While usually considered as a last resort, there have been many well-documented cases of divine interventions that scientists and atheists still struggle to explain. "Sometimes we have cases that you could call exceptional, but that's not enough," explains Dr. Ennio Ensoli, who is in the business of determining whether a divine intervention has taken place and whether someone should be named a saint. "Exceptional doesn't mean inexplicable."

Janice Bender was told she had months to live, as the metastatic lung cancer spread throughout her frail body. A medical intervention like liquid morphine and chemotherapy seemed her only hope, but even those options had doctors shaking their heads, telling Janice's husband, Frank, that he had better prepare for the worst. So Frank quit his job as a sculptor, yet he did finish one task: resculpting the mask that lay over St. John Neumann's face at his public shrine in Philadelphia.

Father Kevin Moley came from the Church to see Janice and before leaving he placed a relic of St. John Neumann up to her forehead and said a prayer. Instantly, Janice felt a warm, soft feeling expand inside of her and over the next few weeks, dozens of tests confirmed the inexplicable: the cancer had completely disappeared! While they aren't particularly religious people, the Benders attribute the miracle to the divine intervention of Saint John Neumann. "Maybe St. John Neumann wanted this intercession as a gift to him," Moley said, commenting that the new face Frank sculpted was "perfect."

In Lourdes, France, a fourteen-year-old peasant girl named Bernadette Soubirous saw the Virgin Mary eighteen times in the cave of Massabielle, from February 11 - 16th, 1858. By the Virgin Mary's twelfth appearance, a woman's paralyzed arm was cured in the spring when she appeared at the site of Mary's appearance. Similarly, in 1901, a man named Gabriel Gargam, who had gangrene feet, was paralyzed from the waist down, was bed-ridden and weighing just 75 pounds, came to be healed at Lourdes but fainted from the exertion. After he could not be revived, they placed a cloth over his face and thought him dead, but when the priest came to give him last rites, Gargam suddenly sat up, stood up and said he was cured! In 1923, epileptic and paraplegic John Traynor found physical and mental healing after bathing in the grotto. He was so cured, in fact, that he didn't remember how long he had been ill! Today, 6 million people come to Lourdes, hoping for divine intervention that will heal them from illness and disability, even when medical intervention has failed.

For some people, divine intervention can be found in a church. For others, they need to make a long pilgrimage to one of the sacred sites in the world. Tarot card readers have become mainstream as people look for answers, direction and a sense of purpose. Meditation has grown in popularity in Western culture to help connect with a universal soul. When other intervention techniques fail, there's no harm in asking for assistance: you just might be surprised!