Since January this year has five Sundays, we get a sort of bonus Sunday to reflect on the Eucharist! Because the Eucharist is the central liturgy of the Catholic Church, many hymns have been written in honor of this Most Blessed Sacrament. One of the most famous Eucharistic hymns was written by St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) in honor of the new feast day of the Body and Blood of Jesus (Corpus Christi). There is a beautiful poetic English translation by Fr. Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ, and the English text of this translation is below. It is also a great resource for personal prayer.

Godhead here in hiding, whom I do adore,
 Masked by these bare shadows, shape and nothing more,
 See, Lord, at Thy service low lies here a heart
 Lost, all lost in wonder at the God thou art.

Seeing, touching, tasting are in thee deceived:
 How says trusty hearing? that shall be believed;
 What God’s Son has told me, take for truth I do;
 Truth Himself speaks truly or there’s nothing true.

On the cross Thy godhead made no sign to men,
 Here Thy very manhood steals from human ken:
 Both are my confession, both are my belief,
 And I pray the prayer of the dying thief.

I am not like Thomas, wounds I cannot see,
 But can plainly call thee Lord and God as he;
 Let me to a deeper faith daily nearer move,
 Daily make me harder hope and dearer love.

O thou our reminder of Christ crucified,
 Living Bread, the life of us for whom he died,
 Lend this life to me then: feed and feast my mind,
 There be thou the sweetness man was meant to find.

Bring the tender tale true of the Pelican;
 Bathe me, Jesu Lord, in what Thy bosom ran
 Blood whereof a single drop has power to win
 All the world forgiveness of its world of sin.

Jesu, whom I look at shrouded here below,
 I beseech thee send me what I thirst for so,
 Some day to gaze on thee face to face in light
 And be blest for ever with Thy glory’s sight. Amen.

I recommend reading along with this text while listening to it sung at the same time. Scan the below QR link for a listen! I hope that you have found this month of reflection and study on the Eucharist to be helpful for your faith and spiritual life. Fr. Alford, Fr. Rankin, and I hope that these weekly columns are not only informative but also help to nourish your faith life. This is why I’m including this beautiful prayer resource to conclude our reflection on the Eucharist. The Eucharist is so much more than a topic for academic study. In the Eucharist, Jesus gives the Church all of his love and his entire self.

Jesus is always waiting for us in the tabernacle at Church. Whenever you pass by a Church, make the sign of the cross to acknowledge his presence. I am always inspired by how many visitors we have during the day at the Cathedral. Many people, both local and travelers passing through, stop at the Cathedral to light a votive candle for a special intention or pray for a few moments before continuing their day. Such visits can lighten the load on our weary hearts and give us encouragement to stay faithful to our responsibilities for another day.

May we one day be with God forever in heaven, not only hidden in the Eucharist, but unveiled for our eyes to see his glory.

Feast day: January 28th 

He was rich, but had chosen simplicity.  Preferring to be an unknown Dominican rather than the position of abbot proposed, and promised, to him.   He was thought a dumb ox of a man, but had woven divine revelation and human wisdom together in a marvelous mountain of scholarship that would illumine the Church into eternity.  He was now well known, and well-worn, but his eyes had always flickered with a joy, a love, a childlike gleam of gentleness and Godly goodness.  His poetry and hymnody were unmatched, his logic impeccable, his memory astonishing.  He wrote hymns and prayers that matched those of greatest popes and saints in history, only falling short of the psalms which were the hymns and prayers composed by God Himself.  He would dictate multiple books at the same time, quoting scripture verbatim for one, then the next, as the poor previous scribe tried to catch up.

But today he did not consider his humble robe – it had long been all he ever wore – it was simply the garb that he wore below his vestments as he prepared for Mass.  This morning his mind was not wresting truth from the swaths of human scholarship, debate, or philosophy – rather his mind was calm, with a deep, pious, loving, tranquility that came from years of placing his heart again and again before God.  He did not draw scripture from his memory, but from the missal before him on the altar, trusting that the Church had chosen the passage with which God wished to speak to Him today.

His eyes glanced along the lines offering the host and chalice for sacrifice, and then into the long-prayed Canon of the Mass.  Prayed, in various forms, with touches throughout the centuries from saints and scholars, but always leading up to the great words of Jesus: “hoc est enim Corpus Meum…”, “this is My Body…” had said those words countless times, thousands of priests had repeated them after Christ bestowed His greatest gift upon His Church.  And today, as like every day those  many years, the great saintly, scholarly, simple, man, saw the host, and adored His God, and genuflected before His King, and loved Him.  

His eyes were renewed in their joy.  His simplicity was filled with divinity.  His scholarship once again returned to its source.  And His substantial body simply lifted off the floor, entirely caught up in Divine Love.  His words were answered by Christ’s, “you have written well of me Thomas” – oh, what a joy to hear His Lord speak His name! – “what would you have from me?”  He paused, not to think through His response, but because the yearning He had plumbed throughout his whole life now flashed into four simple words back to God.  “Nothing, except You Lord.”  Not wisdom, not friends, not peace, not words, not family, not gifts, or life, or fitness, or praise, or victory for the Gospel…  no, all those things could come or go, the only truly necessary thing was the gift that he already held in His hands.

Nothing, except You Lord.

The robe, the words, the friends, the works … all, he ever said after, we’re straw.  Of course, he still offered his energy for the Church, but He was ever after a man utterly, and simply, content to be filled with God.

We are too, every time we receive the Eucharist.  Do we surrender all our worries and words and works and weariness to Christ, as He receives us?  Let us take his words to do so: 

O God, who to us in this wonderful Sacrament, bequeathed a memorial of Your Passion: grant, we beseech, that we, in worshipping the Holy Mysteries of Your Body and Blood, may within ourselves continually perceive the fruit of Your redemption. You who live and reign forever and ever.  Amen

– Fr. Dominic has prayed before the crucifix that spoke to Thomas, celebrated Mass upon his tomb, and spent an afternoon in the cell in the abbey where he died.  But I am closer to him at every Mass when the whole host of heaven surrounds the sacrifice of Christ than I ever was visiting those sites.  And, I am closer to His heart when I come before the Blessed Sacrament, when my mind and heart and body are caught up in Our Lord, Who so completely remained in him.

A little over a year ago, Pope Francis issued a document in which he declared that the Third Sunday of Ordinary Time be celebrated at the Sunday of the Word of God.  In this letter, the Holy Father had promised previously that he would set aside a Sunday so that the faithful could give special attention to the Scriptures.  He wrote the following:

Devoting a specific Sunday of the liturgical year to the word of God can enable the Church to experience anew how the risen Lord opens up for us the treasury of his word and enables us to proclaim its unfathomable riches before the world.

I welcome this decision by the pope, as I have become more and more convinced at how powerful the Scriptures can be for us, as they speak to us in ways that encourage us and challenge us, thus pushing us forward in our journey of discipleship.  I have had the practice of reading from the New Testament for 5 minutes each day, and by doing so, I have been amazed at how my love of the Word of God has grown.  At the beginning of this month, I was made aware of a podcast hosted by Ascension Press titled “The Bible in a Year (with Father Mike Schmitz).”  I have been listening every day and I have really enjoyed it, especially listening to the Old Testament in short chunks.  Even if you signed up now, you would be getting through most of the Bible in one year.  These are just two examples that work for me.  There are many different ways in which to have more regular contact with the Word of God.  Maybe today can be a day to make a resolution to be more intentional with regards to your relationship with the Word of God.

It is very fitting that that Sunday of the Word of God falls during this month during which we are focusing on the Sacrament of the Eucharist, the sacrament in which we receive the Word of God made flesh in Holy Communion.  We speak of His Real Presence in the Eucharist, and that is one of the greatest gifts that we have as Catholics.  But just because we have the Eucharist does not mean we do not need the Word of God as much; we need them both.  To highlight how interconnected these two are, I share the following from Pope Benedict XVI’s document on the Word of God:

The sacramentality of the word can thus be understood by analogy with the real presence of Christ under the appearances of the consecrated bread and wine. By approaching the altar and partaking in the Eucharistic banquet we truly share in the body and blood of Christ. The proclamation of God’s word at the celebration entails an acknowledgment that Christ himself is present, that he speaks to us, and that he wishes to be heard. Saint Jerome speaks of the way we ought to approach both the Eucharist and the word of God: “We are reading the sacred Scriptures. For me, the Gospel is the Body of Christ; for me, the holy Scriptures are his teaching. And when he says: whoever does not eat my flesh and drink my blood (Jn 6:53), even though these words can also be understood of the [Eucharistic] Mystery, Christ’s body and blood are really the word of Scripture, God’s teaching. When we approach the [Eucharistic] Mystery, if a crumb falls to the ground we are troubled. Yet when we are listening to the word of God, and God’s Word and Christ’s flesh and blood are being poured into our ears yet we pay no heed, what great peril should we not feel?” Christ, truly present under the species of bread and wine, is analogously present in the word proclaimed in the liturgy. A deeper understanding of the sacramentality of God’s word can thus lead us to a more unified understanding of the mystery of revelation, which takes place through “deeds and words intimately connected”; an appreciation of this can only benefit the spiritual life of the faithful and the Church’s pastoral activity.

Father Alford     

Last week, I reflected on the reality of transubstantiation, the moment when the substance of bread and wine are changed to the substance of body and blood. This happens at the Consecration, just before the priest lifts the host and chalice to show the people. Strictly speaking, a miracle occurs at every Mass when the bread and wine are changed into the body and blood of Jesus, even while the appearance of bread and wine remains. However, sometimes God also allows the appearance of bread and wine to be changed. God usually allows this type of miracle to occur to strengthen the weak faith of an individual or even a whole community. 

The first recorded Eucharistic miracle took place in 750 AD when a Catholic priest was having serious doubts about Jesus’ Real Presence in the Eucharist. At the time of the Consecration, the consecrated bread and wine turned into human flesh and human blood right there on the altar. This occurred in a town called Lanciano, which was named after the lance that pierced Jesus’ side, allowing blood and water to pour out. Amazingly, this flesh and blood has not decomposed to this day, and visitors to Lanciano can still visit and venerate them. In 1973, the World Health Organization did a series of tests on this flesh and blood and the findings were astounding. The flesh is a piece of heart tissue from the left ventricle. The blood is type AB which is the universal recipient. Both the flesh and blood showed signs of being alive. 

More recently, there have been several similar miracles around the world. Two of these miracles occurred in the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires when Pope Francis was the bishop of that diocese. In 1992, some particles of the Eucharist were placed in the tabernacle to dissolve and be properly disposed of, and they were later found to have changed into a red substance. In 1996, another Eucharistic host in Buenos Aires was placed in the tabernacle to dissolve, and later it was found to be bloody. Not all Eucharistic miracles have been scientifically investigated, but the ones that have been investigated produce similar results: the flesh is from the heart and the blood is type AB. 

Blessed Carlo Acutis was just declared “Blessed” by the Church in October. He was an Italian teenager who died at the young age of fifteen from leukemia. Young Carlo was known for two things by his family and friends: his great devotion to Jesus in the Eucharist and being a total computer geek. He combined these two passions and made a website in which he catalogued all known Eucharistic miracles from church history. He had a goal of making a pilgrimage to all these sites in his lifetime, but he did not have the chance to do so because of his cancer. He started this project when he was eleven and finished when he was fifteen. 

Blessed Carlo was greatly inspired by these Eucharistic miracles. Even though he had the strong faith of a saint, his faith was still nourished by this manifestation of God’s power and his great love for us. This can give us a clue as to why Jesus sometimes allows Eucharistic miracles. He wants to draw even greater attention to the Eucharist in the Church and he wants us to make the Eucharist the center of our Christian lives. On his website, Carlo wrote, “The more Eucharist we receive, the more we will become like Jesus, so that on this earth we will have a foretaste of heaven.” How true this is! Blessed Carlo, please pray for us, so that we can love Jesus in the Eucharist as much as you did. 

The stories from this article were paraphrased from an article entitled, “The Amazing Science of Recent Eucharistic Miracles: A Message from Heaven?” by Jeannette Williams. For more information, see media.ascensionpress.com.