St. John Eudes (1601 AD - 1680 AD)
From The Eponymous Flower:
A consecrated Host becomes flesh and blood
At
seven o’clock in the evening on August 18, 1996, Fr. Alejandro Pezet
was saying Holy Mass at a Catholic church in the commercial center of
Buenos Aires. As he was finishing distributing Holy Communion, a woman
came up to tell him that she had found a discarded host
on a candleholder at the back of the church. On going to the spot
indicated, Fr. Alejandro saw the defiled Host. Since he was unable
to consume it, he placed it in a container of water and put it away in
the tabernacle of the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament.
On Monday,
August 26, upon opening the tabernacle, he saw to his amazement that
the Host had turned into a bloody substance. He informed Cardinal Jorge
Bergoglio, who gave instructions that the Host be professionally
photographed. The photos were taken on September 6. They clearly show
that the Host, which had become a fragment of bloodied flesh, had grown
significantly in size. For several years the Host remained in the
tabernacle, the whole affair being kept a strict secret. Since the Host
suffered no visible decomposition, Cardinal Bergoglio decided to have it
scientifically analyzed.
On October
5, 1999, in the presence of the Cardinal’s representatives,
Dr. Castanon took a sample of the bloody fragment and sent it to New
York for analysis. Since he did not wish to prejudice the study, he
purposely did not inform the team of scientists of its provenance. One
of these scientists was Dr. Frederic Zugiba, [sic; actually, Frederick T. Zugibe, former Chief Medical Examiner of Rockland County, NY] the well-known cardiologist
and forensic pathologist. He determined that the analyzed substance was
real flesh and blood containing human DNA. Zugiba testified that, “the
analyzed material is a fragment of the heart muscle found in the wall of
the left ventricle close to the valves. This muscle is responsible for
the contraction of the heart. It should be borne in mind that the left
cardiac ventricle pumps blood to all parts of the body. The heart muscle
is in an inflammatory condition and contains a large number of white
blood cells. This indicates that the heart was alive at the time the
sample was taken. It is my contention that the heart was alive, since
white blood cells die outside a living organism. They require a living
organism to sustain them. Thus, their presence indicates that the heart
was alive when the sample was taken. What is more, these white blood
cells had penetrated the tissue, which further indicates that the heart
had been under severe stress, as if the owner had been beaten severely
about the chest.”
By the way, the evening of August 18, when the discarded host was discovered, would have been the vigil of the feast of St. John Eudes, a great teacher of devotion to the Sacred Heart, who composed the Mass and Office propers for the first Feast of the Sacred Heart, and who at his canonization was proclaimed by Pope Leo XIII "Author of the Liturgical Worship of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Holy Heart of Mary".
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