Eucharistic Miracles Past & Present…
The following article is published in The Truth: Les Femmes, The Women of Truth, Vol 21, No. 2 Summer 2016, entitled: The Answer to All Our Problems? Jesus and Mary by Mary Ann Kreitzer. Reprinted here with kind permission.
The world faces problems these days on an apocalyptic scale. Wars and terrorist attacks, devastating natural disasters, increasing plagues like AIDS, Zika, Lyme, and antibiotic resistant super-bugs, not to mention the anxiety, stress, and depression that accompany modern living. And, of course, we all have relationship challenges among our families, friends, and acquaintances. I’d like to suggest in this article that the answer to all our challenges is simple – increasing devotion to the Real Presence of our Lord in the Holy Eucharist (and, of course, the rosary) and devotion to Our Lady. But I’m going to focus here on the Eucharist, the bread of angels.
An interviewer once asked Bishop Fulton Sheen who was the greatest influence in his life. Was it a bishop or seminary professor, a cardinal or a nun? What, in fact, inspired him to make the challenging decision to pray a holy hour before the Blessed Sacrament every day of his priestly life? The bishop responded with a story about a little 11-year-old girl in China after the virulently anti-Christian Communists took over the country.
One day, the authorities invaded a local parish and locked the pastor in the church’s coal storage room. They ransacked the church, broke open the tabernacle, and emptied the ciborium on the floor trampling the hosts underfoot. Then they left. A small opening between the coal bin and the church allowed the priest to see what happened next. Every night, a little girl, one of priest’s parishioners, slipped past the guards and stole into the church. She knelt and prayed for a few minutes, then bending over she took a desecrated host on her tongue and made a holy hour of thanksgiving. Afterwards, she stole out of the church again.
This went on for 32 nights, corresponding to the number of hosts in the tabernacle. On the day the child consumed the last host, the soldiers saw her and brutally beat her to death. Sheen said if that little martyr could sacrifice her life to make a holy hour with our Eucharistic Lord every day, he too ought to make a daily holy hour in thanks for so great a gift. And from that moment, Bishop Sheen preached unceasingly urging both priests and laity to make holy hours before the Lord.
Saint Teresa of Calcutta often said the answer to all the world’s problems was perpetual adoration of the Eucharist with every Catholic making a holy hour every week. Such a small sacrifice with such a great return! Jesus, present in the Eucharist, is the remedy for all our ills. If we would only believe and act on our belief we can change the world.
“But why should we believe Jesus is really present?” some may ask. “It’s only a piece of bread, a symbol. What nonsense to think the host can literally be the body and blood of Christ present here on earth. Who can believe such a thing?” Sound familiar? It should. In John’s gospel, chapter six, Christ Himself responded to His disciples’ disbelief saying, “My flesh is real food; my blood is real drink….Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you have no life in you.” But God never asks us for “blind” faith. Our belief is reasonable and God gives us numerous proofs that what we believe about the Eucharist is true. In addition to the words of our Savior we have many Eucharistic miracles including several modern ones. Let’s examine the recent Eucharistic miracles confirmed by scientists. The witness of scientific evidence proves the truth of our Eucharistic belief, enough to convince the greatest skeptic if he is, in fact, a truth seeker.
My first example occurred in 1996 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Fr. Alejandro Pezet took a consecrated host discarded in the back of the church and placed it in a container of water to allow it to dissolve. About a week later he examined it and found that the “host had become a bloody object.”[i]
Upon informing the local bishop, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio our current pope, he was told to have the host professionally photographed. The photos taken on September 6th, “clearly show that the host had become a piece of bloody flesh, and had significantly grown in size.”[ii] Three years later in October 1999 the host was examined by Dr. Frederic Zugiba, “an expert in cardiology and forensic pathology.”[iii] The doctor did not know the source of the specimen but described it saying:
The analyzed material is a fragment of the heart muscle found in the wall of the left ventricle, close to the valves. This muscle is responsible for the contraction of the heart. The left cardiac ventricle pumps blood to all parts of the body. The heart muscle is in an inflamed state and contains a large number of white blood cells. This indicates that the heart was alive at the time the sample was taken…[W]hite blood cells had penetrated the tissue, which further indicates that the heart had been under severe stress, as if the owner had been beaten severely about the chest.[iv]
Later, when Dr. Zugiba learned the specimen was three years old he remarked, “If this sample came from a dead person, how could it be that while I was examining it, the cells of the sample were moving and pulsating? If the heart came from someone who died in 1996, how could it still be alive?”
An Australian journalist, Mike Willesee, who was covering the story and witnessed the tests, converted to Catholicism after researching a previous Eucharistic Miracle. He later wrote a book called Reason to Believe.[v] Willesee, in collaboration with lawyer Ron Tesoriero who also witnessed the tests produced a documentary on the miracle and screened it around Australia. In one city this remarkable event occurred:
The showing at Adelaide drew a crowd of two thousand viewers. During the commentary and question period that followed a visibly moved man stood up announcing that he was blind. Having learned that this was an exceptional film, he had very much wanted to see it. Just before the screening, he prayed fervently to Jesus for the grace to see the film. At once his sight was restored to him, but only for the thirty-minute duration of the film. Upon its conclusion, he again lost the ability to see. He confirmed this by describing in minute detail certain scenes of the film. It was an incredible event that moved those present to the core of their being.[vi]
But God isn’t finished emphasizing his Real Presence here on earth. In 2008 a similar miracle occurred in Poland at the Church of St. Anthony of Padua in Sokółka. During distribution of Communion Fr. Jacek Ingielewicz retrieved a dropped host and placed it in a silver container filled with water. This time the host was partially transformed into what appeared to be flesh and blood with the flesh still connected to the consecrated host. Again, the local bishop was contacted and took action:
On January 5, 2009, the bishop asked two professors of medicine at the University of Bialystok, Maria Elizabeth Sobaniec-Lotowska and Stanislaw Sulkowski, to conduct an analysis of a fragment of the host….After working separately, the two specialists arrived at the same conclusion – what they had been given came from human heart muscle tissue that was still alive, but in agony….Professor Sobianiec-Lotowska confirmed: “This is living heart muscle tissue.”…Also very intrigued by the way the heart tissue was connected to the consecrated host, she declared that “this extraordinary phenomenon of inter-absorption of the heart muscle tissue with the host, observed under the microscope and also by electron microscopy, proves that no human manipulation of the sample could have taken place.” In fact, the structure of the myocardial fibers and the structure of the bread were so tightly bound that no human intervention could have caused it.[vii]
A third recent Eucharistic event occurred in Poland on Christmas Day in 2013 at St. Hyacinth Church in Legnica. A consecrated host fell to the floor during distribution and, as the rubrics prescribe, was placed in water. A few days later, red stains appeared on the host. The bishop, Stefan Cichy, established a commission to investigate:
Samples were taken in order to conduct thorough tests by the Department of Forensic Medicine in Szczecin. The final medical statement reported that “in the histopathological image, the fragments were found containing the fragmented parts of the cross striated muscle. It is most similar to the heart muscle.” DNA tests also determined the tissue to be of human origin, and found that it bore signs of distress.
In January 2016, Bishop Kiernikowski presented the matter to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. On April 10, Bishop Zbigniew Kiernikowski of Legnica made public in a Communiqué that a Eucharistic miracle had happened in 2013. In accordance with the Holy See’s recommendations, he ordered parish priest Andrzej Ziombrze “to prepare a suitable place for the Relic so that the faithful could give it the proper adoration.”[viii]
Mexico also experienced a miracle on October 21, 2006 in a slightly different way. During Communion at Tixtla in the Diocese of Chilpancingo-Chilapa, a nun serving as an extraordinary minister noticed a consecrated host with a red substance that looked like blood. She showed the priest who reserved the host and notified the bishop. The bishop opened an investigation which found that the host was indeed bleeding and that the blood was flowing from the interior of the host:
By analyzing the Host it was observed that it was human blood of type AB and that it corresponded to tissue. Then an analysis was done of phytochemical markers which confirmed that it was live cardiac muscle. No study exists that can maintain alive a cardiac tissue in this situation. Normally after 48 hours the tissue dies, here 3 months passed before the result could be obtained and this is truly unexplainable for science.[ix]
In all these Eucharistic miracles the blood was also found to be the same type as that from the Shroud of Turin and the Miracle of Lanciano, type AB.
Eucharistic miracles are not new. They have occurred throughout the centures, but as these recent examples illustrate, they seem to be increasing in frequency. In view of the fact that Eucharistic miracles are often associated with disbelief (The priest at Lanciano had doubts about the Real Presence as he celebrated Mass), is it really any surprise that our loving and merciful Lord would offer us these modern proofs of his existence to challenge this age of rampant disbelief?
Remember Christ’s response to the father of a possessed boy who asked, “If out of kindness of your heart you can do anything to help, please do!” “If you can,” Jesus replies and admonishes him for his lack of trust upon which the man responds, “I do believe, help Thou my lack of trust,” and Jesus cures his son. Again, in admonishing the doubting apostle Thomas, Jesus says, “Do not persist in your unbelief, but believe!” Finally to Jairus when the servants tell him not to bother the Master because his daughter died, Jesus encourages him saying, “Fear is useless; what’s needed is faith.” Faith is a catalyst of miracles. If you have the faith of a mustard seed you can move mountains. Unbelief, on the other hand, says St. Thomas Aquinas, “is a sin committed against God Himself, according as He is Himself the First Truth, on which faith is founded…the sin of unbelief is generically more grievous than the sin of schism.” [x]
Bishop Athanasius Schneider in a recent interview described the crisis in the Church saying it:
…consists in the ever-growing phenomenon that those who don’t fully believe and profess the integrity of the Catholic Faith frequently occupy strategic positions in the life of the Church, such as professors of theology, educators in seminaries, religious superiors, parish priests and even bishops and cardinals. And these people with their defective faith profess themselves as being submitted to the Pope.
The height of confusion and absurdity manifests itself when such semi-heretical clerics accuse those who defend the purity and integrity of the Catholic Faith as being against the Pope – as according to their opinion in some way, they are schismatics.
For simple Catholics in the pew, such a situation of confusion is a real challenge to their faith in the indestructibility of the Church. They have to keep strong the integrity of their faith according to the immutable Catholic truths which were handed down by our forefathers, and which we find in the traditional catechisms and in the works of the Fathers and of the Doctors of the Church. [xi]
When asked how faithful Catholics should prepare for living in a Church that “while ever spotless, is in complete disarray,” the bishop responded in part:
We have to believe firmly: The Church is neither ours nor the Pope’s The Church is Christ’s, and He alone holds and leads her indefectibly even through the darkest periods of crisis, as our current situation indeed is….
All good children of Mother Church, as courageous soldiers, have to try to free this mother – with spiritual weapons of defending and proclaiming the truth, promoting the traditional liturgy, Eucharistic adoration, the crusade of the Holy Rosary, the battle against sin in one’s private life and striving for holiness.[xii]
The prescription is always the same: personal holiness and devotion to the Eucharist and the rosary. We are, no doubt, living in the time prophesied by the dream of St. John Bosco showing the barque of Peter attacked by enemies and steering toward the two columns: one with the Holy Eucharist and the words, “Salvation of the Faithful,” the other smaller column holding a statue of the Blessed Mother with the words “Help of Christians.”
In explaining his dream, Don Bosco said, “Only two means are left to save [the Church] amidst so much confusion: Devotion to Mary Most Holy and Frequent Communion, making use of every means and doing our best to practice them and having them practiced every-where and by everybody.” No sensible person can deny that Satan attacks the Church today with forces outside and even from enemies within, but we have the assurance that the gates of hell will never prevail against the Church. It is our duty as Catholics first, to be the battering rams that shatter the gates of hell, freeing sinners enslaved by Satan and second, to be His legions zealous to establish the reign of Christ the King. Viva Cristo Rey!
[i] Newsletter of St. Joseph de Clairval Abbey, Flavigny-sur-Ozerain, France, March 27, 2016.
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] Ibid.
[v] ks. Mieczysław Piotrowski TChr, Eucharistic Miracle in Buenos Aires, Love one Another Magazine, Jan. 7, 2010. Online at http://www.loamagazine.org/nr/the_main_topic/eucharistic_miracle_in_buenos.html
[vi] Ibid.
[vii] St. Joseph de Clairval Abbey.
[viii]SSPX News and Events, New Eucharistic Miracle in Poland, May 1, 2016. Online at
http://www.sspx.org/en/news-events/news/new-eucharistic-miracle-poland
[ix] The Real Presence, Eucharistic Miracle of Tixtla. Online at
http://www.therealpresence.org/eucharst/mir/english_pdf/Tixtla2.pdf
[x] St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa, Whether schism is a graver sin than unbelief, Question 39, article 2, Answer to objection 3, http://dhspriory.org/thomas/summa/SS/SS039.html#SSQ39A2THEP1.
[xi] Bishop Athanasius Schneider, Interview with Rorate Caeli, originally posted February 1, 2016, http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2016/02/exclusive-bishop-athanasius-schneider.html.
[xii] Ibid.
Comments invited…
Comments (32)
A beautiful article. It’s no wonder the Church is in shambles, because the human element of the Church does not adore and worship God in the Holy Eucharist.
What an amazing article, confirming the truth of Catholic teaching regarding the Real Presence. I have a friend at work, and she was born in Nigeria and raised as a Catholic, but has since ‘left’ the Church and become Pentecostal. I will send her this article concerning the Real Presence, because she says the Eucharist is purely symbolic.
CC,
That’s a wonderful thing to do – send on the link to a doubter. That’s an apostolate in itself. What a great start to the Catholic Truth (and Les Femmes) year – brilliant!
I tried to show this information to my militantly atheist father, but he won’t even condescend to look at it. As the Psalmist said in Psalm 13 – “The fool hath said in his heart: There is no God”. Yet my father believes in macroevolution whereby retiles can evolve into birds and apes into humans, despite the fact that there is no missing link.
My friend seems to be closed to Catholicism, as often happens with people who leave the faith. But she was not well-instructed in the faith to start with because she erroneously thought that Papal Infallibility meant that the Pope could not sin. Likewise, she also believes that Purgatory is a place where people are forgiven for their sins after death. I sent her some articles from Catholic Answers but I don’t know if she read them.
She asks me if I have a ‘personal relationship’ with Jesus Christ, and I say yes because I receive Him, Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity in the Eucharist, as proven by Scripture, the Church Fathers and the Popes throughout the ages. Likewise, as a Catholic, I have access to the Seven Sacraments, the keys to the Treasury of Grace.
A great article indeed. If that information doesn’t get Catholics more motivated in their devotion to the Most Blessed Sacrament, then I don’t know what will.
I noticed throughout the piece that every modern Eucharistic miracle has taken place in response to either a dropped consecrated host or distribution of the Sacred Species by a non-cleric. For me the message in these miracles is very clear, vis, that the bishops have to stop lay people from handling the Blessed Sacrament, restricting the administration of Holy Communion once more to the consecrated hands of the priest, which remains the Church’s discipline. Seems to me that Our Lord’s own Divine Heart is making this plea by manifesting clearly to all what the Real Presence actually is.
But will the liberated Catholics of today, the proud who think they are now too adult to kneel before their Saviour and receive Him on their tongue, pay any attention? The loss of Eucharistic Faith is so great, especially amongst the prelates, that I doubt it very much. If only they have the humility and simplicity of Faith as that little Chinese girl!
Athanasius,
I read the article again after reading your post and you are right – the modern miracles all occur as a result of “discarded” hosts (no doubt due to Communion in the hand) or the Extraordinary Minister albeit a nun, doesn’t matter, handling the Blessed Sacrament.
That is truly thought-provoking. Clearly God is telling us that this is not good enough and he is reminding us that the host is his Son’s own Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, not to be handled by any hands but those of a priest. IMHO, though, the Catholics who take Communion in the hand are determined to stick to it. They are so patently proud when the subject comes up, regarding this as the “adult” way to receive, forgetting Our Lord’s warning that “unless you become as little children you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.”
For me, one of the highlights of the article came in the paragraph beginning “The showing at Adelaide drew a crowd of two thousand viewers.” about the blind man who had his sight restored long enough to see the film. that was really amazing.
That’s a great article and makes a marvellous meditation on the Real Presence for the start of the new year – especially this new year, 2017, when we will be remembering the Fatima apparitions of 1917.
As you say, if this article doesn’t motive Catholics to show more devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, what will?
Another interesting feature of this article is that, with the exception of the Chinese girl, all the examples of Eucharistic Miracles appear to be with hosts that were consecrated during a Novus Ordo Mass…which should somewhat silence those, like “NovusOrdoWatch,” who claim that these Masses are invalid. Unfortunately, it might also add ammunition to those who refuse to consider that the NOM is a severely deficient, and actually anti-Catholic, rite.
RCA Victor
Great points. Yes, it does silence those who insist that the Novus Ordo is at all times invalid while, on the contrary, giving rise to the possibility of Novus Ordo people claiming the opposite, vis, that these miracles wouldn’t happen if God were displeased with the Novus Ordo.
The second argument is answered, I think, by the observation that these Eucharistic miracles took place in response to careless lay administration of the Sacred Host, which they should not be touching. Our Lord, ever merciful, is showing them clearly what their weak faith implicitly denies by the inherent indifference to the Real Presence that the Novus Ordo inevitably results in for the majority.
Actually, believe it or not, the former SSPX bishop Williamson gives a good answer to the NOM Eucharistic miracles. I quote from one of his Eleison Comments (I’m not a fan of his, BTW, but when I read this, which someone sent me, I thought it made sense):
NOM Miracles?
Traditional Catholics must be broad of mind –
Not only faithlessness they left behind.
In the United Sates last year there arose a serious controversy as to whether God can work miracles within the framework of the Novus Ordo Mass. Now if God does work supernatural miracles, it is obviously for them to be believed in, so that they will strengthen people’s supernatural faith. And if he wants something outside of the natural order to be believed in, he is obviously going to provide enough evidence, like Lazarus walking out of his tomb in front of a large crowd of bystanders. And in this respect the most convincing evidence is of a material and physical sort, such as can in no way be the product of any human mind (however pious), like the fireworks of the sun in Fatima in October, 1917. Then what is the material and physical evidence of a eucharistic miracle having taken place in any Novus Ordo Mass?
One such miracle is alleged to have taken place in the parish church of Sokulka, Eastern Poland. On October 12, 2008, a priest, ordained five years ago by a Polish bishop consecrated in 1980, dropped a Sacred Host on the altar step while distributing Holy Communion. He stopped to pick it up and placed it in the small vessel containing water next to the Tabernacle. After Mass it was locked inside the sacristy safe for the Host to dissolve in the water, so that the Real Presence would no longer be there and the water could be safely discarded. This procedure is altogether normal for such accidents in the Catholic liturgy.
But when on October 19 a parish Sister went to check on the dissolving Host, she saw in its centre some matter intensely red in colour, like a blood clot. She immediately informed the parish priest who came with other priests to observe what looked like a piece of living flesh. All observers were amazed. Next came the local Archbishop, of Bialystok, with several diocesan officials. All of them were deeply moved. By the Archbishop’s instructions, on October 30 the Host w as removed from the water, transferred onto a small corporal and placed in the Tabernacle to dry out. To this day it retains the form of a blood clot.
On January 7, 2009, a sample from the Host was taken to be examined by two pathomorphologists, separately, at the nearby Medical University of Bialystok. Their unanimous judgment, but independent of one another, was that “of all the tissues of living organisms, the sample most resembles human myocardial tissue,” from the left ventricle of the heart, typical for a living person in a state of agony. Furthermore both pathologists found, presumably under their microscopes, that the fibres of the myocardial tissue and the structure of the bread were so tightly bonded together that any possibility of a human fabrication was ruled out. On January 29 this material and physical evidence was presented to the Metropolitan Curia in Bialystok, where the Church’s official judgment upon the supernatural origin of the occurrence is patiently awaited. In that wait, said the Archbishop in a sermon of October, 2009, decisive will be the spiritual fruits among Catholics. Already there has been a significant rise in the piety and religious practice of local Catholics, and from abroad there have been hundreds of pilgrimages, with numerous miracles of healing and conversion also taking place.
If the material evidence is to be believed, then in Sokulka God worked one more in a long series down the ages of eucharistic miracles to help souls to believe in something normally difficult enough to believe in, namely that he is Really Present beneath the appearances, once consecrated, of bread and wine.
But how is that possible when Traditional Catholics know that the New Mass is the single major cause of the Church’s destruction by loss of faith since Vatican II? An answer may be that the Sacred Heart, knowing that the shepherds were mainly responsible for the ambiguous NOM, refused to abandon his sheep, and continues to feed them with what is still Catholic amidst the ambiguity. And amidst all the Newchurch’s relative carelessness in dealing with the Holy Eucharist, the Sokulka event is also a daunting reminder to shepherds and sheep alike – “Remember whom you are handling – it is I, your God!” Kyrie eleison.
Nicky,
Yes, Bishop Williamson’s expalnation makes perfect sense. It is the explanation many others have offered, the only logical one.
Whilst I share Bishop Williamson’s view, and your’s, that the Novus Ordo Mass is seriously defective, pseudo-Protestant and harmful to the Faith as stated by Cardinal Ottavianni, why would Bishop Williamson draw attention to the fact that “on October 12, 2008, a priest, ordained five years ago by a Polish bishop consecrated in 1980, dropped a Sacred Host on the altar step while distributing Holy Communion”. Likewise, why does he refer to the ‘Newchurch’. In his commentaries on the New Rites of Episcopal Consecration and Ordination (Eleison Comments 450, 451) he refers to Newrite, Newform, Newmatter and so on and even says that (in 450) Bishops and Priests ordained in the ‘Newrite’ should be conditionally reordained and/ or reconsecrated, due to the potential invalidity of the New Rites. Bishop Williamson is a dangerous man, and to my mind is not continuing the work of the Archbishop.
CC,
None of us has become a defender of Bishop Williamson’s overall views. The point was simply made by someone and confirmed by me that he was correct to point out the possible reason for this Eucharistic miracle. We don’t really want this to be turned into yet another debate on Bishop Williamson. It is very clear to all of us that he no longer carries on the work of the Archbishop.
I agree with you entirely, Athanasius and I think it was quite obvious the context in which Bishop Williamson was quoted.
Catholic Convert 1,
I made it clear in my post at the very start, that I’m no fan of Bishop Williamson, but I thought it good to quote him because he is so very opposed to everything new, especially the novus ordo, in the modernist Church.
Margaret Mary
“…Forgetting Our Lord’s warning that “unless you become as little children you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Absloutely. And little children don’t feed themselves, as do those who receive in the hand!
“For me, one of the highlights of the article came in the paragraph beginning “The showing at Adelaide drew a crowd of two thousand viewers.” about the blind man who had his sight restored long enough to see the film. that was really amazing.”
I forgot to mention this in my original post but now that you remind me, I’m not sure I’m comfortable with this claim. It seems odd to me that Our Lord would grant a blind man his sight for thirty minutes and then take it away again. I’m not aware of any similar example in history of God temporarily healing someone and then restoring the misery of their disability.
I would definitely suggest that this claim be more thoroughly investigated by the Church’s authorities. It doesn’t fit with the mercy of God at all. What do you think on reflection?
Athanasius,
Well, yes and no. I didn’t think of it the way you put it, but if the man prayed just to be able to see the film, then who knows, God might have answered his prayer literally.
If he was able to describe bits of the film to two thousand people present there, well, it might be true.
I do think, right enough, that maybe more evidence is needed for that claim, but I didn’t doubt it until you said what you said.
Margaret Mary,
It just struck me as very odd. A greater miracle would have been for a man known to be blind to have been permanently cured in relation to this Eucharistic miracle. But who knows the ways of God? That’s why I think this one requires further investigation.
Athanasius,
I must confess, the “blind man” episode was actually what made me want to post this thread! Maybe I’m getting more gullible as I get younger (I was 29 again last birthday) but I didn’t think about the temporary restoration of sight being “unmerciful” – that thought didn’t even enter my head. You do have a point, though, as the eraser said to the pencil.
I’ll need to think about that one (the “lack of mercy”/temporary restoration of sight, I mean, not the eraser/pencil…!)
I will be interested to see what others think.
Editor
Maybe you’re not so gullible at 29, maybe it’s me at 22 watching too many detective movies and becoming overly suspicious. It will be interesting to see what others think. Temporary healings, though, are usually associated with the devil, not with God. It’s a troubling one, this.
Athanasius,
I must say, I’m inclined to agree with you (sorry, editor!) because, thinking about it carefully, it doesn’t seem to mean anything. If 2,000 people saw the film and were convinced by the evidence of the Eucharistic miracles, there would be no need for the blind man “miracle”, so what would the point be? It’s really nothing more than a kind of spectacular entertainment value and I think you’re right that this is more like something the devil would do, not God.
OK, so you’re all ganging up on me – I can live with that… for now. Just don’t make a habit of it!
Editor
We’ll continue to make a habit of it until you mention the rolling pin. Old habits, as they say, die hard.
Athanasius,
Many thanks for that comment. That’s exactly what I thought – it’s almost as if the Hosts are going to extraordinary measures to manifest their divinity. Are they crying out to the laity, “Please do not handle me”?
Petrus
Precisely! That, for me, is the plea of Our Lord by these miracles. It’s a reminder to all that the Sacred Host is His body, blood, soul and divinity, not a piece of bread to be handled by unconsecrated hands.
And let’s not forget that Communion in the hand was illicitly introduced into the Church by rogue bishops and is, to this very day, permitted only by Indult. The Church’s strict discipline remains that of receiving Holy Communion on the tongue from the consecrated hands of the priest.
The Vatican Eucharistic Miracles exhibit passed through my city some years ago, when I was still vacillating between the Novus Ordo and the real Mass. It was very inspiring, to say the least. I see there is a website about it, promoting, among other things, the catalogue book with a forward by Cardinal Burke: http://www.therealpresence.org/eucharst/mir/engl_mir.htm
That’s a superb article. It really does mean we have to redouble our preparation for Holy Communion and make a proper thanksgiving afterwards. A really wonderful article.
The article is fantastic. It’s great to have all those Eucharistic miracles in one place, and very powerful indeed to read. How any Protestant can read those scientific findings and not be convinced of the Real Presence, beats me. I pray that God’s grace will touch the hearts of all who read that article and bring everyone to a strong belief in the Blessed Sacrament.
Editor,
Thank you for posting this. I have been inspired to spend more time in front of the Blessed Sacrament thanks to this article.
I was spellbound with this article. It will be in my mind next time I go to Holy Communion. I know we should always be aware of Who is it we receive but something like this really brings it home.
This is a very moving and thought provoking article. I read it the other day, but this is my first chance to comment.
On one hand it brings great consolation and encouragement regarding our faith in transubstantiation. On the other, it makes one weep even more over the plethora of ill-treatment and disrespect the Eucharist receives regularly, even at the hands of ill-taught persons who would think themselves good Catholics.
The Catholic Truth “main page” has a links and media section – I would propose this article be turned into a permanent feature accessible from there under the heading “Eucharistic miracles”.
What a lovely article – very moving and faith-affirming.
It should make everyone who takes Holy Communion in the hand feel thoroughly ashamed that Our Lord has had to demonstrate their irreverence to them through the careless handling of his Precious Body and remind them that he is truly present, using these miracles to do that. Yet, I bet they will continue regardless, because their pride won’t let them admit they are in the wrong to receive in the hand.
Wonderful article and video. AB is the rarest blood group, and I remember reading that when a blood sample taken from the Shroud of Turin was analysed, it was found to be AB, and female. Makes sense, as Our Lord took his human flesh from Our Blessed Lady. All of these discoveries are wonderful and inspiring aids to our faith.
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