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We should first briefly consider some objections to the concept of miracles. Today, in the secular Western world, many are skeptical of the very possibility that miracles can occur.   This is an assumption of secular Westerners, but it is not shared by other peoples. And there is actually a great deal of evidence that miracles do occur, including in today’s world. The Catholic Church has rigorously evaluated many reported miracle …

One of the alternative explanations offered to the resurrection of Jesus is the idea that, on Easter morning, the disciples simply went to the wrong tomb, one that happened to be empty, and concluded that Jesus had risen from the dead. There are multiple problems with this hypothesis. Here are the biggest ones: 1) The Gospels indicate that the women who visited the tomb were eyewitnesses of the burial. The Gospels even name the women involved. Mark states, “Mary Magdalene and Mary the mot …

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 …

Filling in the Gaps about the Eucharist We read of Jesus instituting the Eucharist in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, as well as in St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. John gives us something different, which is not surprising: John wrote his Gospel long after the other three, and he assumes you’ve read them already. His Gospel is meant as a sort of “gap-filler,” covering important moments in the life of Jesus that nobody else had written down yet. He offers us the “t …

And people brought to him a deaf man who had a speech impedimentand begged him to lay his hand on him.He took him off by himself away from the crowd. He put his finger into the man’s earsand, spitting, touched his tongue;then he looked up to heaven and groaned, and said to him,“Ephphatha!” (that is, “Be opened!”)And immediately the man’s ears were opened,his speech impediment was removed,and he spoke plainly. - Mark 7:31-37Before Jesus did any teaching at all, he did miracles.Isaiah had promised …