April 3, 2017

O’Cebreiro

O’Cebreiro lies in a hilly region of northwest Spain. In the year 1300, the winter was cold and inhospitable. Snow was falling without abatement one day, and the wind was strong and piercing. In a convent chapel, a priest was celebrating Mass. He had thought, perhaps hoped, no one would come for the Mass, but someone did. A farmer named Juan Santin arrived.

The priest went ahead with the Mass, despising the farmer’s feelings and credulity that caused him to venture out on such a day to attend a service without real meaning. The priest did not, in fact, believe in the miracle he himself was to facilitate, the transubstantiation of ordinary bread and wine into the Real Presence.

He verbalized the prescribed words of consecration, and immediately afterwards, the Host changed to flesh and wine changed to blood. The Blood overflowed the chalice and stained the corporal.

For almost two hundred years, the Host-Flesh was kept on the paten there. Then, Queen Isabella happened to pass through the town on her way to Santiago de Compostela. She learned of the miracle and ordered a special crystal shrine be custom-made to hold the Host-Flesh, paten and chalice.

To this day, they can be viewed in the church.

Every year on the feast days of Corpus Christi, August 15th, and September 8th, the relics are taken in a solemn procession to remember the wondrous event.

Source: “The Eucharistic Miracles of the World,” a Vatican international exhibition, as reported by The Real Presence Eucharistic Education and Adoration and Association, http://www.therealpresence.org/eucharst/mir/english_pdf/Ocebreiro.pdf.

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