The Catholic Accent Podcast

21 - Signs and Wonders: When the Apostles Performed Miracles

• Diocese of Greensburg • Season 2 • Episode 11

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A man survives a venomous bite. A shadow heals the sick. A sleepy listener falls from a window and is brought back to life. Acts is full of moments that pull us out of our assumptions, and we wanted to test what those stories mean for faith, reason, and everyday life right now. We start by pinning down a clear definition of miracle—not a break with logic, but an act of God that can’t be explained by natural causes—and why the early Church treated claims with scrutiny long before social media “proof.”

From Paul’s brush with a serpent to Peter raising Tabitha, we unpack the difference between resuscitation and resurrection, the role of faith in receiving healing, and the subtle humility of the apostles who refuse the spotlight so Christ can take center stage. The thread runs through every account: signs and wonders exist to point beyond the messenger. That principle becomes our guide for discernment, leadership, and how we talk about “coincidences” that change our path.

We then turn to modern cases: Eucharistic miracles with tested heart tissue, the liquefaction of St. Januarius’s blood, and the rigor of the Lourdes medical bureau where secular doctors document healings with no human explanation. Alongside those headline moments, we consider the “little miracles” that many of us quietly experience—timely encounters, narrow escapes, words that arrive exactly when needed—and how cooperation and humility make us available to grace. We even revisit Eutychus’s infamous nap as a lesson in how God meets us at our lowest and lifts us back into community.

If you’re curious, skeptical, or simply hungry for hope, this conversation offers a grounded way to think about signs and wonders—anchored in scripture, attentive to evidence, and focused on Christ. If it sparks something in you, share it with a friend, subscribe for more, and leave a review to tell us where you’ve seen grace break in.

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Jordan Whiteko, Father Andrew Hamilton, Father Christopher Pujol, Vincent Reilly, Cliff Gorski, John Zylka, Sarah Hartner

SPEAKER_02:

You're listening to the Catholic Acting podcast. We discussed the act that Jesus performed that stunned his disciples. Great to be back, Jordan.

SPEAKER_00:

You don't know us by now, you're never gonna know.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm Jordan Waco here with Father Hamilton and Father Poojil. And we're both stunned. All right, we're on episode 11. You're still with us. We're talking about signs and wonders when the apostles perform miracles. So usually when we think about miracles from the Bible, we think of Jesus. But throughout the Acts of the Apostles, they also perform the miracles. Uh, but before we get into specifics, what is a miracle?

SPEAKER_03:

A miracle is something that, first of all, gets our attention, right? It comes from the Latin to mean an object of wonder, something that is so attractive and so changing and something so unexpected that it pulls us in. But in if you apply that to Christianity, really a miracle is a an act of God in our human condition.

SPEAKER_00:

I would say, yeah, it's a supernatural revelation logic.

SPEAKER_03:

Yes. And so I mean, miracles still happen. Not human.

SPEAKER_00:

Actually, I'm gonna correct that. Maybe not human logic, so much as it's not that miracles break logic in any way, but it's something that we like wouldn't normally understand something to be.

SPEAKER_03:

Because God is logical, but we can't explain it from a human perspective. Right. So like if we look at all the different cases that are open right now for the causes of canonization of saints, each miracle of those saints are studied by multiple doctors, lay people, but also non-Christian doctors, because a miracle has to be objectively true.

SPEAKER_00:

It's unexplainable by natural means.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

All right. So it keeps us held in wonder and suspense.

SPEAKER_02:

And it's described repeatedly as signs and wonders, hence the title. Um, so a miracle is wonderful. What were some of the memorable miracles that took place in Acts of the Apostles?

SPEAKER_00:

There's some fun ones along the way if you're if you're keeping track as you go through the Acts of the Apostles. Like it's not all drama. No, it's all not just yeah, dramatic, but there's there's real life effects that happen from miracles. Tell us about the snake bite. So Paul's by a fire there, and he's bitten by what would be a venomous, not poisonous snake. Poison is for plants, venomous for snakes. For all of our snake experts out there. Yep. So a venomous snake, and he should die from it, swell up and fall over.

SPEAKER_03:

And there's no life light to get him to the venom clinic.

SPEAKER_00:

And essentially nothing really happens to him. So it fulfills what comes at the last part of the written gospel as talking about that those that follow Christ will be able to work wonders, that they will be able to drink even things that would be otherwise poisonous or venomous things biting them, and it doesn't have an effect upon them. So it's breaking down the natural order with the supernatural shining through. And so people are amazed by that.

SPEAKER_03:

And we have Saint Peter, he raises Tabitha from the dead. And so we have to also make the distinction that this is a resuscitation, not a resurrection, because she'll have to die again.

SPEAKER_00:

But I always thought about Lazarus after he comes out of the grave. I'd be so mad. Think about having to die again, you know. Like I'm already bound.

SPEAKER_03:

Leave me in my tomb.

SPEAKER_02:

And yeah, and we talked about that last season last season, too. Would you even want to come back once you're in the glory of God and paradise? No. No. Yeah, no. I knew that was a rhetorical question.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh we just had to be very clear. Uh there's other interesting miracles, right? We talked about in one of the previous episodes. Yeah, Peter's shadow about outside the temple. So it's uh more important than the shadow that we have of uh the famous little rodent there in Punchatani. Yeah. So a shadow that's more meaningful that gives healing, uh, rather than just telling us that we have a couple weeks more or less of winter.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it means the same thing either way, by the way. It does. Whether you're if he sees a shadow or not, you know, it's still the same day.

SPEAKER_03:

But that would be fun to be part of that group and get one of those top hats and knock on the we can get you a top hat. Maybe for next year.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, we'll put you we'll put we'll put uh the logo on it.

SPEAKER_03:

All right. But even the man that Peter heals with his shadow, imagine what faith he must have had to simply think that even not a physical touch would heal him. And thinking just that this man's shadow could affect me and restore me back to health and community. And I think that that's something important for us to recognize. Jordan, have you ever experienced anything that was like a miracle, that was like a sign or wonder that really made you see God acting? He got a girlfriend.

SPEAKER_01:

I'm just gonna cut to that. That was good. All right. Well, Father Andrew answered for me. I I I finally got a girlfriend. So you can stop sending in those letters.

SPEAKER_02:

Please cease and desist. So, what lessons can be learned from these miracle stories?

SPEAKER_03:

When we least expect it is oftentimes when we find the Lord working.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and God gives them not in a way in which that we can guess, oh, on Tuesday next week, this miracle's gonna happen, or here or there, wherever. God works these into time and creation, maybe when a person most needs something, when they're going through the most difficult thing of their life. Think about how many people have experienced, not that we've like looked into it on a level of scientific inquiry exactly, but many times people experience smaller miracles in their life of ways in which that you know they really fell into something that changed their life, that they met this person that they never would have thought. It could be seen as a coincidence, everything could be seen as a coincidence in this life, or that could actually be your personal little miracle story that has changed the route that you've taken in life.

SPEAKER_03:

It's important as we look at these miracles, it's so we can get so caught up in the wonder of them, which is important, but then we forget sometimes that the miracles are always done in the name of Jesus. The disciples never do it for their own glory, their fame, their honor, and they're always pointing towards Christ.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, may the greater glory of God, you know, God be praised in all our actions. And when we get out of the way and it's not about our own vanity, that's when God can work. When we forget ourselves in the mission of God, that's when he's most fully alive in the midst of the world. And so we see that exact image of the early church that everything's about Jesus, it's about his name, about getting his name out there. And so they kind of sink back, uh, take a backseat to all of that, and that's what continues to grow the church and why it prospers then into those early years.

SPEAKER_03:

And it should remind us of that interaction between Saint Peter and Christ when Peter told when Christ told Peter to get behind me. Because Christ is the one who is leading, the one who is moving us forward. And so really each and every one of us have to be behind him, who is that standard bearer, that flag bearer, that announcer of of freedom for all people and salvation.

SPEAKER_00:

Because he's the one that's called from the prophecies, wonder counselor, right? God amongst us, and so he's still amongst his church.

SPEAKER_02:

So what about miracles today? You know, are have there been any that have happened modern time?

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, we still have miracles that happen that are constantly being looked into. You have Eucharistic miracles, which are something for our viewers to look into, especially starting with Lanciano, Italy, and uh spread it out throughout Europe. And the Eucharistic miracles, really, in this time of Eucharistic revival uh within the church are so important for us because it takes the veil off of everything to see like this is done by God. This isn't ordinary just bread and wine. It might have the appearances of that for many people, but sometimes again, God breaks through that. And like, what do we see in some of these miracles? That the host actually bleeds. We get true heart tissue. And there's these miracles that happened in the 1300s and the 1400s, no way to preserve them or to keep an environment where things wouldn't decay, and yet they're still here that many years later. Something that just is stupefying in the normal order. The same thing St. Januarius, that a lot of people always think of a church that holds a vial of his blood in Naples, the blood continues to turn and liquefy every year on his feast day, something that a lot of people come to see and to see that great miracle. And if it doesn't, there's great famine in the land or war. But some of the ones I've been most edified by looking into are some of the miracles that happen at Lourdes, France, and from the apparitions there to Saint Bernadette. And you have a lot of other doctors that are not Catholic, that are from all different faith backgrounds or no faith whatsoever, and purely just objective, looking at these natural circumstances that somehow it came out that cancers that couldn't be healed were healed, deformities restored.

SPEAKER_03:

And 60 Minutes actually just did a piece about it within the last year about Lord's and about these miracles that are taking place, and so well scientifically documented that there is no human explanation for how these things have occurred. I mean, I think we have to be open to seeing miracles every day because our ability to call upon God as Father in one sense is miraculous, that we have a relationship with the living God. So if that's our basis, then it's easier for us to believe these miracles that are more flashy.

SPEAKER_02:

So, in addition to the ones you already mentioned, uh there's Ananias who heals Paul, who was blinded by his encounter with Jesus on the road. Peter heals a paralyzed man, Paul heals a man who is crippled, uh, and performs an exorcism on a slave girl, and later heals a man with dysentery.

SPEAKER_00:

The dysentery. You gotta watch out for the dysentery. Anybody ever play Oregon Trail? Kills you in one of two ways. Either you make it to Oregon or you die from dysentery. What happens when you die from dysentery? Uh, we don't want to see that one.

SPEAKER_03:

You're not fording the river.

SPEAKER_02:

Um, and that doesn't even include the jailbreaks we talked of uh in the previous episode.

SPEAKER_00:

Another great lesson that we can learn from the Acts of the Apostles is Paul's healing of a young man named Eudyches. Now, Eudyches' story is that he is listening to Paul preach, and seemingly Paul's a pretty interesting preacher. I mean, he's going around to a lot of different communities, he's well written, well spoken. And so I don't know if he just had a rough night the night before, but Eudyches, he drifts off a little bit. And so as he drifts off, he he just so happened to be next to a window, which is not where you usually want to be. And so then he fell to the ground fellow out of the window upstairs, uh essentially dying, being on the ground, and then Paul goes down and resuscitates him and raises him that way. And uh, it's a good reminder then for all of you out there that maybe father's going on a little long up there at the Ambo at a weekend mass, but you don't want to be like Eudekes, okay? Keep those eyes open.

SPEAKER_03:

And don't break the stained glass falling out.

SPEAKER_02:

I'll write some of the homilies, keep them entertaining.

SPEAKER_03:

I mean, poor Eudyches. He's laying dead on the ground because he fell asleep during a boring homily, and next thing you know, Saint Paul has raised him back to life. So it's a reminder that when we think we're in the worst possible, when we've hit bottom, right? That the Lord still is present and makes himself known to us and can do marvelous wonders. Oftentimes, it takes our acceptance and our cooperation to see those miracles take place and take fruition. Thanks for listening to the Catholic Accent Podcast.

SPEAKER_02:

Don't forget to follow, like, and subscribe to our show.

SPEAKER_03:

I think uh I don't think. Um clearly I'd like to mention that due to a popular response of our faithful listeners, we've added two more episodes to this season. Last season we had 10 episodes, and this season we were 12 for our going to be a twelve.

SPEAKER_02:

But yes, we've already passed our our last how numbers were.

SPEAKER_01:

One the count counts.

SPEAKER_02:

All right, let's just move on.