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.
Chapter 2
What Should We Do with Miracles?
The question of the role of miracles in our life of faith is an important one and requires avoiding two extremes: an overemphasis and credulity regarding the supernatural on the one hand and a denial of the possibility of divine intervention and a diminishment of the role of popular devotion on the other. Sometimes it is hard to discern the amount of emphasis we should place on what St. John XXIII called “those supernatural lights.”
Excessive, obsessive expression of belief by the faithful in miraculous phenomena is not only the reason the Church is methodical and cautious in approving any occurrence as authentic but also a primary impetus for performing any investigations in the first place. The unspoken goal of such examination is to prove that nothing supernatural is occurring at these places, in order that the faithful might return to a more authentic and grounded practice of their faith. But because there is typically such a tremendous swell of support and interest surrounding a purported miraculous event, the Church by necessity must investigate and provide pastoral guidance on the matter.
Although seeking miracles is often an attempt to quench an authentic thirst for the spiritual and an opportunity to quell spiritual doubts, miraculous phenomena are not a substitute for absolute faith in God. The center of the Catholic Faith can be found in the person, acts, and words of Jesus Christ. A great demonstration of true faith comes in a story about St. Louis (King Louis IX of France from 1226 to 1270). While St. Louis was working in his study, a courier came running in to inform him of a miracle happening at that very moment: an image of the infant Jesus appeared on the host during Eucharistic adoration. The saintly king calmly continued his writing and quietly responded: “I could not believe more firmly in Christ’s presence in the Eucharist if I were to behold a miracle.”16
Private revelation can serve as the special insights of saints who received messages from the Blessed Mother. The content of such messages does not belong to the deposit of faith, and as such, belief in approved private revelations — even in the most highly recognized and celebrated miraculous events like Fátima and Lourdes — is never required by faith. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, when he was prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), the Vatican body with the final word on miracle claims, acknowledged this fact but warned against ignoring the signs given to us by God:
No apparition is indispensable to the faith…. But we certainly cannot prevent God from speaking to our time through the simple persons and also through extraordinary signs that point to the insufficiency of cultures stamped by rationalism that dominate us.17
The Church is clear about the role of private revelations but devotes a mere eight lines to the topic in its official compilation of doctrine for the faithful, the Cathechism of the Catholic Church. The Catechism states:
Throughout the ages, there have been so-called “private” revelations, some of which have been recognized by the authority of the Church. They do not belong, however, to the deposit of faith. It is not their role to improve or complete Christ’s definitive Revelation, but to help live more fully by it in a certain period of history. Guided by the magisterium of the Church, the sensus fidelium knows how to discern and welcome in these revelations whatever constitutes an authentic call of Christ or his saints to the Church. (CCC 67)
It is not uncommon for believers to be swept up in chasing the latest miracle or alleged message from the heavens. Caught up in
