Signs & wonders
Garvey, John
Signs & wonders he Gospel accounts of Jesus' miracles make it clear that there is something almost ironic about them: the blind see, the paralytics walk—but what really matters (and what looks...
...Bongiorno, a legal secretary, with & seven-year-old daughter, had no previous record, but said she had been using drugs for ten years...
...It also shows bow good can work almost by a kind of contagion...
...It takes these overt, dramatic demonstrations of Jesus' power to indicate that he has the authority to do the really important thing: the forgiveness of sin, breaking down the barrier that keeps human beings from their fullness, their true vocation, which is to be in communion with God...
...The deaths hit close to home: people is my parish knew Father Demetrios Frangos and Father Germanos Stavropoulos...
...They looked almost crushed...
...George Frangos's response to a terrible personal loss is the greater miracle...
...George Frangos has mentioned his father, and what his father would have wanted, in several interviews with the press...
...On March 17 two priests returning from a meeting of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese were killed as they sat at a stop-light in Queens, New York, waiting for the light to change...
...His mother supplied flowers to our church, and lived with her son in our neighborhood George Frangos, Father Demetrios's son, responded to the death of his father in an astonishing way: "The last thing my father would have wanted was to make an example of [Ms...
...She didn't set out to kill two priests...
...Father Germanos was particularly close to some of them...
...All they could say is, "We're sorry, she is a good girl...
...She didn't mean to do this...
...john garvey 10...
...Frangos wants Bongiomo to avoid a long sentence, for the sake of her daughter...
...Close to the tkne of the death of the two priests there was a report of a weeping icon at a Coptic Orthodox church in Brooklyn...
...Like the healing miracles of Jesus, this may indeed be wonderful but only if it points to something deeper...
...Frangos has offered to provide a lawyer to help her fight the murder charges...
...Lisa Bongiomo, apparently high on PCP, drove into their car, killing both men instantly...
...What this story shows, I think, is not only a man who is extraordinarily capable of forgiveness...
...The response was outrage, tabloid headlines with phrases like "priest killer...
...Bongiomo]," Newsday (March 26) quotes him as saying...
...There are saints (Basil is one of them) whose families were filled with saints...
...lisa Bongiomo's parents attended the wake for the two priests and asked if they could speak with George Frangos...
...They were stooped with grief," he said...
...Saint Seraphim of Sarov said, "Acquire inward peace, and thousands around you will find their salvation...
...Signs & wonders he Gospel accounts of Jesus' miracles make it clear that there is something almost ironic about them: the blind see, the paralytics walk—but what really matters (and what looks so much less significant to the onlookers) is that their sins are forgiven...
...She has been charged with murder aad several other felonies...
...It is extremely important that her child be told that we forgive her mother...
...Sometimes forgiveness takes on flesh in ways that reveal it as the miracle it is...
...We have to look after the innocent one, the child...
...there are communities who can be moved to generous action by one or two holy people...
...This is a woman who is anguished and troubled to begin with and the drugs in her own mind seem to keep her life together...
Vol. 121 • April 1994 • No. 8
