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<\/a><\/p>\nIn college, I read a book that began to drastically change the way I thought about God and the ways in which God worked in the world.\u00a0 For a young person from a conservative Southern Baptist background, Leslie D. Weatherhead<\/a>\u2018s The Will of God<\/em><\/a> was a radical reading experience.\u00a0 Faced with theological inconsistencies during World War II, Weatherhead began re-thinking his concept of the will of God.\u00a0 His text, a series of sermons to victims of the war and their families, resonates decades later with anyone experiencing suffering or, perhaps, a series of debilitating doubts.\u00a0 I recently watched two films that reminded me of Weatherhead\u2019s text.\u00a0 Both Saint Ralph<\/em> (2004) and The Third Miracle<\/em> (1999) deal, indirectly, with the will of God through their characters\u2019 pursuit of miracles or interactions with the miraculous.<\/p>\n Both Saint Ralph<\/em> and The Third Miracle<\/em> are feel-good-movies, of a sort.\u00a0 Yet neither of them offer easy answers or nicely cleaned up endings.\u00a0 Moreover, their main characters, Ralph and Father Shore, are complex people of faith who struggle with that faith, especially in light of restrictive dogma.\u00a0 Ralph suffers from (stereo?)typical Catholic guilt over his adolescent doings while Father Shore faces a much more existential crisis, doubting the very existence of God.\u00a0 Drunk, he visits his friend and fellow priest, Father John Leone (Michael Rispoli<\/a>), and in a fit of anger and despair cries, \u201cI don\u2019t want it to have all been for nothing!\u00a0 It better be goddamned true!\u201d\u00a0 Both of these characters act out their crises quite powerfully:\u00a0 they cry, scream, curse, and get drunk.\u00a0 Yet they never lose hope.<\/p>\n<\/a>Directed by Michael McGowan<\/a>, Saint Ralph<\/em><\/a> tells the story of Ralph Walker (Adam Butcher<\/a>), a Catholic teenager whose father died in World War II and whose mother is in the hospital, sick with cancer.\u00a0 A typical teenager, prone to the \u201csins of the flesh,\u201d headmaster Father Fitzpatrick (Gordon Pinsent<\/a> in another great performance) orders Ralph to join the cross country team to quell his sexual urges.\u00a0 Doctors told Ralph that it would take a miracle for his mother to recover.\u00a0 On the first day of cross country practice, Ralph\u2019s coach, Father George Hibbert (Campbell Scott<\/a>), mentions in passing that it would be a miracle if anyone from their team won the Boston Marathon.\u00a0 The dreamer that he is, Ralph puts two and two together and believes that if he trains for the marathon and wins that his mother will be healed.\u00a0 Thus begins a spiritual journey of sorts for several of the main characters.\u00a0 Ralph matures spiritually, physically, and emotionally; Father Hibbert re-discovers a long-lost passion; and Father Fitzpatrick embraces a suppressed aspect of his own spirituality.<\/p>\n<\/a>The Third Miracle<\/em>, directed by Agnieszka Holland<\/a> (who also directed three episodes of The Wire<\/em>), follows Father Frank Shore (Ed Harris<\/a>), a Catholic postulator who must verify or denounce reports of miracles in the process of canonization.\u00a0 We first meet Father Shore in the slums of Chicago and quickly learn that he has written a popular book on spirituality and has since taken something of a leave from the church.\u00a0 However, bound by vows of obedience, he must undertake the investigation of miraculous accounts of a blood-weeping statue and healings in the name of Helen O\u2019Regan, a faithful layperson who operated an orphanage for children outside Chicago.\u00a0 Father Shore struggles through a personal dark night of the soul, wracked with doubts and uncertainties about miracles and, moreover, the existence of God.\u00a0 Unfortunately, he is not helped by his superiors, Bishop Cahill (Charles Haid<\/a>) and Archbishop Werner (Armin Mueller-Stahl<\/a>), who seem all too quick to dispel reports rather than embrace them.\u00a0 Father Shore perseveres and discovers secrets about Helen O\u2019Regan\u2019s life that have direct connections to the life of one of his superiors.<\/p>\n<\/a>Both of these films offer up serious theological discussions regarding the will of God, miracles, and our relationship to the two.\u00a0 While the characters in Saint Ralph<\/em> never claim that Ralph\u2019s mom is sick because of the will of God or that her improvement would be the will of God, Ralph genuinely believes that he can participate in the miraculous\u2026that God <\/em>will heal her if he<\/em> wins the marathon.\u00a0 While this, in a way, seems childish, on another level, it signifies the importance, perhaps even the necessity, of our participation in God\u2019s work in the world.\u00a0 Yet Ralph does not win the Boston Marathon, coming in second by only the closest of margins.\u00a0 Three weeks later, his mother emerges from her coma.\u00a0 While this is an unexplainable event to the doctors, at least in the film, some viewers might attribute it to the work of God.\u00a0 Yet such a hypothesis also leads to a hypothetical question of its own:\u00a0 why do other cancer patients die or never emerge from their coma?\u00a0 What has God to do with them?<\/p>\n