The Most Holy Body and Blood of Jesus (Corpus Christi) 2021 - Become what you receive, Imitate what you celebrate

 On the Feast of Corpus Christi I always like to reflect upon the great extraordinary miracles which remind us that the Eucharist is more than ordinary bread and wine, it is the real presence of the Body and Blood of Jesus—true God and true man.

There is the famous Eucharistic Miracle which became the impetus for this Feast. The story of the doubting priest, Father Peter of Prague. As he celebrated the Mass, and held aloft the consecrated host, the host began to bleed. After the Pope himself investigated the bleeding host, he inaugurated this feast of Corpus Christi, so that the entire church universal might celebrate with great solemnity, our belief that at holy mass, ordinary bread and ordinary wine is transformed by the power of the holy spirit, into the very body and blood of the Lord Jesus.

I came across another story, which I’d never heard before—a dramatic Eucharistic miracle in the French town of Faverney [fah-vuhr-NAY], in 1608, in the local Benedictine monastery. 

This monastery had a tradition of inviting the townspeople to solemn adoration of the Blessed Sacrament on Pentecost Sunday and the following Monday. That year the Pentecost services were well attended. At nightfall, when the doors to the church were shut, two oil lamps were left burning before the Blessed Sacrament, which was left exposed on the altar in a simple monstrance.

When the sacristan reopened the doors on Monday morning, he found the church filled with smoke, and flames billowing on all sides of the altar. He ran to warn the monks, who rushed to the church to put out the blaze.

While the flames were being extinguished, one of the monks noticed that the monstrance with the Eucharist was hovering in mid-air. The fire had devoured the altar, turning it into a heap of ashes, but the monstrance remained suspended in mid-air. Of course the monks fell to their knees in adoration.

Word quickly spread, and throughout the day villagers, priests, monks from other abbeys, and plenty of skeptics were constantly flowing in and out of the church, gazing at the miracle, which continued throughout the day and Monday night. 

Tuesday morning, Mass was celebrated on a nearby altar, and during the consecration, the congregation saw the monstrance slowly descend to the makeshift altar that had been brought in to replace the one destroyed in the fire.

The suspension of the monstrance had lasted at 33 hours and was confirmed by dozens of witnesses, who later gave official depositions to the bishop.

These dramatic Eucharistic miracles remind us that at every Mass, God causes a miracle to occur— during the words of consecration, the humble, normal substances of bread and wine are changed into Christ's living body and blood. Of course, the physical accidents of bread and wine remain. It looks like bread, smells like bread, tastes like bread. But on the supernatural, substantial level, the Eucharist is Jesus. Which is why following the words of consecration, we all express our wonder, awe, and belief in this miracles when we give our response to the priest's invitation: "The mystery of faith." Our faith is able to fathom a deeper reality than ever our senses can detect. 

The Eucharistic is not just a symbol. We don’t love symbols, we don’t kneel down and adore symbols, we don’t strive to better ourselves for a symbol. But we do kneel down and adore the Eucharist, we treat it with the highest level of reverence we can muster, because the Eucharist is really and truly Jesus Christ, present. He is truly present in the tabernacle. He is made present on the altar through the prayers of the priest. He is truly present as you receive him in Holy Communion. And he makes Himself present that you may love Him, and adore Him, and know Communion with God through Him, and receive the transforming grace you need to be faithful to Him in the concrete circumstances of your life. Helping you, like Him, to become a pleasing sacrifice to God, to be broken and shared for others.

St. Augustine said that when you receive the Eucharist with faith, faith in his real presence, faith with his ability to transform you and sanctify you, you become what you receive. Pope Francis echoed St. Augustine recently when he said the Eucharist allows us to imitate what we celebrate. 

The Eucharist is Jesus. And receiving the Eucharist worthily, with faith, enables us to imitate Jesus in His love—His love of the Father and the Holy Spirit—and His love for humanity. The Eucharist enables us to comfort the afflicted like Jesus, to counsel the doubtful like Jesus, to feed the hungry like Jesus, to teach the ignorant like Jesus, it humbles us to wash the feet of our brethren like Jesus, it gives us strength to bear our crosses like Jesus and rise to eternal life like Jesus. 

Following the 11am Mass we will make procession with the Blessed Sacrament around our property. A Eucharistic procession is an act of imitation. As we make the simple walk, we imitate our Lord who walked from town to town preaching the Gospel throughout Judaea and Galilee, walking the streets of Jerusalem, carrying his cross in the hot sun, parched and bleeding, on his way to offer the ultimate sacrifice on Calvary. 

Our procession is also an act of evangelization—a way of inviting others to Faith. How strange we will likely appear to those who see us processing—carrying enshrined in gold, what looks to the world as a piece of bread. Why do they do this strange thing, they might ask. And that can be the beginning of God’s truth breaking into their lives.

The procession is also a reminder to us. That’s what we’re supposed to do every day. Being visible signs of the goodness of our Eucharistic Lord—spreading his love and the faith He taught for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

Corpus Christi 2020 - Eucharistic Miracles and Real Presence

We come to the great feast of Corpus Christ, the origins of which date back to an extraordinary event in the year 1263.  A priest named Peter of Prague was making his way from his home city of Prague to Rome on pilgrimage. Peter of Prague was a pious priest, though he harbored some doubts about the Lord’s Real Presence in the Eucharist. Perhaps, this is why he was making the pilgrimage, to help renew his Faith. Well, as he neared the Holy City, Father Peter stopped in the Italian town of Bolsena to offer his daily Mass. And during Mass, a miracle occurred which certainly cleared up his doubts. At the moment he lifted up the consecrated host, the host began to bleed. The blood ran down his hands and his arms and dripped down onto the corporal on the altar.

Astonished, Peter of Prague quickly made his way to the nearby town of Orvieto, where Pope Urban IV was visiting.  He knelt down before the Holy Father and confessed his former doubt of the Real Presence told the Pope of this extraordinary miracle. The Pope sent a delegation of Cardinals to investigate, and when the facts were ascertained, he ordered that the Host and the corporal bearing the stains of Blood be brought to him.  After seeing the signs of the miracle himself, the Pope ordered the sacred items to be placed in the Cathedral of Orvieto, where they are still on display.

Traveling with Pope Urban during this period was the greatest theological writer of the time, of all time, no? St. Thomas Aquinas.  In honor of this miracle, the Pope asked the Dominican friar to compose the liturgical prayers for a feast honoring the Real Presence of the Lord. We celebrate that Feast today, the Feast of Corpus Christi.

There are many stories of Eucharistic miracles throughout the centuries like the one experienced by Peter of Prague, miracles in which the Lord God bolsters the faith of the doubting, or gives supernatural proof of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

One of my favorites is from 13th century Portugal: the story goes that there was a woman living in the town of Santarem, Portugal. The woman had begun to suspect that her husband was unfaithful, for he had withdrawn his affections. She became desperate to win back her husband’s attention, and so she turned to a strega, a witch. The witch promised that the husband would again love her like before, but for a price. The woman was tasked with stealing a consecrated host from church and bringing it to the witch. This frightened the woman, as she knew this to be a terrible sacrilege, but she agreed. After receiving communion in her parish church, St. Stephen, she did not consume the host upon receiving it, but took the host out of her mouth and placed it in her scarf.

On her way to the house of the witch, a miracle occurred: the Holy Host began to bleed. The woman panicked, and out of fear, she hurried home and placed the scarf with the Host at the bottom of a wooden chest in her bedroom. Her husband returned home, and the two retired for the evening, though due to her dreadful state she could barely sleep, the guilt of her sin tormented her—she could not get the image of that Bleeding Host out of her head.

And then, in the middle of the night, brilliant rays of light began to shine from the chest. The couple awakened to the spectacular vision of angels kneeling down and adoring the Host contained in that wooden chest.

The woman could no longer keep secret her terrible deed. She confessed her great sin to her husband. Both repented and spent the rest of the night kneeling in adoration and reparation before the miraculous Host.

The next morning they informed the parish priest who returned the Host to his parish Church of St. Stephens in a solemn procession. The host continued to bleed for days, when it was finally encased in a reliquary made of bees wax.

A hundred years later, the new priest went to move the reliquary to the tabernacle, when the beeswax disintegrated, but the bleeding host remained. The host was placed in a case of glass, and throughout the centuries, it has bled repeatedly, and several images of Our Lord was seen in the host.

These stories are important, they bolster our faith in the Real Presence, the remind us that in each host, in the smallest particle of each host, is the body and blood of Our Lord, who says in the Gospel, my flesh is true food, my blood is true drink. Now, most of us will never witness an Extraordinary Miracle, of seeing a bleeding host, and that’s fine because and we don’t need to. Blessed are those who believe without needing such extraordinary measures. The gift of supernatural faith enables us to know that Our Blessed Lord is truly present in the Eucharist. And, if you are struggling to believe this doctrine, please ask the Lord for help: Lord help my unbelief. Don’t just write off this doctrine as superstition, ask God for help. If you believe yourself to be too modern, too intellectually sophisticated to believe in the Real Presence, you do need help, you do need God to help ignite a faith that has grown cold, or polluted by worldly categories.

There is a crisis of faith in the real presence. Last August, remember, Bishop Robert Barron made national news lamenting a recent Pew Research report that over two-thirds of Catholics have lost their faith, or never had faith, that Jesus is truly present in the Eucharist—that bread and wine are truly transformed, not just symbolically, but truly, into the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ.

Two-thirds of Catholics. Perhaps they’ve been failed by their Catechists, perhaps by faithless clergy or religious, perhaps by their parents who themselves exhibited little-to-no Eucharistic faith, or they themselves have allowed secular materialism to destroy their faith. Whatever the reason, we must pray and work for a renewal of Eucharistic faith. The more the Eucharist is profaned or abandoned, the more we need to receive it with love and reverence.

Again what does it matter? Belief in the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Eucharist is an essential doctrine of our Saving Faith. It is a conduit for grace, and transformation. Belief in the real presence leads us to make our lives worthy of its reception, to strive to adorn our souls with virtue, to make our souls fitting receptacles, spiritual tabernacles for our Eucharistic Lord.

The Eucharistic is not just a symbol. We don’t love symbols, we don’t kneel down and adore symbols, we don’t strive to better ourselves for a symbol. But we do kneel down and adore the Eucharist, we treat it with the highest level of reverence we can muster, because the Eucharist is really and truly Jesus Christ, present. He is truly present in the tabernacle. He is made present on the altar through the prayers of the priest. He is truly present as you receive him in Holy Communion. And he makes Himself present that you may love Him, and adore Him, and know Communion with God through Him, and receive the transforming grace you need to be faithful to Him in the concrete circumstances of your life. Helping you, like Him, to become a pleasing sacrifice to God, to be broken and shared for others.

May this feast help us to enshrine the Eucharist with Love, with worship in spirit and in truth, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.