What miracle?

“THEY ARE undoing a miracle.”
So was the recounted-out Gov. Eddie T. Panlilio headlined in the newspaper that has pimp-primed him since the start of his political career.
Panlilio was of course referring to the Commission on Election’s Second Division in its declaration of former Board Member Lilia Pineda as the winner in the 2007 gubernatorial polls.
Panlilio – along with his greatly-reduced myrmidons – has always claimed his victory in 2007 as a miracle.
“This is not about me but about the people’s crusade. This is a divine crusade because God worked to unite us to work for good changes in our province…Kapampangans of good conscience cannot accept these accusations that we cheated our way to victory in 2007. We did not cheat. They are undoing a miracle.” Thus were the unsettled governor’s ululations quoted in the Panlilio-patronizing paper.
“I wonder what grade this dispensation-seeking, suspended priest got in Theology, or if he learned anything from his four years in that course.”
So sneered an almost-priest upperclassman of mine at the Mater Boni Consilii Seminary who went past third year Theology before seeing the inevitability that “it is not good for man to be alone,” and promptly sought the woman destined to restore his ribs to completion.
What has Panlilio’s studies in Theology got to do with the result of the Comelec recount?
“Too bad you reached only as far as Rhetorics, too removed from Theology to instantly see what I meant.” Condescended this effete snob of an intellectual.
Okay, educate ignorant me.
“Panlilio’s statement of ‘undoing a miracle’ is a contradiction in terms. A miracle undone is no miracle at all.”
Aha, I get the drift. Panlilio called the dramatic increase in quarry collections at the start of his term as a miracle. When the collections went on a downward spiral soon after, I wrote: “The miracle is a mirage.”
“No miracle, but a mirage there indeed. By its very essence, a miracle is an intervention of the divine, of God Herself working through, above, without or against created nature. Hence, even the miracles attributed to saints are the handiwork of God, the saints being mere instruments. What God has done, his mere creatures cannot undo. To believe otherwise is a negation of God.”
That’s veering toward agnosticism.
“Wrong. That’s an instance of atheism.”
Now, we’re talking. So what’s your take on the philosopher James Keller’s words: "The claim that God has worked a miracle implies that God has singled out certain persons for some benefit which many others do not receive implies that God is unfair…If God intervenes to save your life in a car crash, then what was He doing in Auschwitz?"
“So why does God allow bad things to happen to good people? So they can be even better. “
Spoken like a true theologian there, philosophy be damned.
“In Panlilio’s case, the context of miracles adhere to the so-called Littlewood’s law: ‘That miracles do not exist, but are rather examples of low probability events that are bound to happen by chance from time to time.’”
Yes, apropos Panlilio’s “miracles,” I recall some readings to the effect that miracles are wielded by highly creative storytellers, devised to embellish the hero or the incident they – the kwentistas – themselves create so as to make them larger than life to effect the strongest impression, indeed, to shock and awe their audience.
“They are undoing a miracle.” The only revelation there is the face of Panlilio’s highly imaginative storyteller.
Undoing a miracle? There’s only Panlilio’s questioned governorship undone here. And that’s no miracle.