Illumina Domine Blog – Devotion to The Holy Face

Ven. Carlo Acutis had a profound love of the Eucharist at an early age. Being something of a computer genius, he used his passion and talents to catalog the Eucharistic miracles of the world.  Before he died of leukemia at the age of fifteen, Carlo had researched over 136 Eucharistic miracles that have occurred over the centuries in many countries in the world. He spent two and a half years creating a virtual museum website where others could discover and appreciate God’s greatest Gift of Himself to mankind.

Eucharistic miracles  are extraordinary manifestations of the Lord’s real presence which point to the reality of the Eucharist being the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ. The Eucharist was prefigured by the the manna that God gave to Moses, “When the Israelites saw it, they said to each other, ‘What is it?’ For they did not know what it was. Moses said to them, ‘It is the bread the LORD has given you to eat.'” (Exodus 16:15)The Eucharist was also prefigured by the mysterious “Bread of the Presence” also known as the “Bread of the Face of God”  mentioned in Exodus. The Hebrew word “panim” was commonly rendered as presence, but the literal translation is actually “face.” God commanded Moses to keep three sacred object in the Tabernacle: The Ark of the Covenant, the golden Lampstand, known as the Menorah, and the golden table of the Bread of the Presence — where bread and wine were offered to God. The holy “Bread of the Face” was the visible sign of God’s love for His people. “On special feasts, the golden table of the Bread of the Presence would be brought out for pilgrims to see, and the priests would declare, ‘Behold God’s love for you!'” (Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist, Dr. Brant Pitre) The mystery of this offering of bread and wine was fulfilled in Jesus Christ as the perfect offering to God in the Eucharist:

Jesus said to them, “Amen, Amen, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven; my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world… I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst. But I told you that although you have seen [me], you do not believe. Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, because I came down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of the one who sent me. And this is the will of the one who sent me, that I should not lose anything of what he gave me, but that I should raise it [on] the last day.” (John 6:32-39)

“I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is My flesh for the life of the world.” (John 6: 51)

From then, up to the present, people have found this “a hard saying” (John 16:60) But God — who understands our weakness of faith — has performed  miracles of the Eucharist  that we may believe. One of the most spectacular and rigorously studied by scientists was the Eucharistic Miracle of Lanciano.  After conducting over 500 tests, the scientists were left baffled and published their amazing findings in 1976 declaring in conclusion that “science, aware of its limits, has come to a halt, face to face with the impossibility of giving an explanation.”  Many of the Eucharistic miracles that have undergone scientific examination have actually found the Host to be “the living tissue of a human heart”  as in the Eucharistic Miracle of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The astounding results of that investigation were presented in 2006 to Cardinal Jorge Maria Bergoglio, who is now Pope Francis.

But as many miracles have pointed to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the Eucharist, others have pointed to the Eucharistic Face of Christ, such as the one which occurred in 1902…

To be continued in “Behold God’s Love for You!” – Part Two

Excellent video of talk by Dr. Brant Pitre on Jesus & the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist — in which he explains the mysterious “Bread of the Face of God” in Exodus.