By Jenna Marie Cooper, Question Corner
Question: One of the Protestant churches I attended in the past said that when the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, it came to every believer in Jesus, including down to today, which they said meant we all ought to be able to do miracles. Another church taught the Holy Spirit came to the Apostles only, and that the ability to perform miracles ceased with the last of them. All we can do today, they said, is pray, hope for the best and leave it with God. What is the Catholic Church’s teaching on this?
Answer: I think the best answer is that, as Catholics, we believe in the reality of past miracles and the possibility of miracles occurring in the future. But we also hold that almost by definition miracles are not something that the vast majority of Catholics will be able to work — and that the non-working of miracles is not a problem or a sign of weak faith. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1508) explains, “The Holy Spirit gives to some a special charism of healing so as to make manifest the power of the grace of the risen Lord. But even the most intense prayers do not always obtain the healing of all illnesses.” Ultimately, it is not a person, living or deceased, who heals but God alone.
Miracles are instances when God intervenes in an extraordinary way, in ways that supersede or “break” the laws of nature.
We might talk about certain awe-inspiring things in our normal human experience as being “miracles” in a poetic sense, such as when we call the birth of a baby a miracle of new life. But such things are not truly miracles technically speaking.
We believe that when God created the universe, He did so in a marvelous way where all parts are well-ordered down to the smallest detail. The natural world thus reflects God’s splendor and glory, which is why we might feel a sense of awe when gazing at a starry night sky or looking out at the vastness of the ocean. As human beings we are a special part of this creation, since we are made in God’s image and likeness and endowed with free will and rationality.
Because of our rational nature, through hard work and study, human beings can come to know how the natural world is ordered and then make use of this knowledge to our advantage. For example, the whole of medical science is an attempt to understand how the human body works so that diseases and injuries can be healed, and we are encouraged to make use of this. So if someone recovers from a serious illness, most often this is simply the human body healing as it was designed to do, possibly with human assistance using natural scientific means. A true “medical miracle” would be a case where a person’s recovery had no possible natural explanation at all.
There are scenarios where the Catholic Church specifically looks for miracles. In particular, verified miracles are part of the canonization process for new saints. That is, the church looks for miracles as a sign that the would-be saint actually is in heaven enjoying the beatific vision in the presence of God. We are encouraged to pray for intercession from those who are already saints or those who are approved by the Church as Servants of God of Blessed (Beatified). Prayers for miracles are always humbly requested in accord with our Lord’s most holy will.
Even in canonization processes, the church is only interested in posthumous miracles; whether or not the potential saint had miracles associated with them while they were alive is not at all relevant to the church’s estimation of their personal sanctity or degree of closeness with God. Again, it is God who works miracles. Also, the Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick is offered by priests for our benefit.
And we know that Jesus — who while he walked the earth was certainly not shy about working miracles! — complained about those who would seek the miraculous in inappropriate ways. For example, in John’s Gospel, Jesus laments how some sought him out not for proper spiritual reasons, but because he fed them miraculously with the multiplied loaves and fishes (See Jn 6:26). And in Mark 8:12, Jesus,
“sighed from the depth of his spirit and said, “Why does this generation seek a sign? Amen, I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation.”
Jenna Marie Cooper, who holds a licentiate in canon law, is a consecrated virgin and a canonist whose column appears weekly at OSV News. Send your questions to CatholicQA@osv.com.