Publisher's Synopsis
In the long, wonderful, and sometimes weird history of supernatural phenomena in the Catholic Church, perhaps the most stunning example is the stigmata: the miraculous appearance of Christ's holy wounds on the bodies of ordinary believers. For centuries, these manifestations of the marks of Jesus's passion have been a subject of great piety and devotion--and controversy. Are they real or are they faked? What is the evidence? And if they are real, what could possibly be God's reason for causing them? In God's Wounds, John Clark offers what may be the most thorough, honest, and faithful reckoning with the stigmata ever written. Neither cynical nor naïve, he takes evidence for the phenomena at face value and tries to make sense of it both medically and spiritually. He looks at stigmatists both famous (like St. Francis and Padre Pio) and obscure, and he scrutinizes the details of historical accounts for cohesion with science, reason, and the Catholic tradition. God's Wounds is a uniquely valuable new work on many levels. As a sleuthing history of the stigmata, it reveals the breadth and detail of this fascinating miracle over time. As an apologetic for the miraculous, it will help you understand and explain (to unbeliever and skeptical Christian alike!) the wondrous and extraordinary ways that God sometimes works in history. And perhaps above all, as a meditation on the Passion it will strengthen your devotion to the One who first bore these sacred marks for our salvation.
