What is a Miracle? What Does it Take?

Normal physical events have both physical causes and physical effects. Physical here taken in a wider sense including also chemistry and biology and to some degree even everyday metaphysics. They are also, normally, real.

Illusions, lies, dreams, etc are not real. The events in them, if any, have neither physical cases, nor physical effects; they are all only in the mind of someone experiencing them.

A miracle, by contrast, is caused by a mind, but by a mind other than the mind experiencing them. They have no physical causes, but - unlike illusions - they do have physical effects.

If God usually moves one body through another body, each case when He is directly moving a body by an act of will is in this sense a miracle. Angels and human spirits have a smaller participation in this power : they can move bodies, but angels only one at a time, each angel, and human spirits only the own body, while they are alive.

God can not just move, but also change the essence of bodies, and this is not a power shared by angels or men in their own created natures.

So, one can narrow down and say, it is not just a case of having no physical causes but having physical effects, it is also a case of going outside what God is doing with the Universe every day./HGL