Religion: Trends in Miracles

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Miracles these days are not as widespread as they used to be. But for Catholic—and, to a much lesser degree, for Protestant and Jew—miracles are a fact of faith. How much of a fact and how essential to faith, Hungarian-born Roman-Catholic Author Zsolt Aradi recalls in a new volume on the old subject, The Book of Miracles (Farrar, Straus & Cudahy; $5). Protestants and Jews may believe in miracles as they see fit; Catholics must believe in their existence, but it is not heretical for them to doubt any given miracle except the Immaculate Conception, the Virgin Birth, or the Resurrection of Christ. What then, is a true miracle?

Author Aradi cites a dictionary definition: "An effect wrought in nature directly by God." He lists seven characteristics of miracles: 1) the phenomenon should be relatively infrequent; 2) it should be reasonable and moral; 3) it should have evident spiritual motivation; 4) it should promote welfare; 5) it is usually instantaneous; 6) its effects should be persistent; 7) it is usually an answer to prayer. These conditions are supposed to be universal, but there are trends in miracles.

Earthquakes & Visions. The Old Testament sparkles with wonders, and Aradi explains their profusion by reminding his readers that God had a hard time with the Israelites. "God had to prove His existence to a people that did not know Him."

The New Testament miracles are quite different. Instead of earthquakes and lightning, the immobilizing of heavenly bodies and the annihilation of cities, Jesus changes water into wine, gives sight to the blind, feeds multitudes with an armful of fishes and loaves. Christ's miracles proceed, as it were, from a creative force revealing itself in life, rather than impinging on life to make men stare.

The Middle Ages must have seemed sometimes like a miraculous three-ring circus. Saintly men and ladies flew through the air with the greatest of ease—sometimes even their personal effects followed them, as did the walking stick of Joseph of Cupertino—and sometimes, like the great St. Teresa of Avila, they had to be held down by main force. Bodies that should have been moldering in the grave were exhumed fresh and fragrant; sometimes they bled, as did that of St. John of the Cross when they cut off its finger. The Host at Mass once leapt by itself into the mouth of St. Catherine of Siena.

With some exceptions, notably the annual liquefaction of the blood of San Gennaro (died A.D. 304), which is formally witnessed each year at the Cathedral of Naples, modern miracles run more to visions and apparitions—largely of the Virgin, and granted to the young. Examples: Bernadette Soubirous at Lourdes (1858); the three children at famed Fatima, Portugal (1917); St. Catherine Labouré (1830), who heard the rustle of silk one night and received instructions from Mary herself about the miraculous medal that is now worn by hundreds of thousands. Stigmatists exist today who, like the first of them, St. Francis of Assisi, exhibit the wounds of Christ's crucifixion.