The New Testament is filled with miracles. On many occasions, the Lord Jesus revealed his divine glory by miraculous works of power that disclosed his mastery over nature. He the made the deaf to hear, the dumb to speak, and the blind to see. He multiplied loaves and fishes to feed multitudes and calmed storms with a word.
Christ walked on water and changed water into wine. He cleansed lepers, cured the sick, and healed palsied limbs. He cast out demons and liberated souls from slavery to grave habitual sins. And on three occasions he restored the dead to life and so revealed his power over life and death.
But such miracles were not limited to the Lord Jesus. Christ also gave such power to his Apostles to confirm their authority to teach, sanctify, and govern in his name. And so the Acts of the Apostles tells us of the wonders worked through the Apostles, especially Peter and Paul.
Both men cured the sick and healed the lame, and Luke tells us that crowds in Jerusalem followed Peter through the city in the hope that at least his shadow would fall on them as he passed by and so heal those who were afflicted in any way. Peter even restored a dead woman to life, just as Christ had done, and in this way, Peter’s mission as the bearer of the keys to the kingdom of heaven was confirmed in the early Church.
Then fifty days after the Resurrection of the Christ, another miracle took place: the coming of the Holy Spirit as tongues of fire to ignite the mission of the Church to fulfill the Great Commission. Forty days after he walked out his tomb, the Lord Jesus ascended to his Father, and as he departed he also promised that he would remain by sending the Holy Spirit to his disciples. Christ commanded that they wait together in Jerusalem for this gift to come, a gift which arrived ten days later.
Here we must remember that Pentecost was a Jewish feast for 1,200 years before the beginning of the Christian celebration. When God gave the Law to Moses, heavenly fire fell on Mount Sinai as the sign of this divine gift to Israel, and according to tradition, that miracle occurred fifty days after the Passover of the angel of death began the exodus of the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt. So the Feast of Shavuot begins seven weeks after the second day of the Feast of Passover, and that solemn day was known as Pentecost, from the Greek word meaning fiftieth.
The miracle of the Holy Spirit falling as fire was experienced by thousands of people who were gathered in the Holy City for the Jewish festival of Pentecost, and the universal mission of the Church began that day with the miraculous gift of tongues which allowed pilgrims from many places to hear the Gospel in their own languages. As the disciples proclaimed to the crowd that Jesus Christ is Lord, those who heard the Gospel rejoiced, as Saint Luke tells us today, in the “mighty acts of God.”
But two thousand years on, we may well wonder, where are the mighty acts of God? Where now are the miracles about which we read in the New Testament? Why don’t we see the same today, and does their absence mean either that God has abandoned us or that the Scriptures are merely myths, fables, and fairy stories?
To answer those questions we must remember what the Apostle John calls miracles in his Gospel. John calls the miracles signs. In fact, John doesn’t use the word miracle at all; instead, he describes the mighty deeds of the Lord Jesus simply as signs.
All of the works by which Christ revealed his glory are signs - signs pointing to the hidden reality our eyes cannot see, and the purpose of the signs is to confirm the truth of the words spoken by the Savior who is himself the Word made flesh. Understood in this way, the signs worked by the Apostles had the same purpose of confirming the truth of the Word they preached and the reality of their authority to continue the mission of the Messiah to the ends of the earth and the end of days. And that is how our Gospel ended last Sunday. After receiving the Great Commission, Mark explained that the Apostles “went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the word through accompanying signs.” (Mark 16:20)
But while that mission of the Church will continue until Christ returns in glory, the miraculous signs are no longer regularly among us because they were meant from the beginning to be provisional. The habitual miraculous signs were unique to Christ and his Apostles, and the apostolic age ended with the death of the last Apostle, Saint John.
What followed then and what continues now is the time of the Church, during which the new life of grace begins with the proclamation of the Gospel and is sustained by the apostolic succession of bishops, priests, and deacons who teach, sanctify, and govern in Christ’s name. And that is why the signs have gone over into the sacraments.
Saint John called the miracles signs, which is the same word we use to describe the sacraments. The seven sacred mysteries of the New and Eternal Covenant are visible sacramental signs of the invisible reality of God’s grace at work among us, and each one of the seven sacraments is a sign of divine love given to the Church by Christ. The three sacraments of initiation are Baptism, Confirmation, and the Eucharist. The two sacraments of healing are Confession of Sins and Anointing of the Sick. And the two sacraments of service are Holy Matrimony and Holy Orders.
Each one of these signs is a little miracle, an instrument of grace which brings about in those who worthily receive them the life of the new creation revealed by the Lord Jesus for the salvation of the world. And although the power of these sacramental signs cannot be seen except with the eyes of faith, they remain mighty acts of God which reveal and confirm the truth of the Word of God in all three senses - the Word of God eternal, the Word of God incarnate, and the Word of God written.
Here we must note that the sacraments, though powerful instruments of God’s grace, are not magic. We read in Acts that a man named Simon Magus wanted to buy miraculous power from the Apostle Peter so that he too could wield authority and confer the gifts of the Holy Spirit, but that is a pagan misunderstanding of the signs of divine love contained in the sacraments of the New Covenant. Those signs are not magic, and they have their intended effects in our lives only when the sacraments are received with authentic faith, hope, and love.
Let us note that there are several ways to succumb to the error of Simon Magus. For example, too many cultural Catholics ask to be married or to have their children baptized or receive Holy Communion without any intention of following the Lord Jesus in the Way of the Cross by, at a bare minimum, attending Mass each Sunday to fulfill the Lord’s command: Do this in memory of me. They may ask for these things because their parents expect it or because they have a nostalgic memory of having once been Catholics. But, friends, that is to treat the sacraments like magic.
And there is a different temptation to which practicing Catholics are subject, and that is a yearning for the miraculous signs of the apostolic age to confirm the reality of our faith. Strange Protestant movements like the so-called New Apostolic Reformation have influenced not a few Catholics, especially within the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, to seek a return of the mighty works of God as evidence of the truth of the Gospel. And who of us has not felt that desire?
For example, when I walk into a hospital room with the Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick to comfort someone in deep pain from bodily illness, I have often found myself wishing that like Saint Peter in imitation of the Savior himself, I could call on the power of God to restore that person to perfect health.
But if we look at this in its proper depth, then we see that this approach to the sacraments is not true devotion; it is, rather, a refusal to accept the Cross and a variation of the superstition shown by Simon Magus. And we must never cooperate in such misuse of the sacred mysteries of faith.
Yes, of course, miracles continue in every age including ours, especially through the intercession of the saints, and it is not wrong to pray for miracles as signs of God’s providential love for us. But miracles are always exceptions rather than a regular part of the sacramental economy of grace because the signs of Christ and the Apostles have gone over into the sacraments, and we cannot tie our faith to the performance of miracles. Instead, we have the God-breathed Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments and the sacred mysteries of Christ in the sacraments, and those are the means chosen for us by God to awaken and sustain saving faith in the Lord Jesus.
With this Solemnity of Pentecost, the glorious season of Eastertide comes to an end, and now begins the season we call Ordinary Time, the green weeks of the year during which we ponder all of Christ’s public ministry and the work he gives us as his witnesses to all the nations. And so now we dedicate ourselves again to the high privilege and sacred duty of fulfilling the Great Commission.
Friends, the mighty works of God are still among us in the Sacred Scriptures and the seven sacraments of the New and Eternal Covenant, and our task, guided by the supernatural gift of divine revelation, is to lead others to saving faith in Jesus Christ so that they too can be nourished unto everlasting life by the sacramental signs that unite us by grace to the death and Resurrection of Christ through faith, hope, and love.
God be praised, it is Pentecost! And through Word and Sacrament, the fire of divine love is still among us, for
Christos Anesti! Alithos Anesti!
Christ is Risen! Truly He is Risen! Alleluia! Alleluia!
Here is the text of my homily for 19 May 2024, the Solemnity of Pentecost.
Fr Jay Scott Newman