Handbook of Miracles

Miracles are extraordinary facts or events that happen through divine intervention. They strike instantaneous fear, awe, and admiration. They are not meant for entertainment as the mad King Herod wanted them from Jesus. Neither were they for the amusement of Satan who tried to tempt Jesus to turn stone into bread. The extraordinary, awesome character of miracles is meant by God to attract man's curiosity to hear what He wants him or her to know or need to know for his salvation. That's divine psychology -- very much like what scholastics used to teach: learning starts with the senses. Remember how Moses' curiosity was excited by the burning bush that preceded God's message: go seek Pharaoh to let God's chosen People go? Indeed, once man's attention is engaged, God reveals His message -- a salvation-related message. Miracles are God's ways of communicating what He wants people to know and live by to attain the purpose of their existence.

Citing extraordinary events in the Old Testament and the prodigious works of Christ, the Apostles, and the Saints, "Handbook of Miracles" defines miracles as conveyors of God's messages of salvation. Every true miracle is salvation-ordained. Miracles were among Christ's manners by which He revealed a way of life that leads people to eternal happiness. By the miracle of His resurrection, for instance, Christ reveals He is the Son of God sent by the Father to redeem mankind from sin.

The book further explains the nature of miracles from philosophy and theology. From eternity, we read, the Creator determined what everything in His creation can or cannot do. God's creation includes angels, who are pure spirits, and humans, who are made of spirit and matter. He created the universe and everything in it: physical objects, time and movement, any conceivable and inconceivable energy and potency embedded in them. The sum total of His creation and everything in it is what we come to know as nature. Nature is finite; it has limits. Only God is infinite; He is limitless. He can do what He wills to do-- can make any creature do what is beyond what He determined it can or cannot do. And when that happens, miracle occurs.

The author also explains scripturally and theologically how Mary's conception of Jesus and His birth are miracles; so are Mary's immaculate conception and assumption to heaven. The conversions of St. Peter and St. Paul are also discussed as internal miracles, as explained by St. Thomas Aquinas.


"Handbook of Miracles" notes that since people live in space and time that continually change, God makes miracles to happen in different times and various places; thus, miracles happen in every generation and in various places of the world. The messages conveyed by the Saints' miracles -- together with their holy lives -- model and explain for their generation and generations after them the way of life taught by Christ. This book attempts to spell out the meaning of each of the Saints' miracles, but also invites readers to meditate on the miracles' significance as applicable to every reader's personal life.

The "Handbook" discusses the various miracles wrought by God through the Saints who, because of their holy lives, their unwavering faith and heroic love of God and neighbor, became conduits of God's power and mercy. Accordingly, one or the other Saint raised the dead back to life, cured the sick, multiplied food, read minds and prophesied, received the gift of tongues, defied the enemies of God and laws of nature, levitated and shone like the sun. And each of these miracles conveyed a divine message of salvation.

Citing the Scriptures, the author cites conditions by which miracles can happen to anybody: unwavering faith, coupled with love, according to St. Paul "If I have faith so as to remove mountains, yet do not have love, I am nothing" (1 Cor 13, 2-3). Perseverance (Lk 18, 37-41). Resignation to God's will by which we ask God's will be done (Lk