In today’s age of skepticism, miracles must be appreciated by the faithful more than ever before. Discover the various types of Eucharistic miracles demonstrating the True Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
The Real Presence
At every Catholic Mass, when the priest pronounces the words of Jesus Christ at the Last Supper, “This is my body, which will be given up for you” and “This is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant,” the host and the wine transform not symbolically but truly into the body and blood of Christ.
Some non-believers, Christians, and even some Catholics might find this doctrine a little more comfortable if it were assumed that Jesus was speaking symbolically and not literally. Some are not comfortable with this strange teaching that seems to border on cannibalism. This is true in our own time and in the time in which Christ taught.
But the Church stresses the importance and centrality of the Eucharist for the faithful: “The Eucharist is the source and summit of all Christian life. In the Eucharist, the sanctifying action of God in our regard and our worship of him reach their high point. It contains the whole spiritual good of the Church, Christ himself, our Pasch. Communion with divine life and unity of the People of God are both expressed and effected by the Eucharist. Through the Eucharistic celebration we are united already with the liturgy of heaven and we have a foretaste of eternal life.”
The famed theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas explained that the change which occurs to the bread and wine at the moment of consecration only involves its substance, while the accidents—the appearance of the bread and wine—remain unchanged. Thomas called this transubstantiation. This spiritual reality is a great mystery of our faith. But on some rare occasions, it is not just the substance, or essence, of the bread and wine that changes. Sometimes, a few select souls have been fortunate enough to witness a change also in the appearance.
While the mystery of transubstantiation is considered miraculous by the faithful in its own right, there have been more than one hundred Eucharistic miracles of various sorts on top of that incredible “baseline” miracle throughout Christian history.
The vast majority (90 percent) of historical cases have predictably been witnessed in Europe, with Italy (thirty-three), Spain (twenty), and France (eleven) making up a large portion of the cases. The largest concentration of Eucharistic miracles occurred in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, but—as with other types of miracles we have studied thus far—a rise in cases occurred in the twentieth century and beyond, with more cases than not (70 percent) being reported outside Europe. There has only been one approved occurrence on our own continent of North America: in Tixtla, Mexico, in 2006.
Types of Eucharistic Miracles
Eucharistic miracles can be categorized under several different types—namely, the experiences of saints and mystics, inexplicable preservations, protection from danger, strange manifestations, and visible human flesh and blood. As we will see, some of these lend themselves to “proof” more than others.
For example, saints like Saint Thomas Aquinas have seen visions of the Eucharist, which is difficult to examine scientifically.
Inedia
The phenomenon of inedia, or “Eucharistic fasting,” where someone lives on the Eucharist alone for an extended period of time, allows for at least some chances of observation. German mystic Servant of God Therese Neumann (1898–1962), best-known for her stigmata, was observed in July 1927 by a medical doctor and four Franciscan nurses who kept a watch on her for two weeks straight while she consumed nothing but one consecrated host a day and suffered no adverse health effects. Other saints to experience inedia include Saint Catherine of Siena (1347–1380), Blessed Alexandrina Maria da Costa (1904–1955), and Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich (d. 1824).
Preservation through Disaster
There are also numerous stories of a consecrated Host surviving a perilous situation such as an earthquake, flood, fire, or theft. In 1750, a ciborium (made of gold) in a church tabernacle and the many consecrated hosts inside it were stolen from the Basilica of Saint Francis in Siena, Italy, while the priests and the faithful were gathered for the vigil of the feast of the Assumption. After the town prayed for the safe return of the Hosts, the thieves secretly returned the ciborium out of guilt. The Hosts were discovered stuffed in the church’s poor box. All 348 whole Hosts and 6 halves were recovered. If the story ended there, we would say it was merely an example of conversion (of the hearts of the thieves). The miraculous nature of the story, however, stems from the fact that these hosts still survive to this day, showing no sign of mold or decay after two and a half centuries.
Patterns and Marks
Then there have been some cases which involve a surprising “mark” appearing on a Host. On April 28, 2001, during adoration at a novena to Saint Jude at Saint Mary’s in the Malankara Catholic Church in Chirattakonam, India, the parish priest and members of the congregation noticed several dark spots forming on the consecrated Host. After reserving it in the tabernacle for the week, the priest and congregation could make out the face of a bearded man with a crown of thorns. The image clarified over time, so much so that the local bishop accepted it as miraculous. Skeptics would assert that this is a case of red bread mold and pareidolia (seeing something meaningful in a random pattern). There is no way to deny this is possible, but it is very difficult to see the marks on the Host and not see the face of the suffering Christ. For the marks to take that pattern randomly is difficult to believe.
All of these strange instances point to a high probability of something happening beyond our normal laws of nature, but as we noted, there is little that can be done to verify them scientifically. Thankfully, that is not the case for the next kind we will examine.
Visible Flesh and Blood
Of all the Eucharistic miracles, the ones where flesh and blood are made visible on the Host are most conducive to scientific investigation. Of that sort, an instance in Lanciano, in the Abruzzo region of east central Italy, occurring around the year 750, is perhaps the most widely known and the most thoroughly investigated. In the story known locally as Il Miracolo, one of the Basilian monks entered the church of Saint Longinus to celebrate Mass. His faith was weak and he had begun to have serious doubts about the Real Presence.
That day, though, when he pronounced the words of consecration, the white host suddenly warmed in his hands and turned pink, dark red, and fleshy. The wine in the chalice also darkened to a deep blood red. The priest was lost in wonder, and showing the miraculous manifestation to those gathered, his faith was restored.
While science will never be able to prove the efficacy of the sacraments and the power of the words of consecration themselves, it could examine this case to determine what exactly we were looking at:
1. The “miracle flesh” is truly meat consisting of the striated muscle tissue of the myocardium (muscular tissue of the heart) in the upper left ventricle.
2. The complete analysis of the individual molecules of the “miraculous blood” showed with objective, absolute certainty that it is real blood.
3. The immunological study showed with complete certainty that the flesh and blood are of human nature and that both belong to the same blood group, AB. This means the blood and flesh could be from the same person.
4. The proteins of the blood are broken down normally, according to the pattern of fresh blood.
5. There was no trace of salts or other preservative substances used in antiquity for mummification.
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This article is taken from a chapter in Science and the Miraculous: How the Church Investigates the Supernatural by Micheal O’Neill which is available from TAN Books.