Eucharistic miracles: evidence of real presence
At each Catholic mass, following the command of Jesus himself, the celebrant lifts the host and says: "Take this, all of you and eat it: this is my body, which will be delivered for you". Then he raises the cup and says: “Take this, all of you, and drink from it: this is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and eternal covenant. It will be paid for you and for everyone so that sins can be forgiven. Do it in memory of me. "
The doctrine of transubstantiation, the teaching that bread and wine are converted into the real flesh and blood of Jesus Christ, is difficult. When Christ first spoke to his followers, many rejected him. But Jesus did not clarify his claim or correct their misunderstanding. He simply repeated his command to the disciples during the Last Supper. Some Christians today still have difficulty accepting this teaching.
Throughout history, however, many people have reported miracles that have brought them back to the truth. The Church has recognized over one hundred Eucharistic miracles, many of which occurred in periods of weakened faith in transubstantiation.
One of the first was recorded by the Desert Fathers in Egypt, who were among the first Christian monks. One of these monks had doubts about the real presence of Jesus in the consecrated bread and wine. Two of his fellow monks prayed for his faith to be strengthened and all attended Mass together. According to the story they left behind, when the bread was placed on the altar, the three men saw a small boy there. When the priest reached out to break the bread, an angel came down with a sword and poured the child's blood into the chalice. When the priest cuts the bread into small pieces, the angel also cuts the baby into pieces. When the men approached to receive Communion, only the skeptical man received a mouthful of bleeding flesh. Seeing this, he was afraid and cried: “Lord, I believe that this bread is your flesh and this cup your blood. ”Immediately the meat became bread and took it, thanking God.
The other monks therefore had a great vision of the miracle that takes place at each Mass. They explained: “God knows human nature and that man cannot eat raw meat, which is why he changed his body into bread and his blood into wine for those who receive it in faith. "
Cloths stained with blood
In 1263, a German priest known as Peter of Prague was struggling with the doctrine of transubstantiation. While he was saying mass in Bolseno, Italy, blood began to flow from the guest and the corporal at the time of the consecration. This was reported and investigated by Pope Urban IV, who concluded that the miracle was real. Blood stained linen is still on display in the cathedral of Orvieto, Italy. Many Eucharistic miracles are like that experienced by Peter of Prague, in which the guest turns into flesh and blood.
Pope Urban had already associated himself with a Eucharistic miracle. Years earlier, the Bl. Juliana of Cornillon, Belgium, had a vision in which she saw a full moon that was darkened at one point. A heavenly voice told her that the moon represented the Church at that time, and the dark spot showed that a large celebration was missing from the liturgical calendar in honor of Corpus Domini. He related this vision to an official of the local Church, the archdeacon of Liege, who later became Pope Urban IV.
Recalling Juliana's vision while verifying the bloody miracle reported by Peter of Prague, Urbano commissioned St. Thomas Aquinas to compose the Office for the Mass and Liturgy of the Hours for a new feast dedicated to the devotion of the Eucharist. This Corpus Christi liturgy (more fully defined in 1312) is practically how we celebrate it today.
At Easter Sunday mass in 1331, in Blanot, a small village in the middle of France, one of the last people to receive Communion was a woman named Jacquette. The priest put the host on his tongue, turned and started walking towards the altar. She did not notice that the guest fell from her mouth and landed on a cloth that covered her hands. When notified, he returned to the woman, who was still kneeling on the railing. Instead of finding the host on the cloth, the priest saw only a stain of blood.
At the end of the mass, the priest brought the cloth to the sacristy and placed it in a basin of water. He has washed the place numerous times but found that it has become darker and larger, eventually reaching the size and shape of a guest. He took a knife and cut off the part that bore the guest's bloody footprint from the cloth. Then he placed it in the tabernacle together with the consecrated armies left after mass.
Those consecrated guests were never distributed. Instead, they were kept in the tabernacle together with the cloth relic. After hundreds of years, they were still perfectly preserved. Unfortunately, they were lost during the French Revolution. The blood-stained canvas, however, was preserved by a parishioner named Dominique Cortet. It is solemnly displayed in the church of San Martino in Blanot every year on the occasion of the feast of Corpus Domini.
A bright light
With some Eucharistic miracles, the guest emits a bright light. In 1247, for example, a woman in Santarem, Portugal, was worried about her husband's loyalty. He went to a sorceress, who promised the woman that her husband would return to his loving ways if his wife had brought a consecrated guest back to the sorceress. The woman agreed.
At mass, the woman managed to get a consecrated guest and put him in a handkerchief, but before she could return to the sorceress, the fabric became stained with blood. This frightened the woman. He hurried home and hid the cloth and guest in a drawer in his bedroom. That night, the drawer emitted a bright light. When her husband saw him, the woman told him what had happened. The following day, many citizens came home, attracted to the light.
People reported the events to the parish priest, who went home. He took the guest back to church and placed him in a wax container where he continued to bleed for three days. The guest stayed in the wax container for four years. One day, when the priest opened the door of the tabernacle, he saw that the wax had broken into numerous pieces. In its place was a crystal container with blood inside.
The house where the miracle took place was converted into a chapel in 1684. Even today, on the second Sunday of April, the accident is recalled in the church of Santo Stefano in Santarem. The reliquary which houses the miraculous guest rests above the tabernacle in that church, and can be seen all year round from a flight of stairs behind the main altar.
A similar phenomenon occurred in the 1300s in the village of Wawel, near Krakow, Poland. Thieves broke into a church, made their way to the tabernacle and stole the monstrance that contained consecrated hostages. When they established that the monstrance was not made of gold, they threw it in the nearby marshes.
When darkness fell, a light emanated from the point where the monstrance and the consecrated armies had been abandoned. The light was visible for several kilometers and the frightened inhabitants reported it to the bishop of Krakow. The bishop asked for three days of fasting and prayer. On the third day, he led a procession through the swamp. There he found the monstrance and the consecrated armies, which were uninterrupted. Every year on the occasion of the feast of Corpus Christi, this miracle is celebrated in the Corpus Christi Church in Krakow.
The face of the Christ child
In some Eucharistic miracles, an image appears on the host. The miracle of Eten, Peru, for example, began on June 2, 1649. That night, as Fr. Jèrome Silva was about to replace the monstrance in the tabernacle, he saw in the guest the image of a child with thick brown curls that fell on his shoulders. He lifted the guest to show the image to those present. Everyone agreed that it was an image of the Christ Child.
A second apparition took place the following month. During the exhibition of the Eucharist, the Child Jesus appeared again in the host, dressed in a purple habit over a shirt that covered his chest, as was the custom of the local Indians, the Mochicas. At the time it was felt that the divine Child wanted to show his love for the Mochicas. During this apparition, which lasted about fifteen minutes, many people also saw three small white hearts in the host, designed to symbolize the three Persons of the Holy Trinity. The celebration in honor of the Miraculous Child of Eten still attracts thousands of people to Peru every year.
One of the most recent verified miracles was of a similar nature. It started on April 28, 2001, in Trivandrum, India. Johnson Karoor was saying Mass when he saw three points on the consecrated host. He stopped saying prayers and fixed the Eucharist. Then he invited those to Mass to watch and they also saw the points. He asked the faithful to remain in prayer and placed the Holy Eucharist in the tabernacle.
At the mass on May 5, p. Karoor noticed an image on the host again, this time a human face. During worship, the figure became clearer. Br. Karoor later explained: “I did not have the strength to speak to the faithful. I stood aside for some time. I couldn't control my tears. We had the practice of reading the scriptures and reflecting on them during worship. The passage I received that day when I opened the Bible was John 20: 24–29, Jesus appeared to Saint Thomas and asked him to see his wounds. " Br. Karoor called a photographer to take photos. They can be viewed on the Internet at http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/988409/posts.
Separate the waters
A completely different type of Eucharistic miracle was recorded by San Zosimo of Palestine in the sixth century. This miracle concerns Saint Mary of Egypt, who left her parents at the age of twelve and became a prostitute. Seventeen years later, he found himself in Palestine. On the feast day of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, Mary went to church, looking for customers. At the church door, he saw an image of the Virgin Mary. She was overwhelmed with remorse for the life she had led and asked for the guidance of the Madonna. A voice said to her, "If you cross the Jordan River, you will find peace."
The next day, Mary did. There, she took the life of a hermit and lived alone in the desert for forty-seven years. As the Virgin had promised, she found peace of mind. One day he saw a monk, San Zosimo of Palestine, who had come to the desert for Lent. Although they had never met, Mary called him by his name. They talked for a while, and at the end of the conversation, asked Zosimus to return the following year and to bring the Eucharist for her.
Zosimos did as he asked, but Maria was on the other side of the Jordan. There was no boat for him to cross, and Zosimos thought that it would be impossible to give her Communion. Santa Maria made the sign of the cross and crossed the water to meet him, and gave her Communion. He again asked him to come back the following year, but when he did, he found out that she was dead. Next to his body was a note asking him to bury it. He reported having been assisted by a lion in the excavation of his grave.
My favorite Eucharistic miracle took place in Avignon, France, in November 1433. A small church run by the Gray Penitents of the Franciscan order exhibited a guest consecrated for perpetual adoration. After several days of rain, the Sorgue and Rhône rivers had risen to a dangerous height. On November 30, Avignon was flooded. The head of the order and another friar rowed a boat to the church, certain that their church had been destroyed. Instead, they saw a miracle.
Although the water around the church was 30 meters high, a path from the door to the altar was perfectly dry and the sacred host was not touched. The water had been retained in the same way that the Red Sea had separated. Amazed at what they had seen, the friars had others come to church from their order to verify the miracle. The news spread quickly and many citizens and authorities came to church, singing songs of praise and thanksgiving to the Lord. Still today, the Gray Penitent brothers gather at the Chapelle des Pénitents Gris every XNUMX November to celebrate the memory of the miracle. Before the blessing of the sacrament, the brothers performed a sacred song taken from the Canticle of Moses, which was composed after the separation of the Red Sea.
The miracle of the mass
The Real Presence Association is currently translating Vatican-approved reports of 120 miracles from Italian into English. The stories of these miracles will be available on www.therealpresence.org.
Faith, of course, should not be based only on miracles. Many of the recorded miracles are very old and it may be possible to reject them. There is no doubt, however, that the reports of these miracles have strengthened the faith of many in the instructions given by Christ and provided avenues for contemplating the miracle that takes place at every Mass. The translation of these relationships will allow more people to learn about Eucharistic miracles and, like others before them, their faith in the teachings of Jesus will be strengthened.