Pope john paul ii feast day

What two miracles did pope john paul ii perform

A passionate champion of the Blessed Mother and the miracles attributed to Our Lady of Lourdes, the Polish pope would no doubt have been pleased that a seventieth miracle at Lourdes was officially recognized by the Catholic Church in Unlike the late and truly great John Paul, I admit to cautious skepticism about Marian apparitions; probably a holdover from my Protestant days.

So, my expectations were low as some colleagues and I drove some years ago through the foothills of the Pyrenees mountains to the picturesque French town of Lourdes. It was a beautiful, cool spring day and, except for a few tourists and locals, we had the place to ourselves. We even found a parking spot within sight of the famous grotto by the river.

St john paul ii patron saint of

Some of the miracle stories from Lourdes are nothing less than astonishing. As a young medical student on a family trip to Lourdes, he volunteered to put his medical training to use by evaluating claims of miracles. Shortly after witnessing the immediate healing of a young man suffering from polio, he relinquished his pursuit of a medical career and began formation to become a Jesuit priest.

Such stories are moving, but we all know that miracles do not happen every time we ask for them. Why does God perform miracles in some cases and not others? A good place to start, as with most questions about the faith, is Holy Scripture. Miracles are less frequent in the Bible than you might think. Over the few thousand years of narrative history in the Bible, there are several relatively brief periods characterized by numerous miracles, while in other eras they are comparatively rare.

We find the first great era of miracles in the Exodus from Egypt Exodus , including the conquest of Canaan and the formative years that followed e. A second era of miracles appears with the prophetic ministries of Elijah and Elisha 1 Kings And it would be centuries later when the next burst of miracles occur in Scripture with the life of Jesus and the ministry of the early Apostles.

Biblical miracles typically function as signs that bring attention to special moments of divine revelation.