“Jesus said to him, ‘Unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe.’” (John 4:48)
The royal official believed that Jesus could heal his son; Jesus responds to his faith by granting his request. Our Lord did not approach the royal official to miraculously heal his son, to prove to him that He is the Son of God. There is an important difference.
When we as Catholics consider the most extraordinary things that the Church holds to be true – Marian apparitions, Eucharistic miracles, saints levitating or bi-locating, to name but a few – there is a temptation to think that if only more people knew about them, or if only more people had witnessed them, then more people would believe. Or perhaps a skeptic might think, ‘if I had seen it with my own eyes, then I might believe’. But this isn’t quite true.
Imagine two witnesses at the miracle of the sun at Fatima. One person sees the sun fall out of the sky and believes it’s the fulfilment of Our Lady’s promise. His neighbour sees the sun fall out of the sky and believes it’s an optical illusion, that he is the victim of mass hysteria. They both experienced the same event but they understood it differently. The skeptic wasn’t convinced by the miracle because he didn’t see it through the eyes of faith.
Faith is not arrived at through evidence, it is given to us through the grace of God. Miracles are a confirmation of faith, not the source of it. That is why Our Lord answers the royal official’s request – not for the sake of his son’s health, but for the sake of the father’s soul, that he and his household may be strengthened in their faith in Christ.