One day in Capernaum Jesus is teaching a large throng of people, many of whom have travelled from afar to hear this remarkable figure whose reputation is now the subject of daily conversation across Galilee and Judea.

Friends lower the paralytic man through the roof in Capernaum, by William Hole

Many others have come with ailments and illnesses hoping to be cured by this performer of miracles. A group of men comes to the town and brings an old friend who is a paralytic and quite unable to walk. On arriving at the house where Jesus is speaking the friends realise that it is impossible to enter on account of the crowds, so they decide to take their friend up on the roof, and after removing some thatch and tiles, lower him down into the very room where Jesus is standing. When Jesus sees this happening He praises the faith of all concerned and forgives the paralytic man his sins. After mutterings among listeners about only God being able to forgive sins, Jesus points out that forgiveness achieves exactly the same result as telling this man to get up and walk. He then tells the man to do just that, and the paralytic man is miraculously able to walk.

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This edited article about miraculous visions originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 967 published on 20 September 1980.

The morning of 13th May, 1917, was peaceful and sunny and the three children quietly herding sheep enjoyed their task. Suddenly, however, the plateau near the village of Fatima, in central Portugal, was struck by two brilliant flashes of light. The startled youngsters gazed around them in alarm.

The illumination came from a gnarled oak tree a short distance away. In the centre of a great ball of light, stood the figure of a calm and beautiful woman. The frightened children – ten-year-old Lucia dos Santos and her cousins, Fransisco, aged nine, and Jacito, seven – cowered back.

But the woman, a halo over her head, held out her arms and spoke gently but firmly. “Do not be afraid,” she said. “I will not harm you. You know who I am. Come to this place on the 13th of each month until October. Then I shall reveal a terrible secret to you.”

The vision began to fade and soon there was no sphere of light and no beautiful stranger. Lucia and her cousins hurried down to the village and told their parents of their weird experience. “We saw the Virgin Mary and she spoke to us as if we were her children,” said Lucia. “She is coming to talk to us again.”

Lucia’s story split the village into two conflicting groups. The first group thought that the three children were telling blasphemous lies. The shocked villagers advised the youngsters’ parents to punish them for taking the Holy Mother’s name in vain.

But the second group – which consisted of 50 equally pious men and women – believed the children’s seemingly incredible story. Exactly four weeks later, at noon on 13th June, they accompanied the three cousins up to the plateau and waited to see if the vision would return.

The children knelt and said their rosaries and, as they did so, the Virgin Mary appeared to them. “She came from the east like a glowing messenger from God,” Lucia said afterwards. “Only Fransisco, Jacito and myself could see her, for she had chosen us to reveal her secrets of the future.”

But this time the message was a gloomy one. According to Lucia, the Virgin Mary said that the First World War – then in its fourth year – was only the first of several disasters which were going to afflict humanity in the 20th century.

Soon after the war ended, forecast the Virgin, a terrible illness would rage through Europe and thousands of people would lose their lives. Among them would be Fransisco and Jacito. The two boys later became victims of the influenza epidemic which swept Europe in the winter of 1918-1919,

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In the Gospel of Matthew the evangelist records a whole series of miraculous healings, and the least remarked upon is often the briefest in mention, that of the solitary leper who approaches Jesus when He comes down from the mountainside with His disciples, followed by great crowds.

Jesus heals the solitary leper, by Clive Uptton

The leper simply approaches, kneels and worships Him, asking “Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean”; Jesus replies simply, “I will; be thou clean”, and asks him to tell no-one but to go to show himself to the priest and make an offering of thanksgiving in the temple. It is a snapshot of utter faith on the part of the afflicted which is rewarded by the unquestioning and healing touch of the Lord.

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Bartimaeus is one of the very few named people in the Bible to be cured by a miracle performed by Jesus.

Bartimaeus is brought to Christ, by Harold Copping

He is, as his name tells us, the son of Timaeus, and is in the area of Jericho, a city through which Jesus and the disciples pass on their way to Jerusalem not long before the Passion.  Jesus has already healed  a blind man, and this incident may well have happened because Bartimaeus had already heard of the previous miracles and especially the one concerning the man cured of blindness. So as they and a large crowd pass by , the blind Bartomaeus, who is begging by the roadside, calls out to the Lord for mercy. He is told to be quiet, and everyone tries to ignore his calls, but Jesus asks them to bring him over to Him. When asked what he wants, Bartomaeus replies that he wants to see Jesus, whereupon he is cured of his blindness by his faith, as Jesus tells him.

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After feeding the five thousand Jesus and His disciples travel towards Galilee and pass through the region of Tyre and Sidon, where Jesus encounters the Canaanite woman.

The Canaanite woman appeals to Christ, by Harold Copping

She is greatly distressed and calls out to Him for help, appealing for mercy and telling Him that her daughter “is greatly vexed with the Devil”. The disciples urge Him to send her away since she continues to call after them, but Jesus reminds them that He is “sent to help the lost sheep of Israel”, and after hearing her plea for help, praises her for her great faith and grants her wish, “and her daughter was made whole from that very hour” (Matthew 15: 28).

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When Moses leads the Israelites out of Captivity they travel from Mount Hor past the Red Sea towards Edom, and in this wilderness the people do little but curse Moses and complain of their ordeal, regretting their great escape from slavery and wishing to return to Egypt.

The Brazen Serpent cures those poisoned by snakebites, by Harold Copping

So as usual God has to chasten them with a suitable punishment, and sends snakes into the barren land to torment His hungry and thirsty people. Many are fatally bitten, and panic and remorse spread throughout their encampments, so that eventually they are compelled to go to Moses and ask him to pray to God for an end to their ordeal. Moses does just that, and God tells him to

make a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live. (Numbers 21:8 )

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Jesus and His disciples are passing by a small village near Jerusalem when they see a group of lepers, set apart from the villagers by law, to prevent the spread of that terrible disease.

Jesus commends the tenth leper, by Clive Uptton

They cannot approach Him so call out for attention “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us”. Jesus goes over to the men and simply tells them to go and show themselves to the priests. They take this to mean that they have been cured, since they will need the priests’ approval before rejoining their community. So as they run to do this, when they see their skin is made whole and new again, they are all overjoyed. The priests can find no blemish and all the men return to their own people, all but one that is. The tenth leper is a Samaritan, despised by the Jews, and he returns to Jesus in order to thank Him. Christ observes that they were ten and asks where the other nine are, but no-one knows; He then turns to this one man, telling him that it is his faith that has cured him.

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Jesus and His disciples are on their way to Naim in Galilee and as they reach the city gate they see a procession which, it soon becomes apparent, is a solemn funeral progress. A young boy has died and his litter is being borne out of the city for his burial.

The widow’s son rises from his funeral litter, by Clive Uptton

Many mourners follow the body, and chief among them his grief-stricken mother. She is a widow, and therefore doubly sad that her only son has died and she is now utterly alone in the world. Widows were soon marginalised in the society of that time. Jesus perceives all this, and when the litter passes reaches up and touches the dead body of the young boy, and to everyone’s shock speaks to him thus: “I say unto you arise.” This perhaps unseemly and even tasteless interruption to the sad ceremony confuses the onlookers, but they are even more astonished when to their amazement the boy sits up and begins to talk to Jesus, who helps him down from the funeral litter and takes him to his mother. She is overwhelmed with joy at this miraculous event and all the crowd gives praise to God. They realise that a great prophet has come among them, and news quickly spreads of this wonderful miracle.

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To describe Joan of Arc as a national heroine in France is something of an understatement. Indeed, almost any account of this remarkable young woman’s life seems superfluous, so lodged is she in the popular imagination of people right across the world.

Saint Joan, by James E McConnell

Born to peasant farmers in Domremy in Eastern France, she would come to dominate the entire European political landscape within a handful of years, and all because she was sent revelatory visions by God which instructed her to save France from the English and restore its nationhood and independence. It was this mission and her overriding love for her homeland which determined the course of her destiny, and led to her victories in the Hundred Years War which prepared the way for the coronation of Charles VII at Reims, thus solving the self-destructive question of the French succession. She was captured by the Burgundians, and Charles VII could by rights have ransomed her, but for various lamentable and despicable reasons he did not. Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, equally despicable, sold her to the English, and for political reasons she was famously tried for heresy in Rouen, pronounced guilty and burnt at the stake on 30th May, 1431 at the age of only nineteen. She was only canonised as recently as 1920. Her life and martyrdom have inspired many great artists, composers, writers, poets and cinematographers, but among their brilliant operas, plays and canvases it is perhaps Carl Dreyer’s silent film classic, The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), which best captures the visionary beauty of Joan’s translation from headstrong young girl and heroic warrior to transcendent saintly martyr.

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When Paul is shipwrecked on Melita, or Malta as we now call it, he is made welcome by the local people, and later that evening a group of them are sitting around the fire built to keep the survivors warm. Paul picks up a bunch of twigs to burn, and as he throws them on the fire a snake slithers out from the bundle and coiling round his arm bites him very badly.

St Paul is bitten by a snake, by Clive Uptton

The islanders are rather superstitious and take this as a sign that he is a murderer being punished for his sins; he is fully expected to die, but everyone is amazed to see that his arm is not even swollen where the fangs went in, and before long it becomes quite apparent that Paul has survived the venomous attack. News spreads of this seemingly miraculous event, and Paul is made welcome and stays for a few weeks with the island’s “chief man” or governor, Publius, whose father is suffering from dysentry and fever. St Paul’s reputation is further enhanced when he cures this old man, and after healing several other islanders, he and his guard at last set sail again for Rome and his impending trial. Publius later converts the entire island to Christianity, the first albeit small Christian nation in the world, and is venerated on that island of saints and churches as St Publius, first Bishop of Malta.

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