What followed is a startling series of events that lend weight to the notion of protection for those who pray for God's help. Monteagudo, 64 and a Miami resident for 40 years, said she believes that if any of those moments had gone differently she would not be alive today. Let me use a report from CNN to describe what happened.
Before she went to bed she had lit a prayer candle before an icon of Our Lady of Guadelupe, and so by that action asking Mary, Jesus' mother, to intercede before God on her behalf.
But after she saw the huge crack Monteagudo went into overdrive. "Something inside me said run", she said." You have to run to save your life." The first help toward her quick escape was that the night before she had put her pills and credit cards into her purse because she knew she had to get up early in the morning. Quickly she put on clothes, grabbed her phone and purse, blew out the candle and left her condo.
She knew not to take the elevator but didn't know that the emergency stairs were just beside her unit, so she went to the farthest set of stairs instead.
"If I knew that, maybe I would have taken that one," Monteagudo said.
But as she was flying down the six floors of stairs, pleading with God to let her see her sons and grandsons again, she heard the sound of the tower she lived in collapsing. If she had been in the stairs closest to her home, she likely would have been crushed, her son, Andres Alvarez, said.
"She had to wake up early the next day, the next morning," Alvarez said. "She didn't take her sleeping pill because she was afraid she was going to oversleep. If it wasn't for that open door... if it wasn't for that wind... if she hadn't seen that crack... she wouldn't be here telling the story."
If a person is open to the wider principle of letting the eyes see and the ears hear, the "what ifs" do pose the question: Did God answer Iliana Monteagudo's prayers? Only God knows the answer.
In one way it is strange that Jesus, though understanding that God is all-knowing and all-powerful, directed everyone to pray for what they need - "And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith” (Matthew 21:22). He used the parable of the persistent widow and the evil judge to urge not to give up when prayers are not answered in the way and time we expect.
A couple of preachers this Sunday had insights into how a person's faith, or that of someone close to them, was very much involved in Jesus' miracles, and how this is so in our lives, too. The gospel reading was about Jesus going to Nazareth, and his former neighbours did not accept him as an authoritative teacher and healer, though they knew of his miracles elsewhere - he did cure a few sick people there, though.
What's involved is a "faith dialogue" with God. God offers, but we have to accept the offer. With an openness of heart and mind, miracles can happen. The message on Sunday was: "Let go of a scepticism that is born of limited expectations."
With Jesus' miracles he repeatedly told the cured person: "Go, your faith has healed-saved you." We can go to Jesus in hope and fearlessness.
The twin ideas of hearing and seeing are closely linked to the concepts of learning and understanding, both hallmarks of life and intelligence. However, all of us have that inclination to block out what we might see, to talk over what we might hear, and so shut our heart to what we need to understand. This is where repentance and metanoia (Greek for turning around) come in. The prophets knew their message was usually not accepted because their people were rebellious (Ezekiel 2:2-5). Isaiah (6:9-10) and Jesus (Matthew 13:13) were saddened... "because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand".
"We must not delimit the power of God to act and save...Everything is pure grace and God has the power to do everything... [so] 'if our faith is weak, all we need to do is to imitate the father whose child was suffering from epilepsy. He said to Jesus, 'I believe; help my unbelief'" (Mark 9:24).
To "delimit" means to "determine the limits or boundaries" of something. To avoid blocking our hearts and minds to the spiritual is a real challenge when the main players in society have been captured by the secular mindset and, in turn, they turn their firepower on us and want us in the same chains of conformity as themselves. "Secular" means being being directed away from the spiritual order of life to have a focus only on the material and what is of this earth. This is very damaging to human wholeness. Conversely, a "spiritual" mindset is all enveloping and open to all possibilities.
To a Washington Post reporter, Monteagudo described her abrupt awakening this way: “It’s like something supernatural woke me up. I felt something strange..." Before leaving the apartment, "I blew out the candle that I light every night for Our Lady of Guadalupe”.
“I was afraid I was going to be crushed,” she said, adding: “I kept going, screaming, ‘God, help me, please help me. I want to see my sons, I want to see my grandsons, I want to live, please help me, God.'"
Monteagudo thought about all the things she lost: wedding photos, first Communion photos, kids’ birthday photos. "I lost everything, I don’t have a past,” she said. “But I say thank God, I’m still alive.”
Clearly, there has been a dialogue of faith in this woman's life, and it continued during her short but horrifying ordeal.
A final point is that God can perform whatever wonders he wishes, at any time he desires, but he usually only performs a miracle when faith is present in a person's heart and mind. As in Nazareth, it's hard to envisage Jesus, the Creator God, healing someone who outright rejects him. The way to bridge the gap in our dialogue with God is to cultivate whatever tender shoots of faith that we have still alive from our religious upbringing, or that we find springing up as we experience the mysteries of the human journey.
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