From Christ’s Hands and Side—to Our Hearts
New book faithfully but critically examines Christian history’s most polarizing miracle
SAN DIEGO: Faith is belief in things unseen. But God, in his love and mercy, also sometimes gives us visible signposts—in the form of miracles—to guide and strengthen our faith as we journey toward salvation. In the entire history of Christianity, perhaps none of these miracles is as stunningly graphic as the stigmata—the supernatural manifestation of Christ’s wounds on the bodies of ordinary men and women.
God’s Wounds, the new book from Catholic Answers Press, makes a critically important contribution to the study and understanding of this controversial miracle. Though steeped in faith and well-researched into the details of stigmata phenomena over the mists of many centuries, it also offers a fresh take on the mysteries that modern readers—living in a highly skeptical age—can access and benefit from.
Author John Clark didn’t set out to write simply another devotional book, taking every pious story at face value. Instead, he scrutinizes the medical and historical records of both of well-known stigmatists (like Padre Pio) and more obscure ones, and seeks to reconcile the stigmata with Catholic, biblical teaching about how God works in the lives of his faithful.
The result is food for both the soul and the mind. “The stigmata are a sign of contradiction to today’s unbelieving world,” says Todd Aglialoro, director of publishing for Catholic Answers Press. “Skeptics don’t want to acknowledge even nice, purely spiritual miracles; to them the stigmata are—like the Passion—also absurdly grotesque. That’s why God’s Wounds is so important: it is a clear and unyielding defense not just of the miraculous but also of the inescapable physicality of God’s saving intervention in human history.”
About the Author:
John Clark is a Catholic newspaper columnist, author, and former political speechwriter.
