We read of Jesus performing many miracles, both in crowds and in more intimate settings, and it can seem to us that the people of his time should have believed in him more readily and more profoundly with evidence such as that.  And we wish that we could have seen those miracles ourselves, that we had been touched just as personally by Jesus.

But haven't we been?  I am not thinking of the times that we pray for God to grant us a healing or the easing of a family situation:  it is too hard to sort the supernatural out from the natural in such cases on an individual basis when our prayers are answered.  I refer rather to our direct and constant experience of God in our lives, how he walks with us at every moment and wherever we go.

Even though his touch is gentle and his soft words audible only to those who listen attentively, we do not leave our prayer and move into our daily lives without being changed by his presence, not in a visible or superficial way but deep down where we really live and grow.  I would consider the way that God has changed me in particular over the years to be nothing short of supernatural, nothing a rational or natural cause could sufficiently explain.  Beyond my very existence being God's first (but not greatest) gift to me, his continuing presence, love, and guidance, his care for someone as hidden and insignificant as each of us is, is his greatest and most commonplace miracle.

I think that this is a good part of what Mary meant in her "Magnificat," although she was far more aware of God's ready and active presence than we are.

Let us look then not at some other time or in some other place for God's miracles or his action in this world but in the most obvious and important place, our very own lives.