Homily for Corpus Christi Sunday, June 6, 2021. Gospel of St. Mark 14:12-26. Theme: Look Beyond
Today’s Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, or to give it it’s traditional Latin name, Corpus Christ, was established in the Church way back in the year 1264. Around that time, a priest named Fr. Peter, made a pilgrimage to Rome. On the way, he stopped in Bolsena, Italy, to celebrate Mass. At the time, he had been struggling with doubts about the Body and Blood of Christ being actually present in the Eucharist. But God in his great mercy came to Fr. Peter’s aid in an unforgettable way!
When he recited the words of consecration at Mass that morning, drops of blood started dripping from the consecrated host in his hands and fell onto the altar cloths. And even more, they formed a rather rough but discernable image of the face of Jesus Christ. The pope at the time had the miracle investigated and as a result he instituted the Solemnity that we are celebrating today.
I think all of us can relate to Fr. Peter’s dilemma because what we see and touch in Holy Communion still looks and tastes like bread and wine. But don’t you think that makes a lot of sense on God’s part? How many of us would go to Holy Communion if the externals were also changed to look and taste like what they really are: the Flesh and Blood of Christ?
But you know, God, has worked many more marvels throughout the centuries than just Fr. Peter’s miracle in Bolsena. We now have about 130 documented and scientifically examined Eucharistic miracles in Church history and I would like to say just a little bit about the very first one and also the most recent one.
The first and most famous actually took place 500 years before Fr. Peter’s experience. It was the year 700 and a priest was celebrating Mass in the village of Lanciano, Ital.0y. He, too, was having some doubts about the Real Presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. During the words of consecration, the host he was holding began to literally turn into flesh right in his hands! And as he spoke Jesus’s words from the Last Supper over the chalice, the newly consecrated wine was transformed into coagulated drops of blood! And astoundingly, they have remained flesh and blood throughout the past 1300 years! In 1971, Pope St. Paul VI permitted carefully guarded scientific studies to be carried out and it was discovered that the flesh was from the heart of a male and the content of the chalice was human blood type AB.
Keep this in mind as we now jump ahead into the late 20th century.
In Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1996, a host also turned into bloody flesh. The archbishop at that time, who is today Pope Francis, sent the sacred specimen under guard to a reputable lab in New York for testing. Those who examined it were not told what it was nor where it came from. The man in charge of the study was Dr. Frederic Zugibe, a world-famous cardiologist and forensic pathologist. His findings revealed the consecrated host to be part of a male’s heart muscle. The blood type was found to be type AB. It was a perfect match to the miracle of Lanciano! But here’s another very interesting fact: the blood matched the very same blood type which is found on the famous Shroud of Turin.
As if these findings weren’t amazing enough, the scientific testing came up with an even more astounding and inexplicable fact. When the host was put under a microscope, Dr. Zugibe saw that the cells were actually moving; they were pulsating, beating, as if he looking at a normal functioning human heart! The communion host that was originally simply a round disc of ordinary wheat bread had somehow become living flesh! Dr. Zugibe declared it to be a mystery beyond the capability of science to explain.
This miracle reminds us that in Holy Communion we receive the body and blood of the living Risen Lord, not that of a dead and long-gone Savior. It also calls to mind the words of Jesus which we just recited today for our Alleluia Verse: “I am the living bread come down from heaven.” When people heard Christ say those words, not all were convinced and many left his company. And sadly, the same is true today. There are many who think that the Eucharist is nothing more than specially blessed bread and wine, and they scoff at the notion of a supernatural miracle taking place at every Mass.
This tension that exists between what our human senses perceive and what our faith tells us is really nothing new in Christianity. After all, when Christ lived on planet Earth the reality of who he really was couldn’t be experienced by the human senses either. As a matter of fact, when people looked at Jesus of Nazareth what they saw and smelled and touched and heard was a young Jewish man, fit and strong from his work as a laborer, covered with the dust of the road and having the smell of many days on that road without a bath.
What their senses could not tell them was that the Eternal Son of God the Father, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, was standing right there in front of them! And yet that reality of his divinity was always there. It was just hidden from them by the outward appearances of flesh and bone. Those disciples needed great trust in Jesus to look beyond what their eyes saw and call Him Lord; to look beyond what their hands touched and worship Him as God.
And the same is true for us when we come before Jesus truly present in the Eucharist. The full reality of Who is actually before us is hidden by the outward appearances of bread and wine. And so, we must rely upon faith to look beyond what our senses tell us about Holy Communion. We must look beyond the appearance of the consecrated host and remember that Jesus said, “This is my body given for you…”. We must look beyond the chalice of consecrated wine and recall the words of Christ at the Last Supper: “This is my blood, poured out for you.”
The Eucharistic Miracle of Lanciano, 700 AD
The Eucharistic Miracle of Buenos Aires 1996 AD
The Eucharistic Miracles that the Church holds to be authentic are the ones which have been witnessed by others and were studied by science. We have about 130 of these with the first documented one happening in the year 700. If you are interested in more information on this topic go to the extensive catalog of such marvels at: http://www.miracolieucaristici.org/en/liste/list.html
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