A miracle is an extraordinary fact, which cannot be explained by the laws of Nature and which shows the intervention, the imprint of God, ratifying a holy action as proceeding from God and showing the mercifulness, the providence or the justice of God, ratifying whether some facts or words are coming from Him, since everything that comes from God is good. The real miracle doesn’t rest on the physical performance but on the inner event in the heart, where conversion and spiritual grace take place. There are saints who never performed any miracle, as Saint Therese of the Child Jesus, who, even so, was a great saint in her simplicity.

There are also extraordinary facts which are above the laws of Nature that do not come from God but from devilish mediations and, in this case, they are not related to holiness, to mercifulness, or justice. The possibility that the forces of evil perform “signs and wonders” is ratified by the Bible (Saint Marc 13, 22), where, referring to the coming days of such a big tribulation as never has taken place from the beginning of the Creation, warns us: “For false christs and false prophets will arise, and will show signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect”.

The Catechism condemns the recourse to such supernatural powers as occultism and spiritism, even if sometimes this is done with a good intention. (Catechism, 2115-2117).

Let’s give the example of a true miracle: Therese Munné, a woman from a village in Tarragona, was suffering a lot from a deadly disease, which had opened a big hole on her back, diagnosed by the doctors as an incurable type of bone-cancer. This woman accepted the suffering and offered it for the conversion of her sons and her husband who didn’t believe. She said that she didn’t pray for her healing, but for the faith of her family. She went to Lourdes and was completely healed after being submerged in the water pool: the hole on her back was entirely filled with new flesh and, as a result of the healing, her sons believed (her husband had already come back to the faith because of another prodigious event).  In the present case, we have a holy act, a woman who accepts her suffering and offers it in order that her relatives believe, not even asking for her own healing, and an extraordinary fact, her healing, which overrides the laws of Nature (no physician will regard as normal that a hole on the body is filled with new flesh in the twinkle of an eye), being useful for the conversion of her sons when they see the miracle as she was praying for to the Lord, through the blessed Virgin Mary: it is a true miracle, because it ratifies a holy action, showing God’s mercifulness for the body of Therese as well as for the souls of her sons.

(On the other hand, if an extraordinary fact is used to back up an evil action or a bad doctrine, we can be sure it is not a miracle, that it does not come from God, but from the devil, in the case that it really be an extraordinary event).