226. The reason for miracles
226. THE REASON FOR MIRACLES
Many people wonder why God does not perform more miracles, and use power to save us from our problems. The answer to that question hangs on the Cross, refusing to call down the twelve legions of angels that He had at His beck and call. And our being “in” Christ and therefore “in” His work of redemption is our answer to why we too must “fail” and suffer and die like Him: we are participating in His actual work. This is why God does not miraculously rescue us as a policy (only as an instructive exception).
But the opposite question is seldom asked: why God performs any miracles at all in our world and through human agencies. The question here is not why there are so few miracles but why there are so many.
God enables man to work miracles for two reasons. First and principally, in confirmation of the doctrine that a man teaches . . . so that when a man does works that God alone can do, we may believe that what he says is from God, just as when a man is the bearer of letters sealed with the king’s ring it is to be believed that what they contain expresses the king’s will.
Secondly, in order to make known God’s presence in a man by the grace of the Holy Ghost, so that when a man does the works of God we may believe that God dwells in Him by His grace. . . .
Now both these things were to be made known to men concerning Christ, namely that God dwelt in Him by grace, not of adoption but of union, and that His supernatural doctrine was from God. And therefore it was most fitting that He should work miracles. Wherefore He Himself says (Jn 10:38): Though you will not believe Me, believe the works; and (vs. 36): The works which the Father hath given Me to perform . . . give testimony to Me. . . .
Chrysostom says . . . that He worked signs not for the sake of those whom He knew to be hardened, but to amend others. . . . Miracles lessen the merit of faith in so far as those are shown to be hard of heart who are unwilling to believe what is proved from the Scriptures unless they are convinced by miracles. Yet it is better for them to be converted to the faith even by miracles than that they should remain altogether in their unbelief (III,43,1).
The first strategy behind miracles mentioned by St. Thomas is certification, like a king’s signet ring, the seal that is unique and proves that the letter is from the king alone. Jesus came into the world not to give mankind miracles but to give them Himself; but He performed miracles that only God could perform (most especially His own Resurrection) to prove His claim that He was not just man but God, so that mankind could believe this almost unbelievable claim.
The second purpose St. Thomas mentions is almost identical to the first: “to make known God’s presence”. Pope Benedict begins his book on Jesus by asking: What did Jesus give the world? When He left our world, it remained full of war, sin, suffering, disease, and death. The stunningly simple answer is that He gave us God.
St. Thomas then answers a serious objection to miracles: that they “lessen the merit of faith”. And they do; for Christ said to “Doubting Thomas”, “You have believed because you have seen (My resurrected body), but more blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (Jn 20:29). And his reply to this objection is both very practical and very compassionate. It is that many of us need miracles to persuade us to belief and conversion; that although this weaker kind of belief, the “Doubting Thomas” belief that depends on miracles, has less merit, it has more popularity and thus more population. God wants to maximize the population of Heaven. Imperfect belief is at least much better than unbelief. Because God is love and love will stoop to conquer, God will stoop to conquer. We get miracles only because we are so stupid and hard-hearted that we need them.
If you want to know the reason God performs miracles, look into your own foolish heart.