One of the earliest documented Eucharistic miracles occurred in the 8th Century in Lanciano, Italy. A priest who was said to be experiencing doubts about the Real Presence was witness to the consecrated species turning into human flesh and blood. The flesh and blood were gathered and the Church declared that a miracle had occurred. After more than a millennium, pilgrims still journey to the Church of St. Francis in Lanciano, Italy to offer adoration to the miraculously transformed Eucharistic species, which have been scientifically verified to be human cardiac flesh and fresh blood. Lanciano was probably not the first, nor was it the last. The Church continues to witness (and verify) Eucharistic miracles in our own day. They are among the most “common” miracles; so common, in fact, that St. Thomas even developed a theology around them in order to help the faithful draw fruit from these miraculous gifts of the New Tree of Life.
Miracles
To approach the tree of Eucharistic faith, we must begin with a few important explanations. The word miracle is often misused making it necessary to offer some clarifying remarks. We often hear someone speak of the “miracle of life” when what they really mean is how wonder-full it is. Within the divine plan, life is the natural end of procreation. It is amazing and awesome, but not a miracle. There may be miracles that occur that leads to individual conceptions or individual births, but those are the exceptions that prove the rule. Instead, a miracle occurs when the laws of nature are somehow suspended or altered. There must be a natural ordering that is understood in order for us to even begin to recognize that a miracle has happened. The supernatural assumes the natural.
Related to the topic at hand, the Eucharist itself is not a miracle. Within the Sacramental realm it is exactly what is supposed to happen. It may be a mystery of unbelievable depths, but it is still governed by a set of laws. When those laws, which we call form and matter, are obeyed the Eucharist is the “natural” result. The Bread of Life is an act of God’s omnipotence and omnipresence that has no parallel in the natural order, but still it is the norm within the sacramental order. Through the proper matter and form, the Son is really and truly present under the appearance of bread and wine.
Eucharistic miracles are no different in this regard. It is only when the appearance deviates from bread and wine that we can recognize a miracle has happened. Many saints (St. Catherine of Siena and St. Faustina come to mind) received a personal apparition of Christ’s true body (at various stages of His life) which were miraculous but eventually vanished. These are personal and the Church does not examine these. The Church is more interested in the more “permanent” apparitions when the species are transformed into actual flesh and blood such as was seen in Lanciano. These are miracles properly speaking because the Eucharistic presence of Christ “normally” appears as bread and wine, but through Divine intervention the sacramental law is suspended.
St. Thomas says that the change in the outward appearance has a distinct purpose—to show that Christ’s body and blood are truly in this Sacrament. It is on faith that we know that, what looks like to all appearances bread and wine, is really the body and blood of Christ. In order to bolster that faith, God miraculously intervenes and changes the appearance.
Our Lord’s Natural Body
At this point it is important to mention a key aspect of Christ’s Eucharistic presence. Our Lord’s natural body in its glorified condition has only one natural, spatial presence; heaven. But through God’s omnipotence His body also has a sacramental dimension that gives it a supernatural non-spatial power of presence enabling it to transcend any physical limits and be present wherever His Eucharistic presence is made manifest. This power also enables Christ in His humanity and His divinity to be truly present even under the smallest particle of the Eucharistic species.
What this means is that the cardiac muscle in Lanciano is no more an actual piece of Christ’s heart than the Eucharist itself is the natural body of Christ. The cardiac tissue and drops of blood miraculously preserved in Lanciano only “appear” to be flesh and blood just as the Eucharistic species only appear to be bread and wine. The miracle is in the change of the accidents and nothing more. There may be ways to scientifically tie them to the humanity of the God-Man such as blood types and DNA connecting it to the ancestry of Our Lord, but they are not actually parts of His natural body.
Some might balk at this thinking that God is deceiving us. This is why having an understanding of the Eucharistic theology is important. But St. Thomas also makes an important point (ST III q.76 art. 8) that “this is not deception, because it is done to represent the truth, namely, to show by this miraculous apparition that Christ’s body and blood are truly in this sacrament”.
In essence the flesh and blood become sacraments verifying the Sacrament. Like the many miracles that Our Lord performed during His earthly ministry there will always be those who flock to simply see the miraculous. For the faithful however they should flock because they desire to see the signs themselves. Because no change in the substance occurs with these miracles, the flesh and blood truly contain the Real Presence of Christ. That makes them worthy of our adoration so that many pilgrims, confirmed in their faith, adore Our Lord in this miraculous Blessed Sacrament.