Miracle

IN HONOR OF "We Love Rocky Week," I want to share a story about Rocky and St. John's Baptist Church. In February, our pastor, David Powles, notified our small congregation of outstanding utility bills totaling $5,000. Rev. Powles asked for prayers to find a solution to our dilemma. Lo and behold, less than a week later, our church was contacted by people involved in filming the new Rocky movie. They paid us $600 a day to rent our church kitchen. We know the Lord works in mysterious ways, but never did we expect him to send "Rocky Balboa" to our rescue.

Why would anyone try to graft new branches onto America's favorite evergreen? The new Miracle on 34th Street looks as if a plantsman has added plastic boughs to the live Norwegian spruce at Rockefeller Center. Whether they're about angels or Santas, successful holiday movies transform doubters into believers. This is the basis of the 1947 Miracle on 34th Street, a heartwarmer that did not need to be updated, but nonetheless has been. That the remake is more consumed with leveraged buyouts and courtroom strategy than with faith and hope says something about the difference between 1994 and 1947.

A tearful Dan Reeves left a hospital yesterday, four days after quadruple bypass surgery, and called his recovery a miracle. The Atlanta Falcons coach said he had tried to ignore symptoms of a recurring heart problem, "but thank goodness I got it checked out. " During Sunday's 27-17 victory over New Orleans, the pain grew worse, he said. Team physician Charles Harrison, who normally doesn't accompany the team on road trips, happened to be at the game. "For some reason, and I believe it's a miracle, I mentioned it to Dr. Harrison.

Miracles? Miracles here, there and everywhere. Popular discussions of miracles have recently appeared in Time and Newsweek, in newspapers and periodicals of all types, on TV and radio, and in movies such as the Philadelphia-based "The Sixth Sense. " A more significant local example is the case of Katharine Drexel. A Philadelphia heiress, nun and social worker who died in 1955, Mother Drexel is nearing the end of the long process whereby a person is canonized a saint. The process hinged upon the recent official certification of two posthumous miracles attributed to her. That Mother Drexel was an admirable, compassionate and selfless woman who divested herself of her considerable fortune and made the world a better place, I have no doubt.

James McSherry, president of the Roman Catholic High School alumni association, and Paul Pincituro, the vice president, waited anxiously in the lobby of the archdiocesan offices yesterday afternoon while the school's seven trustees discussed the school's fate. So when word came that Cardinal John Krol had given the school a second chance, the two, who had organized a lobbying campaign with other alumni against the closing, were overjoyed. "We believe in miracles!" Pincituro exclaimed.

THE SPECTRUM home of the Broad Street Bullies, Dr. J and many other great athletes - may become just a memory. If its demise comes to fruition, it will be a sad occasion for many concert-goers and sports fans in the city of Philadelphia. But say it ain't so - will Ed Snider and his band of merry men really build a state-of-the-art complex for the people of the Delaware Valley with no public funding from the city of Philadelphia or commonwealth of Pennsylvania? The nerve of some people not wanting my tax dollars so they can become richer!

The first hint of trouble came as soon as Isiah Thomas limped into the press conference supported by a pair of crutches. "Will you be able to play tomorrow night?" a writer asked anxiously. "At this point," Thomas said, "I seriously doubt it. It hurts. "I guess I'm looking for a miracle. " The miracle, of course, would be if Thomas were to play for the Detroit Pistons tonight against the Los Angeles Lakers in the seventh and deciding game of the NBA Championship Series.

Here comes Veda Zuponcic, a red blur streaking through the corridors of Glassboro State College, her blunt-cut blond hair fluttering in the tail wind. She sprints past the music rehearsal rooms, waving. She nimbly sidesteps a knot of students at the turnoff for the Wilson Auditorium. As she prepares to clear the lobby, she decelerates slightly, but only to grasp a pair of hands and smile. The owner of the hands opens her mouth to speak. Too late. Zuponcic has regained her speed.

The devoted fans of Barbaro see the colt's recovery as a wonder that trumps even the "Miracle on 34th Street," and this holiday season they want to celebrate. The fence that surrounds the sprawling New Bolton Center in Kennett Square, where the Kentucky Derby winner has been recovering since May from his breakdown at the Preakness, has turned lately into a big Christmas shrine. Its theme: the miracle of Barbaro "The Miracle is Barbaro's Spirit," reads one. "May the angels of healing continue to wrap their wings of healing around you," says another.

SO, NFL FREE AGENCY starts tomorrow at 4 p.m., and Eagles fans, like fans everywhere, want their team to gobble up anybody who might help get the Birds to the Super Bowl. Just one problem with that. Who won the Super Bowl last month? The Giants. OK, name all the big-time free agents who contributed to that title. There was . . . ah, nobody. Not a single key contributor joined the G-men as a 2011 free agent. In fact, the Giants took some grief for that inactivity, back when the Eagles were snapping up all the "bargains" in the frenzied post-lockout free- agent bazaar.

DEAR ABBY : I married "Andy" a year ago. He has three children from a prior marriage. He had a vasectomy eight years ago, but promised he'd have it reversed so we could have a child together. He didn't get around to it, but I'm pregnant anyway. At first we felt it was our miracle baby. However, 15 weeks later, Andy is now "sure" the baby isn't his. Things have gotten so bad that I moved out of our house. Abby, I have NEVER been unfaithful. A paternity test will prove he's the father, but that can't be done until after our baby is born.

INDIANAPOLIS - Mario Manningham is no longer the New York Giants' forgotten receiver. Manningham emerged from the shadow of Hakeem Nicks and Victor Cruz with a catch that will rival David Tyree's Super Bowl helmet grab 4 years ago, helping the Giants knock off the New England Patriots, 21-17, in the NFL championship game last night. Manningham's catch wasn't as improbable as Tyree's grab that led the Giants to a 17-14 win over New England in 2008. It was just as clutch and just as timely, and Tyree was there to see it. Running a go pattern up the left sideline on a first-and-10 from the Giants' 12 and down 17-15, Manningham made a 38-yard, over-the-shoulder catch between two defenders and right in front of Patriots coach Bill Belichick to help set up Ahmad Bradshaw's game-winning, 6-yard run with 57 seconds to go. Belichick didn't hesitate to challenge the catch, also contested by defenders Sterling Moore and Patrick Chung.

THE TITLE isn't an exaggeration. It was something of a "Big Miracle," the way the plight of a family of gray whales, stranded under the Alaska ice, captivated the country and forced oil men and environmentalists, natives and Cold War foes to team up back in the waning days of the Reagan administration. And it's no small miracle that the story of that nearly forgotten moment makes for a delightful family movie. Political cynicism, media opportunism, dogmatic native "tradition," corporate greed and environmentalist stubbornness are each, in turn, dashed against this sunny Ken ("License to Wed")

Third in a series YOU ALMOST have to feel sorry for the Mets. Almost. Remember the Mets that stole Tom Glavine from the Phillies in 2002? The Mets that snatched Billy Wagner in 2006? Remember how former Expos genius Omar Minaya and Yankees royalty Willie Randolph were going to unseat the Braves for the next 2 decades? Remember Carlos Beltran and Carlos Delgado and Francisco Rodriguez? All gone. They couldn't even afford to retain one of their own best players in decades: Shortstop Jose Reyes never was likely to extend with the Mets, and now he's a . . . Marlin?

THE DECLINE of the Philadelphia region's Catholic school system is old news. In Philly alone, the Archdiocese now plans to close 18 elementary schools and two high schools. But between 2000 and 2010, the city lost 23 Catholic grade schools and two Catholic high schools, and total enrollments in Philly Catholic schools fell from about 50,000 to around 30,000. The city's public charter schools have more students than its Catholic schools. The decline would have been even steeper were it not for the influx of non-Catholic students - who are a quarter of the city's Catholic grade-school enrollment - and the tens of millions of dollars pumped into the Catholic school system by the Children's Scholarship Fund of Philadelphia, Business Leaders Organized for Catholic Schools and numerous family foundations and individual philanthropists.

WHO KNEW that the miracle that saved St. Cyril of Alexandria Elementary School was a brief stay of execution, not a permanent rescue? "Long term, it was not to be. But at least we held our own for a while," says Jim Gray, head of the development committee at St. Cyril parish, in Lansdowne, whose school's red doors will shut in June. "Every school around us closed, but we hung in there for six years. This time, we don't have a Tommy to rally us. " That would be Tommy Geromichalos, a faith-filled child who led a parish and its demoralized members through a period of thrilling dynamism that felt like a Christian transformation.

DENVER - One of the most storied NFL playoff teams ran into a rejuvenated Tim Tebow and the Denver Broncos. Sorry, Pittsburgh Steelers. The magic is back. Tebow connected with Demaryius Thomas on an electrifying 80-yard touchdown pass on the first play of overtime and the Broncos defeated the stunned Steelers, 29-23, in the AFC wild-card game on Sunday. Wild doesn't begin to describe it. The play took 11 seconds and was the quickest ending to an overtime in NFL history.

The life of Václav Havel, who died Sunday at age 75, shows poetry can shape the destiny of nations and change the course of history. Dazzled by dollar signs, we in the United States tend not to take the art of language seriously. But Havel (who was awarded the 1994 Liberty Medal) knew the potency of words to mold the future. For more than five decades - in the tradition of Mohandas Gandhi and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., John Lennon and Pope John Paul II - Havel used words to do just that.

YAZOO CITY, Miss. - In this quiet little town where the hill country rises up from the pancake-flat Delta farmlands, reminders of the killer tornado are all around. The bent flagpoles and broken crosses, snapped trees and abandoned houses, all claim a spot in the landscape now. Among the vestiges of destruction, a resurrection of sorts has taken shape in Yazoo City since the 2010 storm. The Hillcrest Baptist Church, destroyed first by fire, then by nature, has been rebuilt on a hillside at the edge of town.