Signs and Wonders?

I was recently able to reconnect with a friend of mine and was pleasantly surprised to find that he had grown a great deal in his faith. In our last encounter, he was struggling with his Catholic beliefs.

Our last conversation centered on the possibility of miracles. Based on his reading of David Hume, my friend was of the conviction that miracles do not exist.  My friend thought that what seems to be a miracle in fact has an explanation that we simply cannot find or discover now.

Such a position is not uncommon.  Miracles are one of the difficult aspects to accept of the Catholic faith.

Even as a middle schooler (many years ago), I recall that my teacher (at a Catholic school, mind you) proposed an effective remedy to that ‘pernicious belief’ in the Resurrection of Jesus. She had seen or read that, instead of maintaining that Jesus rose from the dead, we could simply say that He wasn’t really dead. After three days Jesus simply recovered enough to walk out of the tomb. Such a “resurrection,” she reasoned, is much easier to accept, and will enable people to come to the faith.

Of course, the difficulty with this explanation is that such a resurrection is not a resurrection at all.  And those who believe this explanation would not truly be believers.

Indeed, as Saint Paul puts it (1 Cor 15:16-19): “For if the dead are not raised, neither has Christ been raised, and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain; you are still in your sins. Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are the most pitiable people of all.”

Essential to Our Faith

So either you believe in the Resurrection, in the entirety of its difficult claim that Jesus rose from the dead, or you do not. It is a rock-hard dilemma with no easy, half-way compromise to get out of it. Or, as C. S. Lewis phrased the problem:

“One is very often asked at present whether we could not have a Christianity stripped, or, as people who ask it say, “freed” from its miraculous elements, a Christianity with the miraculous elements suppressed. Now, it seems to me that precisely the one religion in the world, or, at least, the only one I know, with which you could not do that is Christianity.”[1]

Why this insistence on miracles? Why can’t Christianity do without them? After all, Biblical interpretations that make Jesus’ miracles less than miraculous abound. For instance, who hasn’t heard that the feeding of the 5,000 was ‘a miracle of sharing?’

The Church has always understood miracles as an essential component of her faith.  They are not  just an accessory to belief, like a fancy handbag that attracts attention or a complicated Swiss army knife that few really know how to use.

Credibility

The First Vatican Council expresses this reality very clearly in a chapter on faith:

“In order that the submission of our faith should be in accordance with reason, it was God’s will that there should be linked to the internal assistance of the holy Spirit external indications of his revelation, that is to say divine acts, and first and foremost miracles and prophecies, which clearly demonstrating as they do the omnipotence and infinite knowledge of God, are the most certain signs of revelation and are suited to the understanding of all.”[2]

In other words, faith is a grace, a gift from God, by which we submit our intellects and wills to God.[3] Nevertheless, as humans we need reasons to believe. Our rational nature needs proof, or at least convincing reasons, to accept something or reject it.  In the case of faith, these proofs are necessary lest our faith simply turn into a blind leap, an arbitrary decision to believe something.

These “external indications” that help convince us that God is all-powerful and all-knowing, and that His Son Jesus is the fullness of revelation, come to us in the form of signs and wonders, meaning, miracles and prophecies. Jesus’ claim to be the Son of God are credible precisely because of the miracles He performed. To deny these miracles is to deny the evidence which makes belief credible and in accord with our rational nature.

Confirmation

Indeed, the Second Vatican confirmed this in Dei Verbum:

“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 finally with the sending of the Spirit of truth, he completed and perfected revelation and confirmed it with divine testimony.”[4]

From here flows the importance that miracles have for our faith. The First Vatican Council took this so seriously that it proclaimed a series of anathemas (formal condemnations or excommunications):

“If anyone says that divine revelation cannot be made credible by external signs, and that therefore men and women ought to be moved to faith only by each one’s internal experience or private inspiration: let him be anathema. . . .  If anyone says that all miracles are impossible, and that therefore all reports of them, even those contained in sacred scripture, are to be set aside as fables or myths; or that miracles can never be known with certainty, nor can the divine origin of the Christian religion be proved from them: let him be anathema.”[5]

These words should remind all of us of the serious importance of miracles.

Accepting Miracles

Yet, there is more. Signs and wonders are not simply part of the credibility of Jesus’ testimony. They continue as part of the Church’s life today and lend credibility to the path she offers towards salvation and heaven. We see this in a particular way in the canonization of saints.

The first step in the canonization process is beatification.  A person declared blessed (beatified) is eligible for local veneration.  This step requires a decree of martyrdom or one confirmed miracle.

Likewise, canonization (proclaiming a person a saint) requires an additional miracle.  And the Church is very discerning in her acceptance of miracles.

Years ago, I attended a talk by the late Fr. Andrew Apostoli, CFR, who was working on the cause of Fulton Sheen’s beatification.  Sheen had ordained Apostoli and Apostoli joyfully declared that he was eager for Sheen’s canonization.  Sheen’s canonization would make Apostoli’s bald head a relic!

Fr. Apostoli spoke of the criteria for a miracle to be submitted for consideration. The ideal miracle would be uniquely attributed to the candidate, immediately linked to the candidate’s intercession, and documented so that the miracle is clear.

These three criteria are important.

Uniquely attributable to the candidate:  If the sick person asks for a miracle through the intercession of both the candidate and a canonized saint, say, Isaac Hecker and St. Paul of the Cross, the miracle couldn’t be used for the advancement of Hecker’s cause.

Immediately linked to the intercession of the candidate: Ideally, the candidate is invoked, and as soon as possible, the miracle occurs. That way, there is no doubt between the connection of the two.

Documented: Conditions have to be clearly documented, both before and after. With this documentation the miracle is clearly recorded for study.

Documentation

So the Church takes miracles seriously. Consider, for instance, the miracle for the canonization of Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer.[6]

A Spanish doctor, Manuel Nevado Rey, was an orthopedic surgeon. As a result of his frequent exposure to X-rays, Rey contracted radiodermatitis, a skin disease. As the Vatican recounts:

“The disease is progressive and evolves inexorably, causing the appearance of skin cancers. Radiodermatitis has no cure. The only known treatments are surgical interventions: skin grafts, or amputation of the affected parts of the hand. To date, no case of a spontaneous cure from cancerous chronic radiodermatitis has ever been recorded in medical literature. “

In 1962, Rey started having symptoms, which progressively worsened.  By  1984 he needed to restrict himself to minor operations. By the summer of 1992, Rey had to cease work entirely.

In November of 1992, however, Rey met an engineer who gave him a prayer card of Blessed Josemaría.   Further encounters with cards of Blessed Josemaría led Rey to pray for his intercession.

“From the day that he began to entrust his cure to the intercession of Blessed Josemaria, his hands began to improve. Within a fortnight the lesions had completely disappeared and the cure was complete. By January 1993, Dr. Nevado had returned to perform surgical operations without any problems.”

Investigation

However, since the Church takes miracles so seriously, it took several years to investigate and confirm that the miracle was in fact miraculous:

“The canonical process on this miracle took place in the archdiocese of Badajoz where Dr. Nevado lives, and was concluded in 1994. On July 10, 1997, the Medical Committee of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints unanimously established the following diagnosis: a cancerous state of chronic radiodermatitis in its third and irreversible stage; therefore with certain prognosis of infaust (without hope of cure). The complete cure of the lesions, confirmed by the objective examinations carried out on Dr. Nevado in 1992, 1994 and 1997, was declared by the Medical Committee to be very rapid, complete, lasting, and scientifically inexplicable. On January 9, 1998, the Committee of Theologian Consultants gave its unanimous approval for attributing the miracle to Blessed Josemaria. The Congregation of the Causes of Saints confirmed these conclusions on September 21, 2001.”

It would only be a year later, on October 6, 2002, that Blessed Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer became Saint Josemaría – a full 10 years after the miracle took place.

Credibility & Confirmation

The Church takes miracles very seriously. Miracles give credibility to Revelation and permit us to believe in accord with our human nature.  They also confirm that Christ continues to work in and through His Church today. Do we take miracles seriously?

Notes:

[1] C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970), 81.

[2] https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum20.htm

[3] This is also found in the documents from the First Vatican Council.

[4] Dei Verbum, 4. Emphasis added.

[5] https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum20.htm

[6] https://www.vatican.va/latest/documents/escriva_miracolo-canoniz_en.html