A Basilian monk, wise in the ways of the world, but not in the ways of faith, was having a trying time with his belief in the real presence of Our Lord Jesus in the Eucharist. He prayed constantly for relief from his doubts, and from the fear that he was losing his vocation. He suffered through the routine of his priesthood day after day, with these doubts gnawing at him.
The situation in the world did not help strengthen his faith. There were many heresies cropping up all the time, which kept chipping away at his faith. They were not all from outside the church either. Brother priests and bishops were victims of these heresies, and they were being spread throughout the church. This priest couldn't seem to help being more and more convinced by the logic of these heresies, especially the one concerning his particular problem, the physical presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.
One morning, while he was having a strong attack of doubt, he began the Consecration of the Mass for the people of the town. He used the same size host which is used in the Latin Rite masses today. What he beheld as he consecrated the bread and wine caused his hands to shake, indeed his whole body. He stood for a long time with his back to the people, and then slowly turned around to them.
He said: "0 fortunate witnesses to whom the Blessed God, to confound my disbelief, has wished to reveal Himself in this Most Blessed Sacrament and to render Himself visible to our eves. Come, brethren, and marvel at our God so close to us. Behold the Flesh and Blood of our most beloved Christ."
The host had turned into Flesh. The wine had turned into Blood.
The people, having witnessed the miracle for themselves, began to wail, asking for forgiveness, crying for mercy. Others began beating their breasts, confessing their sins, declaring themselves unworthy to witness such a miracle. Still others went down on their knees in respect, and thanksgiving for the gift the Lord had bestowed on them. All spread the story throughout the town and surrounding villages.
Jesus even allowed Himself to be crucified again. After the miracle, the Host was pinned down to a wooden board, so that when it dried, it would not curl up, as scabbed flesh does. So here He was again, with nails in His Body, nailed to a piece of wood.
The miracle that occurred in 700 was just the beginning. That was 1250 years ago. Had that miracle taken place, and then the flesh and blood disintegrated, as would have been normal, the miracle would have been none the less a miracle. The priest's faith had been renewed. The entire town, the whole country for that matter, became aware of the miracle. Pilgrims flocked to Lanciano to venerate the Host turned flesh. Belief in the Eucharist had been reborn. The gift from the Lord was complete.
But that's not all. The miracle is ongoing. The Host-turned-Flesh, and the Wine-turned-Blood, without the use of any form of preservative, is still present in the reliquary. In 1574 testing was done on the Flesh and Blood and an unexplainable phenomenon was discovered. The five pellets of coagulated Blood are different sizes and shapes. But any combination weighs the same as the total. In other words, 1 weighs the same as 2, 2 weigh the same as 3, and 3 weigh the same as 5.
From the very beginning, the local church accepted this miracle as a true sign from heaven, and venerated the Eucharistic Flesh and Blood in processions on its feast day, the last Sunday of October. The fame of the shrine spread throughout the region quickly, and soon all of Italy came to the Church in Pilgrimage.
Analysis of Still Existing Evidence
A pilgrim, born and baptised Catholic, shared with his convert wife, after venerating the Eucharistic Miracle of Lanciano, "I never believed in the physical presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. To me, it was strictly `in memory of Him'. Now, I truly believe that my Jesus comes alive to me personally in the Consecrated Host that I consume at Holy Mass."
On one occasion, after the priest had shown all our pilgrims the Eucharistic Miracle, he came down to the foot of the altar, and made the following observation:
"Remember, this miracle that you are witnessing now, and that you have traveled so far to witness, happens every day in every church in the world, at the consecration of the Mass."
How many tests have been made over the years, how many times Our Dear Lord Jesus allows Himself to be prodded and cut, examined under microscopes, and photographed. The most recent, an extensive scientific research done in 1970, used the most modern scientific tools available. The results of the tests are as follows:
- The flesh is real flesh. The blood is real blood.
- The flesh consists of the muscular tissue of the heart (myocardium)
- The flesh and blood belong to the human species.
- The flesh and blood have the same blood type (AB).
- In the blood, there were found proteins in the same normal proportions as are found in the scro-proteic make up of fresh, normal blood.
- In the blood, there were also found these minerals: Chlorides, phosphorous, magnesium, potassium, sodium and calcium.
- The preservation of the flesh and of the blood, which were left in their natural state for twelve centuries (without any chemical preservatives) and exposed to the action of atmospheric and biological agents, remains an extraordinary phenomenon.
As part of this most recent investigation, the following comment was made: "Though it is alien to my task strictly speaking, I feel I should insert the following reflection into the study just completed: the clarification, which comes through in these studies, of the nature of the flesh gives little support to the hypothesis of a `fraud' perpetrated centuries ago. As a matter of fact supposing that the heart may have been taken from a cadaver, I maintain that only a hand experienced in anatomic dissection would have been able to obtain from a hollow internal organ such a uniform cut (as can still be glimpsed in the flesh)."
What the doctor, a scientist and not a theologian, is saying in simple language is that although it's not his task to speculate, it would have been difficult, next to impossible, for anyone to have cut a slice of the heart in the way that it was done. He also states that it's highly doubtful that there was any fraud involved.
Another unusual characteristic of the blood is that when liquified, it has retained the chemical properties of freshly shed blood. When we cut ourselves and stain our clothes, the chemical properties of the blood are gone within 20 minutes to a half hour. If blood is not refrigerated within an hour maximum, the composition rapidly breaks down. If blood were taken from a dead body, it would lose its qualities quickly through decay. This blood is over 1250 years old and still contains all its properties, chemicals and protein of freshly shed blood. And yet in the testing, it was determined that no preservatives of any kind were found in the blood.
The Above Information is extracted from:
This Is My Body,
This Is My BloodMiracles of the Eucharist
by Bob and Penny Lord
“WHAT????” she exclaims...”you eat Jesus?”
“Yes, we partake in the body and blood of Jesus Christ at the mass” the priest says.
“That’s blasphemy! How can you eat Jesus....just sitting around...mackin’ on Jesus. Oh Lord have mercy, you’re just sitting there chowing down on Jesus.”
“It’s intriguing that one charge the pagan Romans lodged against Christians was that of cannibalism.”
********
Excuse me, WHO was it precisely that such charges were lodged against? ALL people professing Christianity? I don’t think so.
Christians believe Eucharist is a transformative moment. Exactly what has been transformed is grist that will keep the faithful amused for centuries to come. My view is that Eucharist bonds us together as the people of God and in that moment we become and remain the everlasting Body of Christ.
Taking the figurative literally, and taking the literal figuratively.
We believe that because the Lord spoke in parables and everything He said has spiritual meaning, there's more to it than that. We believe the bread to be good and the wine to be new spiritual truth. These correspondences are consistent throughout the Word.
We also believe that the Ten Commandments have spiritual meaning which the Lord taught - adultery of the heart and unjust anger (Matt 5:21,22). These are evils that we should shun as sin after self-examination, prayer for the Lord's help with combatting them because only with Him can we conquer evil and making a commitment to change our life. Confession is an important aspect to acknowledge which evils are a problem. Usually we choose the most troublesome or grievous to work on. Evils are much like bad habits - they don't go away instantly. We will be tempted to repeat them.
The Holy Supper, we believe, is the most sacred of sacraments. It's the culmination of the regeneration process where we being the Holy Spirit into our bodies (eating and drinking mean to make our own) and as such we don't take communion daily or weekly. It's special.
We don't have children take communion. Reasoning and choices between right and wrong do not happen until maturity - early 20's. Then, a person is in freedom to make their own decisions.
As our priest said at Mass yesterday, “For those who believe, no explanation is necessary. For those who won’t believe, no explanation is possible.”
“Transubstanci-what, now?”—”Sister” Peggy Hill
This subject brings backs memories of listening to the teaching of Dr Gene Scott.
The Apostle Peter of the scriptures would have ripped that robe off and flung it to the ground and walked all over it...
And that is 'real' gold thread in that robe...
So since there was no Tradition to rely upon, Aquinas then turned to the mysticism of that Greek philosopher Aristotle, who then became a patriarch, so to speak, of the Catholic Church.
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“The Catholic Church teaches that in the Eucharist, the wafer and the wine really become the body and blood of Jesus Christ.”
In your mouth, or after you swallow? Do you taste it?
“Have you ever met anyone who finds this a bit hard to take?”
I do have a mirror.
The Afikomen and the wine of YHvH's Passover.shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach AdonaiUsed by Yah'shua at His Last Pesach Seder.
NAsbU Luke 22:19 And when He had taken some bread
and given thanks, He broke it and gave it to them, saying,
"This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me."
NAsbU Luke 22:20 And in the same way He took the cup
after they had eaten, saying, "This cup which is poured
out for you is the new covenant in My blood.
As a Protestant with a fairly Lutheran understanding of the Lord’s Supper, my issue with Transubstantiation is NOT that it acknowledges the Real Presence of Jesus Churst, body and blood.
Rather in the distinction between substance and accidents, Transubstantiation requires an assumption of Aristotle’s philosophy of the nature of the world. Aristotelian philosophy was all the rage in the high Middle Ages when transubstantiation developed.
Aristotle is also alien to a scriptural world view.
Did Jesus say "this has become my body", "this has become my blood?" How did the "trans" get injected into Scripture? He simply said "is."
Is the wafer ever not his body (before the prayer of the priest)? Is Jesus not the same forever. How then can he become what he previously was not? Or how can something that is not God become something that is God?
If the wafer is God in Jesus Christ, and if God never changes, does the wafer again become not God at some point?
Does digestion somehow dissolve the Godness of the wafer? Since, as Catholics say, the Body, Soul, and Divinity is contained whole in the wafer, and that His humanity (body) can not be separated from his Godhood, does the wafer just pass through our systems as God? Does God then become fecal matter in the toilet, to be worshiped and adored? (Better not flush!)
What happens to the leftovers from the Eucharist? Do those pieces not eaten rot and are eventually thrown away? How could God be treated thus?
Is saying "I am the bread which comes down from Heaven" the same as saying, "bread is me?" Does the first statement in some way explain the latter?
The Catholics have this one right in my humble (Protestant) opinion. They have Scripture on their side, and there’s no use denying it. The little non-denominational church I attend has held to a basically transubstantiationist position for over a century.
Who needs to go to the Colosseum, when you can go to a “religious” thread and witness the spectacle of Christians eating each other?
Not hard to believe, since it was instituted by Christ.