even notices.”