Q. And the second part of Christ's miracle of the transubstantiation?
A. That despite the change in substance - a change more drastic than a change in form - the accidents of bread and wine did not correspondingly change to become the accidents "appropriate" to human flesh and human blood.
Q. You mean the substance changed but the accidents did not?
A. Exactly.
Q. So when Christ performed the miracle then and when a Catholic priest performs the miracle today, the bread and wine do change into the Body and Blood of Christ, but they maintain the accidents of bread and wine.
A. Exactly! They continue looking like bread, smelling like wine, feeling like bread, tasting like wine, and so on...
Q. And this is what transubstantiation refers to?
A. Correct.
It is also curious to note that in all the Eucharistic miracles that have been reported and investigated throughout the centuries, a good number of them are precisely where the consecrated bread and consecrated wine begin to manifest the properties or accidents precisely of human flesh and human blood.
Q. Really!? There are Eucharistic miracles!? How come I haven't heard about them?
A. How come, I don't know. They are there. Some of them are continuing so that you can go and see them even now if you wish. But the Church does not compel anyone to believe in these miracles - even those that have been investigated and verified by scientists and Church together. What was handed down to us by the Apostles in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition are sufficient for us to believe that Jesus is God.
Q. Well? What's one example of these Eucharistic miracles?
A. The interesting ones to me are the ones where the Sacred Host bleeds or turns into flesh that is scientifically verified.
Perhaps the oldest and greatest such miracle is the one that happened in a place in Italy called Lanciano. A certain monk had his doubts about the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
While he was celebrating Mass one day, after the consecration of the bread and the wine, the host actually changed into live Flesh and the wine as well changed into live Blood!
You can go and see the Host-Flesh today. It has the same dimensions as the large host used today in the Latin church; it is light brown and appears rose-colored when lighted from the back. The Blood is coagulated and has an earthy color resembling the yellow of ochre.
Many scientific investigations have been carried out over the years, the most recent of which was in 1981. And the conclusions the scientists came to are among others:
1. The Flesh is real Flesh. The Blood is real Blood.
2. Of a human being.
3. The Flesh consists of the muscular tissue of the heart.
4. The Flesh and the Blood have the same blood-type: AB (which incidentally is identical to the blood-type that was found in the Holy Shroud of Turin).
5. The preservation of the Flesh and of the Blood, which were left in their natural state for twelve centuries and exposed to the action of atmospheric and biological agents, remains an extraordinary phenomenon.
To be continued...
25th December 2016