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Chapter 1

Are Miracles Really All That Important?

The Church has been enriched by the fruits of miracles from its very beginning. It was the miracles of Christ that invited people to follow him, and it was history’s greatest miracle — his resurrection — that changed the world forever. The apostles were emboldened by his mandate to work miracles and the prodigy of Pentecost that sent them on their way into the world. St. Paul’s life-altering vision put him on the path to become Christianity’s greatest evangelist, and the Roman emperor Constantine was first inspired to legalize Christianity in the year 312 after witnessing a vision in the sky of the IHS Christogram.⁵ Miracles big and small surround us, including the greatest one that happens every hour of every day in every country of the world: the Eucharist, bread and wine transformed into Christ’s body and blood, which has remained at the center of the Catholic Faith since its institution. The Catholic Church has always affirmed the importance of miracles and revelation and teaches that Christ’s works demonstrate that “the kingdom has already arrived on earth.”⁶

In many places in Scripture we are able to reflect on the role of the supernatural in our lives of faith. St. Paul, in writing to the Thessalonians, reminds the faithful to be open to miracles: “Do not quench the Spirit, do not despise prophesying, but test everything; hold fast what is good” (1 Thess 5:19–21). Christ worked many miracles of healing, but he did not seem to encourage the search for miracles: “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign shall be given to it except the sign of Jonah” (Mt 16:4). In the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, Christ announces that no messenger from the next world will be sent to the brothers of the rich man to encourage them to repent. “If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if some one should rise from the dead” (Lk 16:31). Finally, Christ’s words to Thomas are as relevant today as they were when the apostle touched Christ’s wounded side: “You have believed because you have seen me. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe” (Jn 20:29).

The Catholic Church acknowledges that Sacred Scripture is bolstered and given a divine guarantee through the miracles of Christ, most importantly his resurrection from the dead. We read in Vatican II’s Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation:

To see Jesus is to see His Father (John 14:9). For this reason Jesus perfected revelation by fulfilling it through His whole work of making Himself present and manifesting Himself: through His words and deeds, His signs and wonders, but especially through His death and glorious resurrection from the dead and final sending of the Spirit of truth. Moreover He confirmed with divine testimony what revelation proclaimed, that God is with us to free us from the darkness of sin and death, and to raise us up to life eternal. (no. 4)

The miracles of Christ and the subsequent works of the apostles in his name come down to us through Sacred Scripture, which is considered to be public revelation, as it is valid for all time and meant for all. Miracles and messages received after the death of the last evangelist, John — even extensively studied and Church-authorized spiritual insights given to history’s greatest saints — are considered private revelation. In his Message of Fatima, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (the future Benedict XVI) reminded Catholics of the importance of public revelation (as opposed to private revelation) found in Scripture:

The term “public Revelation” refers to the revealing action of God directed to humanity as a whole and which finds its literary expression in the two parts of the Bible: the Old and New Testaments…. It is valid for all time, and it has reached its fulfillment in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In Christ, God has said everything, that is, he has revealed himself completely, and therefore revelation came to an end with the fulfillment of the mystery of Christ as enunciated in the New Testament.⁷

In his apostolic exhortation Verbum Domini, he speaks of the unique value of private revelation:

The value of private revelations is essentially different from that of the one public revelation: the latter demands faith…. Private revelation is an aid to this faith, and it demonstrates its credibility precisely because it refers back to the one public revelation…. A private revelation can introduce new emphases, give rise to new forms of piety, or deepen older ones. It can have a certain prophetic character and can be a valuable aid for better understanding and living the Gospel at a certain time; consequently it should not be treated lightly. It is a help which is proffered, but its use is not obligatory.⁸

The dogmatic constitution Dei Filius from Vatican I reminds us that miracles are external signs provided by God as arguments on behalf of revelation.⁹ The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), in paragraph 156, thus relates this expression of the purpose of miracles:

So “that the submission of our faith might nevertheless be in accordance with reason, God willed that external proofs of his Revelation should be joined to the internal helps of the Holy Spirit” (Dei Filius 3: DS 3009). Thus the miracles of Christ and the saints, prophecies, the Church’s growth and holiness, and her fruitfulness and stability “are the most certain signs of divine Revelation, adapted to the intelligence of all”; they are “motives of credibility” (motiva credibilitatis), which show that the assent of faith is “by no means a blind impulse of the mind” (Dei Filius 3008–3010; cf. Mk 16 20; Heb 2:4).

To deny the existence or the possibility of miracles is an error that would put a person outside of communion with the Church (anathema):

If anyone shall say that miracles are impossible, and therefore that all the accounts regarding them, even those contained in Holy Scripture, are to be dismissed as fables or myths; or that miracles can never be known with certainty, and that the divine origin of Christianity cannot be proved by them; let him be anathema.¹⁰

For all the caution that is necessary to relegate miraculous phenomena to their proper role as supports that lead the faithful to Christ, it would be a mistake to underestimate the importance of miracles in the life and history of the Church. Catholic philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand (1889–1977) reminds us:

One of the great purposes of Vatican II was to enliven the religious life of the faithful. True enlivenment requires that the supernatural spirit of Christ be fully thrown into relief. That means eliminating any blurring of the distinction between the natural and supernatural.¹¹

Throughout the Old Testament we hear stories of God’s intervention to protect his chosen people. There are stories of divine favor for great saints such as Joan of Arc, who received inspired messages and protection in battle. In the famous Battle of Lepanto in 1571, Christian forces overcame great odds and the formidable Turkish fleet with all of Europe praying the Rosary and General Andrea Doria sailing with a copy of the miraculous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe in his ship’s stateroom. In a few select Marian apparition accounts, Our Lady has come to the aid of those in need in time of war. In April 1900, local accounts report that when the Boxer Rebellion broke out in China, ten thousand hostile soldiers attacked the small, impoverished mission village of Dong Lu, home to a thousand Christians. The Virgin Mary appeared in the sky as a beautiful lady in white, surrounded by light. The soldiers, in a senseless rage, started to shoot into the sky. Then the attackers suddenly fled, frightened, when a fiery horseman — perhaps St. Michael — chased them out of the village, and they never returned. As recently as 2009, Russians and Georgians reported a miraculous apparition of the Virgin in the sky during military actions in South Ossetia that ended the battle.¹²

The Faith has not only been protected by miracles but has grown as a result of them as well. Many conversions can be traced to the influence of the supernatural and in fact are some of the spiritual fruits that are assessed in declaring phenomena worthy of belief. Nine million baptisms in Mexico City alone in the seven or eight years following the events in Guadalupe in 1531 speak to this important role, as accounted by Franciscan priest and early historian of New Spain Toribio de Benavente Motolinia in 1541.

Countless stories of conversions involving the Miraculous Medal given to St. Catherine Labouré in a vision on November 27, 1830, attest to this as well. In perhaps the most famous account from 1842, Marie Alphonse Ratisbonne, an anti-Catholic Jew, befriended a baron in Rome and began wearing a Miraculous Medal as a simple test. While waiting for his friend in the church Sant’Andrea delle Fratte, Ratisbonne saw a vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary. He then quickly converted to Catholicism, joined the priesthood, and began a ministry for the conversion of Jews.

Another prime example, this one without Church approval, occurred in 1944 in Mississippi, when Claude Newman was imprisoned for a shooting and was sentenced to death. Given a Miraculous Medal to wear by his cellmate, he later had a glowing vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who advised him to summon a priest. His conversion quickly followed, and the night before his execution, he celebrated with other prisoners as he awaited his eternal reward.

The spiritual fruits of a miracle can take a more concrete form. Some of the largest churches in the world, for example, are built as a result of holy visions. Four of the twelve largest church buildings in the world (by square footage) have their origins in appearances of the Mother of God: the Basilica of Our Lady of Good Health in India, the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, Nuestra Señora de la Aparecida in Brazil, and Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. One of the great churches of Rome, Santa Maria Maggiore was built after an apparition of Our Lady of the Snows in 358, according to pious tradition. Legend says that she appeared to both Pope Liberius and a wealthy childless couple who then donated the money for construction after seeing a floor plan of the future church outlined in snow on a hill. Although Pope Sixtus III¹³ did not include the story when he rededicated the basilica a few centuries later and the reference to the legend (and the title Sanctae Mariae ad Nives, “Our Lady of the Snows”) was removed in the 1969 revision of the General Roman Calendar,¹⁴ the faithful still honor the miraculous story when, during the memorial feast day, white rose petals are dropped in a snow-like shower from the dome of the Chapel of Our Lady.

The fact that the church of Santa Maria Maggiore resulted from a vision is far from unique. A great number of the 2,500 reported Marian apparitions throughout history have involved the request that a chapel, a church, or a sanctuary be built in Our Lady’s honor. In “the Great Event” of the apparitions in Guadalupe in 1531, according to the earliest account, the Nican Mopohua, Our Lady asks St. Juan Diego:

I wish that a temple be erected here quickly, so I may therein exhibit and give all my love, compassion, help, and protection, because I am your merciful mother, to you, and to all the inhabitants on this land and all the rest who love me, invoke and confide in me; listen there to their lamentations; and remedy all their miseries, afflictions and sorrows.

Some of the other apparition events around the world that gave inspiration to the building of shrines are worthy of belief, and others are legends that sprung up later. Still other origin stories are based on oral tradition and were put into writing at a much later date.

For example, one of the great pilgrimage sites in Spain, Our Lady of the Pillar in Zaragoza, originating in a miracle and housing an ancient jasper Marian image on a column, did not always recognize Our Lady under this title. According to the legend relating to the apostle St. James the Greater and his travels in Spain, on January 2 in the year 40, he was disheartened with his lack of success in proclaiming the gospel in Caesaraugusta (present-day Zaragoza) by the river Ebro, when he saw Mary (still alive at the time) miraculously appear on a pillar, comforting him and calling him to return to Jerusalem. The first written mention of the Virgin of Zaragoza comes from a bishop in the middle of the twelfth century, and Zaragoza’s co-cathedral’s name did not originally include a reference to El Pilar, being called Santa Maria Mayor. In 1296, Pope Boniface VIII conferred an indulgence on pilgrims visiting this shrine but still without mention of Our Lady of the Pillar. One of the legal councils of Zaragoza first wrote about Our Lady under this title in 1299, promising safety and privileges to pilgrims who came to visit the shrine. In 1456, Pope Calixtus III issued a bull encouraging pilgrimage to Our Lady of the Pillar and confirming the name and the miraculous origin. So, despite the lack of early extant texts about the miracle story and the name of this devotion, the enduring tradition delivers the story to us today.

One of the greatest miracle stories in the history of the Catholic Church comes from the tradition surrounding a shrine itself being legendarily miraculous. The Holy House of Loreto (Santa Casa di Loreto) is reputed to be the actual former home of the Virgin Mary. The legend recounts that in 1291, when the house was threatened by Muslims, it was carried by angels through the air and deposited in Trsat, a suburb of Rijeka, Croatia. Later, in 1294, angels carried it again across the Adriatic Sea to Loreto. Since the fourteenth century, this small house, surrounded by the Basilica della Santa Casa, has been a major place of pilgrimage — visited by many saints and popes — and healing miracles.

Many of these apparition-based churches play a major role in the lives of the faithful around the world. They serve as some of the most frequented destinations for pilgrimages. Each year ten million people go to Mexico City to venerate the miraculous tilma of Our Lady of Guadalupe, five million visit Lourdes in France, and four million make the trip to Fátima, Portugal. Since 1981, more than thirty million pilgrims have gone to the alleged apparition site of Medjugorje in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Such numbers seem to indicate that the miraculous continues to play an active role in the life of the Church.

The Faith has grown and developed throughout the ages with the influence of the supernatural. Miracles have helped foster an increase in devotions as well as the spread and acceptance of specific Marian dogmas (e.g., the Immaculate Conception in the case of Lourdes). Many devotions and devotionals claim supernatural origins by virtue of referencing an originating Marian apparition. The Rosary is legendarily attributed to an apparition to St. Dominic in 1208, and St. Simon Stock is said to have received the first brown scapular from Our Lady in 1251 in Aylesford, England. Other colors of scapulars have their own legendarily miraculous beginnings. The most popular Catholic medal in circulation continues to be the Miraculous Medal, whose divine design was conferred during the apparitions received by St. Catherine Labouré in Rue du Bac, France, in 1830. Also according to legend, the creation of the popular St. Michael Prayer is attributed to Pope Leo XIII’s response to a vision he experienced in which the Lord gave permission to the devil to do what he wanted to humanity during the twentieth century. While the troubles around the world in that century seem to support such an occurrence, the documentation surrounding it is in fact lacking.

Most of us do not find ourselves surrounded by the great miracles recounted to us from an earlier age. The saints provide an excellent example of how to follow Christ in our ordinary, everyday lives, but many displayed some mystical gifts that appear far from ordinary, whether it was seeing visions or bearing the wounds of Christ. The Council of Trent (1545–1563) relates the importance of the miracles of the saints:

Through God’s saints miracles and salutary examples are put before our eyes that we might imitate the life and customs of the saints and be stirred up to love God and foster piety.¹⁵

In addition to honoring these miracle-working saints on feasts throughout the year, we celebrate our Church’s great moments of divine intervention throughout the Roman Calendar with commemorations for Divine Mercy, Our Lady of Lourdes, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Our Lady of Fátima, and Our Lady of Guadalupe.

The role of miracles has extended beyond impacting the devotional life of the lay faithful. A number of religious orders have their roots in divine inspiration received by their founders. On August 1, 1218, the Virgin Mary, later honored under the title of Our Lady of Ransom (or Our Lady of Mercy), is said to have appeared to St. Peter Nolasco, to his confessor, St. Raymund of Pennafort, and to King James of Aragon and through these three men established a work for the redemption of captives. She desired the establishment of the Mercedarian religious order (whose name derives from the Spanish word merced, “mercy”). Its members seek to free Christian captives and offer themselves, if necessary, as an exchange.

Less than two decades later, seven men of the Florentine nobility were involved in the brotherhood of “Laude” to venerate the Holy Virgin Mary. On the feast of the Assumption, the Blessed Virgin appeared to them to urge them to make their lives even holier and more perfect. They decided to follow her advice and left the business world to retire to a life of prayer and penance, especially giving themselves over to the veneration of the Virgin Mary. On Good Friday in 1239, Mary appeared again and showed them a black cassock that they should wear when they established a new religious order. The order would spread especially the veneration of the Sorrows that the Blessed Virgin experienced during Christ’s Passion and Crucifixion. Thus arose the Order of the Servants of Mary, more commonly known as the Servites, who found rapid and wide dissemination. The seven founders of the Order of the Servants were all canonized.

Other orders derived from a vision include the Passionists (St. Paul of the Cross, 1720), the Sisterhood of Our Lady of Sion (Alphonse Ratisbonne, 1842), and the Sisters of the Rosary (Bl. Mother Marie-Alphonsine Ghattas, 1880). All these orders were founded at the request of the Virgin. Even Opus Dei, a personal prelature within the Church, was founded in 1928 by St. Josemaría Escríva after he claimed a supernatural vision of this work.

Throughout the Church’s history, miracle stories have been woven into the fabric of Catholic tradition and have played a significant role in the lives of the faithful. The insights and inspirations provided in miraculous events and messages have come in times of great crisis for individuals, nations, and the universal Church.