In celebration of the Lenten season, we present some of the famous miracles believed to have happened around the world. We do not impress that these are true, it still depends on your faith whether you believe it or not.
Here are the top 10 on our list:
#1. Marian Apparition in Zeitoun district of Cairo, Egypt
An event in which the Virgin Mary is believed to have supernaturally appeared to one or more persons regardless of their religious faith. Photographed and witnessed by millions of people over a period of two to three years starting on April 2, 1968.
#2. Incorruptible Bodies (St. Virginia Centurione)
Incorruptibility is the name given to the situation in which a dead person does not decay after death. Over the years there have been hundreds of Saints whose bodies have been found to be incorrupt – some many hundreds of years after their death. This is St. Virginia Centurione who is found to be incorrupt by the Catholic Church.
#3. Theresa Neumann
Theresa Neumann was born April 8, 1898 during the night of Good Friday/Holy Saturday in Konnersreuth in Bavaria, Germany. She had visions of the Passion accompanied by blood wounds which appeared not only in the heart area but in all places of the believed wounds of Christ, the Stigmata. A psychoanalytic study of stigmatic Therese Neumann has suggested that her stigmata resulted from post-traumatic stress symptoms expressed in unconscious self-mutilation through abnormal autosuggestibility.
#4. Statue in Akita
The statue was carved from a single block of wood from a Katsura tree and is three feet tall. It is believed to have drops of blood flowing from the statue’s right hand, “sweat” especially on the forehead and neck, and drop of tears from the statues eyes. Scientific analysis of blood and tears from the statute provided by Professor Sagisaka of the faculty of Legal Medicine of the University of Akita confirmed that the blood, tears, and perspiration are real human tears, sweat, and blood.
#5. Our Lady of Lourdes
Bernadette Soubirous, a 14-year old peasant girl from Lourdes claimed to have seen a “lady” which directed her to dig near a rock which revealed a large spring – the source of the water in the grotto to which millions of people flock for miraculous cures every year.
#6. Joseph of Cupertino
Joseph was an Italian Conventual Franciscan friar known to be the “Flying Saint” as he is believed to have miraculous levitations. One instance was when Joseph was assisting in the procession during the feast day of Saint Francis of Assisi that he suddenly soared into the sky while he remained hovering over the crowd.
#7. Tilma of Juan Diego
Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin was an indigenous Mexican who reported an apparition of the Virgin Mary as Our Lady of Guadalupe in 1531. According to Juan Diego, a “lady” intercepted him on his way around the Tepeyac hill to find a priest who could administer the last rites to his dying uncle. The “lady” assured him his uncle would not die, and asked him to climb the hill and gather the flowers he found there. The Lady re-arranged the roses carefully inside the folded tilma that Juan Diego wore and told him not to open it before anyone but the bishop. But when Juan Diego unfolded his tilma before the Bishop roses cascaded from his tilma, and an icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe was miraculously impressed on the cloth.
#8. Padre Pio (St. Pio of Pietrelcina)
Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina was a friar, priest and a mystic of the Catholic Order of Friars Minor Capuchin. He is famous for bearing the stigmata. Padre Pio’s wounds were examined by many people, including physicians. His body was later found and believed to be incorrupt.
#9. The Miracle of Lanciano
It is considered by the Catholic Church as a Eucharistic miracle. The story tells that a Basilian monk and priest was assigned to celebrate the Eucharistic sacrifice in the Latin Rite in the small Church of St.Legontian. Since they are usually celebrating in the Greek Rite, they were using leavened bread and were taught that unleavened bread was invalid matter for the Holy Sacrifice. And so he was disturbed to be constrained to use unleavened bread and had trouble believing that the miracle of transubtantiation would take place with unleavened bread. But during the Mass, when he said the words of consecration, he saw the bread change into live flesh and the wine change into live blood, which coagulated into five globules, irregular and differing in shape and size. Various ecclesiastical investigations have been conducted upon the miracle, and the evidence of the miracle remains in Lanciano to this day.
#10. The Miracle of the Sun
It was an event which occurred on October 13, 1917. It was attended by 30,000 to 100,000 people who gathered near Fátima, Portugal. People have gathered there in belief of the three shepherd children’s claim that the “lady” who appeared to them will perform a miracle at high-noon in the Cova da Iria. According to many witness statements, after a pouring rain, the dark clouds broke and the sun appeared as an opaque, spinning disk in the sky. It was said to be significantly less bright than normal, and cast multicolored lights across the landscape. It was reported to have zoomed towards the earth in a zigzag pattern, frightening some of those present who thought it meant the end of the world.
May we be able to comprehend the true essence of this season. Whatever our beliefs are, may we realize and keep in our hearts and mind the Grace and Great Love of God that He sent His only begotten Son Jesus and may we believe and live with Him through entirety.
