Eucharistic Miracles: Research on The Heart of God

If someone were to tell you, “Beloved, I give you my heart. Take it, it’s all yours!” Would you acknowledge that this person is deeply in love with you? It really cannot get more romantic than that, right? 

After all, the heart is where love pours out. We experience heartache when someone misuses our love or wrongs us. The heart is also the source of life. This powerful organ pumps blood throughout our bodies to keep them healthy. In Spanish, the word for heart is CORAZÓN. Let’s dissect the word for a second. 

The prefix cor- means heart. The suffix -razon means reason. So, if we were to explain the meaning of the heart, we would understand the beauty in saying think with your heart. What we are truly saying is to let your being embrace emotions with reason. It’s not one or the other but both that give power to our humanity. 

The heart paves the way for our minds to be fueled with love and thus bring change to the lives of others and ourselves. 

With this in mind, we can better understand what Jesus said in John 6. He says, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day;for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.”

Understanding Scripture

Jesus does a couple of things in these few verses:

1. He blows our minds: If this sounds wild to our modern ears, you can only imagine the poor Jews listening to Jesus. How can this man give us his flesh? It does sound lucrative. Yet, Jesus doesn’t hold back. He reaffirms our dependence on his flesh for eternal life.
2. Eating and drinking his flesh and blood are nonnegotiable for living because he is ONE with God the Father: another crazy, bold claim to make. How does an earthly human being that people saw grow up say he is divine? It does sound delusional. Yet, Jesus lets them walk away with their unbelief. 

But why does he give us his body and blood? Because he loves us that much. He wants us to be alive with him for eternity, but because of our brokenness, God needed to come down from heaven to restore his broken creation with LOVE. 

As we talked about, we can’t live without blood. Blood comes from the heart. Love comes from the heart. Jesus is love. Jesus gives us the blood we need to live and pump the love that fuels our brothers and sisters. 

Does this sound crazy? 

Friend, everything our Lord does will always sound impossible to our limited human understanding. But to keep up the madness, I want to share how we see His word come true even centuries after He taught about being the Bread from Heaven. 

It’s 750 AD in Lanciano, Italy. A priest is having trouble believing that the bread we use for communion truly transforms into the body of Christ. During the consecration, the host in his hand turns into a piece of flesh. The story’s moral: God hears us and wants to strengthen our faith. 

Fast-forward to 1971, and the clergy of Lanciano passed on the still intact host for scientific testing. You can read the primary source in Italian below, but here is the summary of the findings:

• Human AB blood type
• The host is tissue from a heart with arteries, veins, branch of vagus nerve, and adipose tissue identifiable 
• Both the blood and flesh are fresh as if taken that same day
• No signs of preservation

Source: https://www.storiaechiesa.it/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Linoli1.pdf

More Research on the Heart of Jesus

The Catholic Church has since confirmed other Eucharistic miracles that have occurred in these past years. It’s important to note that consecrated hosts are put in water if needed to be disposed of and placed in the tabernacle. Most countries witnessed the miracles after consecrated hosts were disposed of. When priests went back to dispose of the dissolved hosts, they found red blood substances instead. The miracle in Mexico in 2006, however, happened during the distribution of communion when a religious sister noticed one of the hosts began to bleed.

The more exciting part is that even though they are from different parts of the world, the scientific findings have been the same:

• The blood is human DNA, AB blood type; white blood cells, red blood cells, and hemoglobin present, indicating fresh blood
• The flesh is human myocardium tissue of the left ventricle of an inflamed heart;
• In Argentina (1992 and 1996) and Poland (2008), there was evidence of trauma, indicating repeated lack of oxygen and lesions showing rapid cardiac spasms like the ones found in the final phases of death.
• In the Tixtla, Mexico (2006 )miracle, the flesh resembles a bleeding wound with coagulated blood on the surface but fresh in the interior.
• In the Sokolka, Poland (2013) miracle, part of the host (bread) transforms into flesh as both fibers seemingly intertwine.

What can we make of these miracles of the heart?

Indeed, our Lord wants us to persevere in faith. He, as the source of love, wants to encounter our lives in a personal way. And what is more intimate than giving someone your heart? Our God might provide us with these miracles to reassure us of the truth in His Word. Jesus, the word incarnate, is true to his title. He continues to become flesh for our spiritual nourishment so that we may have eternal life. 

The power of Christ is unsurpassed. I invite you to run to Jesus in the blessed sacrament and let him pour out his love. In his sacred heart, you’ll find peace and all that you need to be with him in heaven one day. 

I’ll leave you with a list of countries that have recorded Eucharistic Miracles. These countries have powerful stories of how the Eucharist has helped communities when they were most in need.

Argentina

Austria

Belgium (Bélgica)

Colombia

Croatia (Croacia)

Egypt (Egipto)

France (Francia)

Germany (Alemania)

India

Martinique (Martinica)

Reunion Islands (Islas Reunión)

México

Italy (Italia)

Holland (Holanda)

Perú

Portugal

Poland (Polonia)

Spain (España)

Switzerland (Suiza)

Venezuela

Giving Credit to the one who complied the research 🙂

In case you haven’t heard of Carlo Acuti, he was an Italian young man who dedicated his life to raising awareness of Eucharistic Miracles around the world so that all could encounter the mystery of our faith. Carlo passed away from leukemia in 2006, but his legacy of getting this valuable information out to the public is stronger than ever.

For more details on these miracles, check out soon-to-be saint Carlo Acuti’s website.