The 72nd healing of Lourdes: “A miracle does not belong to the one who receives it”

Antonietta Raco, sixty-eight, of Francavilla in Sinni, in the diocese of Tursi-Lagonegro, had been paralysed by primary lateral sclerosis. She recovered the use of her legs in 2009, during a pilgrimage to Lourdes made with the Lucanian section of UNITALSI. Science cannot account for this healing, which the Church has recognised as scientifically inexplicable: the seventy-second miracle attributed to the intercession of Our Lady of Lourdes. As Pope Leo XIV's visit to Lourdes drew near, during his journey to France, she looked back on what she lived through.

At the baths, she recounts, she heard the words “Fear not”. At first she kept to herself the discovery that she could walk again, and only later found the strength to speak of it. Today she serves as a volunteer of UNITALSI: she accompanies the sick, listens to them, prays with them, rather than recounting her own healing, for silence, she says, “gives the possibility of entering into the heart”.

Her bishop, Mgr Francescantonio Noè, had reminded her that this gift was not hers alone: “He tells me that this gift was not for me, but for all.” She herself sums it up in a phrase: “A miracle does not belong to the one who receives it.” From the pope's coming she awaits a consolation for the afflicted: “I believe, then, that all he says at Lourdes will be able to fill the hearts of so many who are suffering at this moment, in body as in spirit. It will surely be a great help to them.”

What the Church teaches about miracles

A miracle is neither a gratuitous marvel nor a private favour. It is a sign: a work that God alone can accomplish, above the whole order of created nature, to attest the truth of His revelation and to strengthen faith. The Vatican Council defined it as one of the most certain signs of divine revelation, suited to the understanding of all. This is why the Church never proclaims a miracle lightly: she waits until medicine has exhausted its explanations, and she reserves her judgment with a prudent slowness. This rigour is not distrust of God; it is the respect owed to His work.

The measure

Nothing here contradicts that rule; everything confirms it. A disease held to be irreversible yields with no natural cause, the doctors admit defeat, and the Church, after examination, acknowledges the fact without concluding too quickly. The sign is given, and it is given for what signs have served since the Gospel: not to honour the one who receives it, but to lead others to faith and hope. The woman healed understood this better than many commentators: “A miracle does not belong to the one who receives it.”

In keeping silent about her own grace to bend toward the sick, she restores to the gift its true end. And the words she says she heard, “Fear not”, are those that Scripture sets again and again on the lips of the angel and of the Saviour, at the threshold of the great graces. The faithful have therefore nothing to add or to take away: they give thanks, and they hold fast to the faith the Church has always taught.

Sources. Vatican Council, dogmatic constitution Dei Filius (1870), on miracles as the most certain signs of divine revelation, suited to the understanding of all; Roman Catechism (Catechism of the Council of Trent, 1566), on the first article of the Creed and the omnipotence of God; the Gospel according to Saint John (Vulgate), XX, 30-31, on the signs written “that you may believe”; the “Fear not” (Noli timere) repeated throughout Scripture, in Saint Luke I, 30.