Every Mass is the occasion of a Eucharistic miracle. Bread and wine become the body and blood of Our Lord, a transformation so commonplace yet so mind-boggling that a large section of the Christian fraternity (most Protestants, for example) are unwilling or unable to accept it as true and search for alternative interpretations of Jesus’ declarations that ‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven’ and ‘my body is real food and my blood is real drink’. (John chapter 6). Perhaps even we Catholics only learn by gradual steps to embrace the marvel of this mystery.

 

But occasionally it seems that God presents us with those rare events which give special meaning to the term Eucharistic miracle, moments when our blind faith is assisted by some unique manifestation. In Argentina in 1996 at the church of Santa Maria y Caballito Almagro in Buenos Aires, a communion host which had been somehow desecrated on a candle holder was transferred to a glass of water in the tabernacle. The priest Father Pezet later opened the tabernacle to find that the host had been visibly transformed into a piece of bloody flesh. When some years later the tissue underwent a thorough scientific examination it was identified as a fragment of heart muscle from a living human heart that had undergone a stressful death. Analysis of the blood revealed it as type AB negative, the same type found in other miraculous transformations.

 

There have been a number of such manifestations throughout the course of church history, sufficiently verified that many of them are now officially recognised by the Church as genuine. Such events remind us what a marvel we encounter at every Mass. It’s as if the Lord is saying to us, as he said to Thomas: ‘Ok, if your faith isn’t enough, put your hand into my side.’ However, the Church is insistent on reminding us that these extremely rare miracles are not a substitute for faith, the kind of faith that carries us through times of confusion and doubt when nothing seems certain. The words of Christ from the sixth chapter of St John’s gospel remain our abiding reassurance: “if anyone eats this bread, he will live forever” (v.51a)

John