A few weeks ago, NASA released the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope showing constellations never seen before, giving us an idea of the vastness of the universe and, by extension, the infinite greatness of God, the Creator of the entire universe.
However, to see the extraordinary creations of God, look with the eyes of Faith, and you will see quite extraordinary things happen before your eyes every day, here on earth, which show us the mystery of God's infinite love for mankind. The first of these miracles is the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. The bread and wine are really transformed into the body and blood of Christ during the consecration of the host during the Mass, when the priest pronounces the words "This is My body, this is My blood."
Even if the consecrated host retains the appearance of bread, it is really the flesh of Christ, and the consecrated wine is really His blood. In His great mercy, God has allowed Eucharistic miracles to occur throughout history, to come to the aid of our wavering Faith and help us to believe in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. The best known of these miracles took place in Lanciano, Italy, around the year 750. It was this miracle that prompted Blessed Carlo Acutis, an Italian youth who died at the age of 15, and was beatified in 2020, to list more than 130 Eucharistic miracles around the world. His research became an exhibition shown on every continent.
During a Mass in Saint Francis'Church in Lanciano, at the moment of the consecration, the celebrant began to doubt the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharistic species. At the same moment, and in the presence of many witnesses, he saw the host change into a piece of living flesh and, in the chalice, the consecrated wine became real blood which coagulated into five small clots of unequal size, which are still venerated in Lanciano today in 2022, some 1,250 years later. No preservatives were ever used to explain away this miracle!
The clots of blood are of different sizes but, weighed individually, their weight is identical to the sum of the five clots put together, i.e. 15.85 grams, God thus wanting to show us what the Church teaches: that Christ is totally present in each of the smallest parcels of the consecrated host and in the smallest drop of the consecrated wine.
Upon the request of the Archbishop of Lanciano, tests were carried out in a laboratory in 1970 by experts on samples of this miracle. And what is just as extraordinary, they came to the same conclusions as the analysis carried out on samples of other Eucharistic miracles that occurred in Argentina, Poland, and other countries between 1996 and 2013. Here are their conclusions:
In the Eucharist, it is really Jesus who gives Himself to us, renewing for us at each Mass the sacrifice of the Cross. And unlike an ordinary food that we transform in our stomach when we eat it, in the case of the Eucharist, it is Jesus who transforms us, to make us more like Him.
The Eucharist is the greatest proof of God's infinite love for us, but there are plenty of miraculous signs in the Church showing us this love, one of them being the miraculous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico, still exhibited today in Mexico City; its marvelous facts demonstrate an almost "living" presence of the Virgin Mary in this image (see page 4).
Let us give thanks to God and praise Him for so many wonders, by leading a life worthy of a baptized child of God, devoted to justice and love of neighbor.
Alain Pilote has been the editor of the English edition of MICHAEL for several years. Twice a year we organize a week of study of the social doctrine of the Church and its application and Mr. Pilote is the instructor during these sessions.
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