In an extensive Newsweek article, ‘The Meaning of Miracles’, journalist Kenneth Woodward explains the various religious traditions’ approaches to miracles, and provides examples of miraculous experiences from different faiths.

"Every week of the year, somewhere in the world, believers gather to celebrate the miraculous deeds that God, or the gods, a saint or a sage, worked on behalf of the faithful," Woodward writes. "Many Jews and Buddhists, as well as Christians, Hindus and Muslims, still look for — and, by their own accounts, experience — miraculous interventions in their lives."

In the US, according to a recent Newsweek poll, 84 per cent of adult Americans say they believe that God performs miracles and nearly half (48 per cent) report that they have personally experienced or witnessed one. Three-quarters of American Catholics say they pray for miracles, and among non-Christians — and people of no faith at all — 43 per cent say they have asked for God’s intervention.

Most Americans who pray for miracles ask for cures — for themselves or for loved ones. Fifty per cent of those polled credit God with bringing back to life people who have been declared dead by medical authorities.

"Miracle stories, ancient and modern, do two things," Woodward says: "They explain the ways of God to the faithful, and they are the means by which believers experience the presence of God, or the gods, in their own lives."

Miracles are found in all the world religions, he says: "In ancient India, as in the ancient Middle East, miracles functioned as both signs and wonders. As wonders, they incited awe; as signs, they always signified the presence of transcendent power. When the Buddha dazzled his kinfolk by rising in the air, dividing his body into pieces and then rejoining them, he signalled for all to see that he had achieved complete liberation from the iron laws of karma. When the Prophet Muhammad produced water in the desert for his companions to drink, he demonstrated the compassion of Allah the All-Merciful. And when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, he signalled his power over death and foreshadowed his own resurrection. He also echoed the miracles worked by the earlier Hebrew prophets Elijah and Elisha, and set the pattern for the same miracles to be worked by the apostles Peter and Paul."

— "A decade ago, at the age of 12, Bernadette McKenzie found that she could no longer stand upright, even after three operations. She suffered from a tethered spinal cord, a rare congenital condition causing constant pain. The nuns at her school in suburban Philadelphia began a series of prayers, seeking the intercession of their deceased founder, Mother Frances de Sales Aviat, whom they regard as a saint. On the fourth day, Bernadette herself knelt by her bed, telling God that if this was to be her life she would accept it. But she wanted to know — a sign. If she were to walk again, she pleaded, let her favourite song, ‘Forever Young’, play next on the radio. It did. She immediately jumped up and ran downstairs to tell her family. Bernadette didn’t even notice that her physical symptoms had disappeared, something her doctors say is medically inexplicable. Her recovery is currently being evaluated by the Vatican as a possible miracle."

— "For as long as she can remember, Angela Boudreaux has been praying to Francis Xavier Seelos, a Redemptorist priest whose bones lay buried in her parish church in Gretna, Louisiana. In the summer of 1966, Angela, now 70, was diagnosed with liver cancer. After exploratory surgery showed huge tumour masses throughout 90 per cent of the organ, she was given two weeks to live. ‘She looked like someone out of a concentration camp,’ recalls her physician, Dr Alfred J.Ruffy Jr, now a retired professor from the Wake Forest School of Medicine. But Angela prayed to Father Seelos, asking for time to raise her four children. Almost immediately, Ruffy noticed that the grapefruit-size tumour had begun to shrink, a reversal, he says, that could not be attributed to the rudimentary chemotherapy he had used. ‘It was the most remarkable case I’ve ever been involved with,’ says Ruffy. The following November, Angela was on her feet and caring for her kids. The Roman Catholic Church declared the cure a miracle, and two weeks ago Ruffy and the Boudreaux family were in Rome for the beatification of Father Seelos."

— "A year ago Tyler Clarensau shuffled to the altar in the gym of Park Crest Assembly of God Church in Springfield, Missouri. It was, he thinks, probably the 200th time he’d sought healing for malformed knee joints that surgery had failed to correct. Suddenly, a group of 40 other Pentecostal teenagers encircled him and began to pray. Gradually the whole congregation was raised to a prayerful roar. An hour later, when silence fell, a church volunteer pronounced that God had finally healed Clarensau’s legs. Shakily, he stood up, all eyes on him. He began to do deep knee bends, something he hadn’t accomplished in years. Now he can run — slowly. ‘I’d heard stories about people getting healed,’ says Tyler, 15, ‘and I thought it was pretty cool. But I didn’t really know for sure until it happened to me.’"

— "Shoshana Levin is a singer-songwriter from a liberal Jewish family on the West Coast. But for the last 10 years she has also been a student of the Torah and a member of Chabad Lubavitch, a Hasidic group in Brooklyn, New York, and a devout believer in the power of its late rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson. In July 1992, Shoshana’s mother was diagnosed with stomach cancer and not expected to live. The day after she heard the news, Shoshana went to the rebbe’s secretary with a letter asking Schneerson for a blessing (berucha). She was told to call back that afternoon and, in the meantime, to have her family put mezuzas throughout the house, do good deeds and light Shabbos candles. Her mother reluctantly did as her daughter instructed, writing several cheques for charitable causes. That afternoon Shoshana was told that the rebbe had granted his blessing. Three days later, when doctors did a biopsy on her mother, there were no signs of the cancer. ‘Someone’s prayers were answered,’ the doctor said."

— "Hisham Muhammad Kabbani is a Sufi saint, a Sheik in the Naqshbandi Order of Islam, which traces its lineage back to the Prophet Muhammad. Now 55 and head of the order in North America, he has an M.D. from Louvain University in Belgium. He relates a miracle story that occurred in 1971, when his own spiritual master, Sheik Muhammad Nazim al-Haqqani, made a rare and unexpected visit to Kabbani’s home in Lebanon. ‘He said to me: "I have received an inspiration from a chain of our grandmasters that your father is going to die tonight at 7pm." I asked: "How do you know this? My father is old but in good health." He said: "It is through our essence and the spiritual connection that has been passed over thousands of years." It was 5pm and he told me to call the family together and not to tell my father. At five minutes before 7pm, my master came to my father’s room. My father told the Sheik that he was in pain and his heart was failing. When the clock was ringing at 7pm, my father passed away.’"

— "Maharaj Krishna Rasgotra, a retired Foreign Secretary of India, remembers the precise day almost 30 years ago when he became a devotee of Sathya Sai Baba, India’s most celebrated living saint. Over the years, the government official often witnessed Baba work his signature miracle — producing out of air mounds of vibhuti, sacred ash that his devotees credit with healing properties. But it was in 1986 that Rasgotra experienced Baba’s power firsthand. After suffering a heart attack, Rasgotra lay in a hospital recovery room. Among the hovering doctors and nurses he saw Baba, though the saint was a thousand miles away. When physicians told him he needed bypass surgery to avoid a fatal attack, Rasgotra consulted Baba in person, who told him he didn’t need it. Rasgotra skipped surgery and today, at 75, he plays 18 holes of golf regularly. ‘I have total faith in Baba,’ says Rasgotra. ‘Whatever he says comes about. Whenever you are with him you feel you’re shedding something and acquiring a new kind of life.’"

— "Buddhist sages are wary of displaying these [miraculous] powers to others, lest it bolster the ego they are trying to overcome. Venerable Master Hsuan Hua, a Chinese Buddhist monk, established a Chan monastery in San Francisco in 1970. In Asia, it is reported that he could heal the ailments of those willing to follow the dharma of the Buddha. But in the United States, where he died in 1995, Master Hua thought that using supernatural powers as a teaching tool would be counterproductive in a rational, scientific society."

Woodward concludes that " ... as the United States becomes home to all the world’s religions, miracle stories have acquired a new and almost civic dimension. While they show that religions provide very different visions of how the transcendent operates in the world, those differences need not divide us: miracle stories also invite spiritual seekers to journey into worlds other than their own.... As an old Hasidic saying puts it: ‘He who believes all these tales is a fool, but anyone who cannot believe them is a heretic.’" (Source: Newsweek, USA)