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Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code wasn’t the first historical fiction where the history was just as fictional as the story. Émile Zola beat Brown by over a hundred years.Zola was a famous French writer and avowed atheist whose novels and other works had won popular acclaim. In 1892, he decided to write a novel about the amazing cures said to be taking place in the waters of a spring in Lourdes, France, where the Virgin Mary had reportedly appeared to young Bernadette Soubirous eighte …

Scripture gives us many passages that call us to reflect on the role of the supernatural in our lives of faith. St. Paul encourages us to be open to the supernatural when he reminds us, “Do not quench the Spirit, do not despise prophesying, but test everything, holding fast to what is good” (Thess. 5:19-21). Although Christ worked many miracles of healing, he did not encourage the search for miracles: “An evil and unfaithful generation seeks a sign, but no sign will be given them except the sig …

There have been various kinds of miracles that make up the patrimony of the Catholic Church. One category of such miracles is eucharistic miracles. Catholics believe every time a priest prays the words of consecration over the bread and wine—“this is my body…this is my blood”—the substance of bread and wine (what it is) changes into Jesus’ body, blood, soul, and divinity while the accidents of bread and wine (how it appears) remain. The remaining presence of the bread and wine’s accidenta …