OF THE VARIOUS KINDS OF MIRACLES PERFORMED BY JESUS ​​CHRIST DURING HIS PUBLIC LIFE.

 The resurrection of Lazarus

 

 The preceding question dealt with miracles, with the Lord in general; the present one treats of the diverse classes of those miracles, that are four: miracles on the demons, on the celestial bodies, on the sick and on the dead and, lastly, of the miracles on the terrestrial material things.

The ancient peoples lived in a continuous panic because of the spirits, to whom they attributed all the evils that afflict humanity, especially diseases. The plastic representations that the Assyrians and Babylonians have left us of the spirits, show us very clearly the idea they had of them. A good part of religion was reduced to fighting evil spirits through spells and exorcisms. This idea spread widely in the western regions;

There is no doubt that there was a lot of superstition in this, but that there was also a good dose of truth is shown by Sacred Scripture, especially the New Testament. There are several names by which they are usually designated: Satan, adversary; Devil, accuser, slanderer; Belzebub, Belial. In the third chapter of Genesis we are told how the serpent, the most cunning animal of all those God had created, seduced the woman, making her eat “the forbidden fruit and break the divine precept. To which the divine sentence was followed by cursing the serpent and enacting the perpetual struggle between the serpent and the woman's offspring until she crushes his head, obtaining a complete victory. Under the image of the serpent, which had so much    In ancient superstition, the sacred author, an eminent poet, tells us about       the evil spirit; The struggle that is predicted here is verified in the history       of humanity, both in primitive peoples and in the most       cultured, ancient and modern. Proof     of this is the fascination that    the people suffered, by virtue of which they gave oblivion to the true       God, to embrace faith in the most absurd gods and in the    value of the most barbaric cults. The history of Israel is almost all of it       a struggle between the cult of     their God, who had so clearly revealed himself to them, and the Canaanite, Phoenician, Assyrian, Babylonian, Greek cults. In this fight the spirit of evil is always hidden. Sometimes it appears under the name of Satan, as in Job 1,6.9.12; Reg 1 Pair 21.1; in the prophet Zechariah 3,1s, and in 1 Reg. 2.22ss, where he inspires the false prophets to deceive the king of Israel. But he is, above all, in the gospels and in the rest of the New books.

Testament where Satan's temptation is discovered; that he begins by tempting Jesus to find out if he is, in fact, the Son of God, the Messiah, and to separate him from the divine plans and even subject him to his own, demanding that he pay homage (Mt. 4, ss). Confused with the response of the. Sir, he retires, awaiting a better occasion; but in the meantime he does not give up his commitment, acclaiming Jesus as the Saint of God (Mk 1,24), the Son of God (Mk 3,12), the Messiah (Lk 4,41), with in order to excite the enthusiasm of the crowds and induce them to create difficulties for the ministry of Jesus, who for this reason forced him to remain silent. Other times they complained about the Savior, who had come to make war on them (Me. r, 24). And, effectively, Jesus did it, not only enlightening souls and taking them out of the darkness of their errors, but also ridding the bodies of diabolical possession. The results of this struggle are declared by the words of Jesus to the seventy-two disciples, who, sent to preach, returned elated because even the spirits obeyed them in the name of Jesus: I saw, the divine Master tells them, I saw Satan will fall from heaven like lightning. I have given you power to walk over serpents and scorpions and over all enemy powers, and nothing will harm you (Luke 10, I8S). The Pharisees, impressed by this power of Jesus, attribute it to that of Belzebub, prince of demons, with whom Jesus would have made a pact; but the Master replies by showing them the absurdity of such an explanation and declaring that, if the empire of Satan recedes, it is a sign that the kingdom of God is progressing. At the last supper that Jesus celebrated with his disciples, the divine, Master declares to them saying: Simon, Simon, Satan is looking for you to lie in wait for you like wheat; but I have prayed for you so that your faith does not fail, and you, once converted, confirm your brothers (Luke 22,3is). Allusion is to what will happen in the passion of Jesus. However, from this prayer, Satan managed to win over the traitor and put him at the service of the enemies of Jesus and ministers of the prince of darkness (Luke 22, 3s; Jo. 13, 2.27). But, by the death of Christ, the power of the devil will be undone and the ancient prophecy will be fulfilled: She (the woman's offspring) will crush your head. Indeed, we read in Saint John (12,31): Now the prince of this world will be thrown out. And further on (16,1.1): The prince of this world is already judged. Such is the meaning of the expulsion of impure spirits from the bodies of the possessed. Saint Peter remembered this work of the Lord speaking to the centurion Cornelius and to his house, saying: You know what happened; in all Judea... how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power and how he went about doing good and healing all those oppressed by the devil, because God was with him (Mt. 10:30). The same apostle warns the faithful that our adversary the devil, like a roaring lion, prowls around and seeks someone to devour, whom we must resist armed with faith (1 Petr. 5,8s). The apostle Saint Paul also speaks to the Ephesians about the dark powers to whom they lived subject and with whom they still have to fight (Eph. 2,2; 6,16); for, although defeated by Christ, He does not want to admit his defeat and until the end he will continue in the fight. To the Thessalonians he speaks of how the devil will confer his powers on the wicked, on the man of iniquity, on the son of perdition, who rises up against all that is divine (2 Thes. 2,3s).     

But above all it is Saint John who paints for us in the Apocalypse the struggles of the Church with the devil, embodied in the persecuting pagan empire, Rome and her helpers. He begins the struggle with the very mystery of the incarnation. When the woman appears in the sky who, in the midst of labor pains, is going to give birth to the Messiah, another figure is seen, that of the dragon, ready to swallow the woman's child as soon as it comes to birth. But he did not achieve what he intended, and so he gives himself to persecute his mother, who also flees into the desert, far from the reach of the dragon, The Lord had seen Satan fall from heaven, like lightning. It was victory over Satan. Saint John paints for us a battle in heaven between the angels of God and the dragon with his. They were defeated and thrown to the ground. It is the victory of the faithful who overcome by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony. But the dragon, furious, persecutes the children of the woman, the faithful of Christ. Woe to the earth and the sea!, because the devil came down to you animated with great fury, because he knows that he has little time left (Apoc. 12,12). This fight ends in the battle of Armageddon, the mount of Megiddo, where the Word of God, the faithful and true in fulfilling his promises, comes together, followed by the heavenly armies, and the Beast, accompanied by the kings of the earth with their armies, to give the decisive battle. The author does not stop at the description of the fight, because against the Word of God, who can fight? A breath from his mouth is enough to undo the mightiest armies. And, in fact, that's how it happened. the Beast and the false prophet being imprisoned, killed and handed over to the birds of prey as many as followed them (19.1-21). And the dragon, the ancient serpent, which is the devil, Satan, was caught and condemned for a thousand years (20,1). During them Christ will reign on earth with his saints, after these thousand years, Satan will be released again, who will gather all the kings and nations of the earth and will come to surround the camp of the saints, the beloved city. But he will come down fire from heaven and devour them (20,9). And the devil will be thrown into the pool of fire where the Beast and the false prophet are and they will be tormented day and night for ever and ever (20,10). Then, says Saint Paul, it will be the end, when Jesus Christ delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when he has reduced to nothing all principality, all power and all power (1 Cor. 15,24). Such will be the end of the fight that Jesus engages with the powers of darkness, meanwhile, He, as sovereign, to whom the heavens, the earth and the hells themselves pay homage, will use the demons to test his chosen ones, just as he uses the angels to defend them. For the disciples cannot be in a better condition than the teacher. If he had to sustain a hard fight with the powers of hell, his own will also have to sustain it.

II. celestial phenomena

Jesus Christ denied the Pharisees the miracles from heaven that they asked for. But in the death of Christ the Father wanted to honor him with signs from heaven. It is Saint Luke who tells us: It was about the hour of the sixth, and the mists covered the whole earth until the hour of none; the sky darkened and the veil of the temple was rent in the middle (23-44S). In Saint Thomas's commentary that he gives us of these prodigies, he invokes the testimony of Saint Dionysius the Areopagite, as a witness to the events. Saint Luke does not speak to us about the eclipse of the sun, which would be the strangest thing in the full moon, but about the darkening of the sky throughout the land that we must understand as that of Judea, as in so many other passages of Sacred Scripture. This phenomenon lasted about three hours, and it reminds us of the darkness of Egypt, of which the Exodus tells us.

III. The sick and the dead

It is the healing of the sick that abounds most in the Gospel. It is that there were many then, as today, the sick who wanted to be cured and went to that wonderful doctor, who with a single word or with the contact of his hands returned everyone to full health. And it goes without saying that all those who had experienced the mercy and power of Jesus would give him their entire faith and adherence. With this, Jesus also wanted to prove that whoever had the power to cure the ills of the body also had the power to cure the ills of the soul. This is why he says to the paralytic: Your sins are forgiven you. And then: So that you may see that the son of man of man has power to forgive sins, get up, pick up your bed and go home. (Mt. 9,6)

It is Saint John who most particularly highlights this purpose of the miracles of Jesus, since this means that, after curing the man born blind, he pronounces those words: While I am in the world, I am the light of the world (9,5). And shortly before he had said: I am the light of the world; whoever follows me does not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life (8.12). And when raising Lazarus he said: I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, he will live (11,25). And because this requires certain moral dispositions from man, that is why Jesus demands faith from those who ask him for these favors, whether they are the sick, whether they are his relatives, and because of this, Jesus feels as if he were restricted by unbelief and, on the contrary, he shows great satisfaction when he meets souls of great faith. There has been no lack in our times of those who tried to explain Jesus' cures by the faith that works miracles. This is one of many explanations how unbelief has invented against the miracles of the Gospel.

IV. irrational beings

To manifest Jesus, his power over the entire creation, he also works wonders on irrational beings. He gave the disciples abundant fishing (Io. 21,11), calmed the storm of the sea (Mt. 8,18-23), walked on the waters, provided a tetradrachma in the mouth of a fish to pay the temple tax (Mt. 17,23-26), multiplied the loaves (Mt. 3-21; 15,32-39). All these facts respond to the same purpose of Jesus: to show who He was and generate faith in the beneficiaries or witnesses of such miracles.

Santo Tomás in these questions tries to highlight the reason for the miracles, which comes to be the meaning of them. The first that encompasses all miracles and that comes to be the literal historical sense is to prove with them the dignity of his person, his divine mission and the truth of his word. To this end, the Angelic raises this question in an article: if the miracles performed by Jesus are sufficient proof that God is with Him by personal union, that is, if he is truly the Son of God; And his answer is yes. If we then look at each category of miracles, it will offer us a special facet of the person of Jesus. The casting out of demons will particularly test his power to undo the work of the devil; the healing of diseases, his grace to heal the diseases of the soul; the resurrection of the dead, his power to resurrect souls from the death of sin; the calm of the storm, his power to dominate the storms that fight souls and the Church; the miraculous catch, what the Lord himself promised the apostles, to make them fishers of men, etc. etc. These ideas can then be extended by allegorizing the details of each prodigy, which, done discreetly and with theological sense, will give an exegesis of the miracles that is very rich in doctrine and very profitable.