As we come to this end of Eucharistic Revival where we as a parish have immersed ourselves in the teachings of the Eucharist, we now focus on what it means to go outward. Eucharistic Revival began specially because we have found that studies show in the United States that only one in three Catholics believe in the real presence. The study showed that 70% of Catholics do not believe in what is the actual, most important thing of our faith: the bread and wine are transformed into the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ. Every Tuesday for the last 52 weeks, we’ve had different opportunities to teach about the Eucharist, to witness the Eucharist, and to do scripture studies on the Eucharist in hopes that we can really rekindle our love for the Eucharist.
To begin to focus on this next year, I think it’s very timely that there was this young boy whose name was Blessed Carlo Acutis, who was fifteen years old when he died. He was born May 3, 1991, in our era. He will actually be the first millennium Saint. What that means is the first millennial who will become a Saint, because that was the 1991 year. At age seven, he wanted to receive Holy Communion so badly that he convinced the priest to give him Communion a year early before he was able to receive Communion. The priest gave him his First Communion, and from that point on, he went to daily Mass, and he never missed a single Mass. Seven years old.
After he began going to daily Mass, he started to get bullied by the kids in school because he was so holy. But he was a very normal kid. He played soccer. His body is incorrupt, and he is buried in a glass casket, and you can see he’s wearing a soccer uniform and Nike shoes. This is a really modern saint.
After school hours, he began serving the homeless. He would go with the Mother Theresa’s Missionaries of Charity to serve the poor. He would volunteer with the Capuchins, serving the poor as well. This is a kid who was 8, 9, 10, and 11 years old when he began a life of service.
He started teaching catechism, and he would teach it to all of his peers. His biggest thing was his love for the Eucharist. He wanted to teach people about the Eucharist. As he was growing up, he loved playing video games on the computer. He taught himself how to code as an early teenager. One of the missions he took on was to investigate every Eucharistic miracle that ever happened and make a website for it. The cool thing is this website still exists today. If you’ve seen the Eucharistic Revival, the material that’s been going around from the diocese, that all came from this website. He spent 2½ years from the time that he was ten years old until twelve-and-a-half, 2½ years researching every miracle, compiling it, putting it on the website, and making a map where you could touch on all the different countries where it happened.
My niece had her first communion a few weeks ago, and my nephew said to me, “Uncle Mike, have you heard about any Eucharistic miracles?” And I said, “Yeah, actually, I’ve seen one. You can go on to this website. This young boy made a whole list.” Aiden’s face lit up, and he said, “Are you serious? Do you think these really happened? What type of blood did Jesus have? Have they investigated it?” And I said, “Yes, they have investigated it.”
Here’s the fascinating thing. There were over a hundred Eucharistic miracles and in every single Eucharistic miracle, they discovered the blood type is the same. It’s AB blood type which turns out to be the blood type of universal receivers. The other thing that they discovered is that in every miracle, it was actually flesh; it was the heart tissue of the flesh. The first miracle that is recorded is the miracle of Lanciano in Italy. I got to go there. I took a pilgrimage with my parish a few years ago. They still have a kind of relic of the flesh, the host that turned to flesh. This little chalice holds these five things of blood.
Over the decades and centuries, they’ve gone back and studied that, and the fascinating thing is, the Miracle of Lanciano happened because a priest doubted the real presence. He was really struggling with this doubt. It was kind of eating him up inside because he was celebrating Mass, and he wasn’t sure if he even believed it. So, one day when he was consecrating the host at Mass, he bent down just like I will today, and he said the words of consecration: “Take this all of you and eat it. This is my body.” When he held up the host, right in front of his eyes it turned into the very body and blood. He saw the flesh of Jesus. The same thing happened with the wine. When he held up the chalice and consecrated the wine, and it became the blood of Christ. He began to see these blood goblets begin to form, and after that, of course, he then believed in the real presence.
Blessed Carlo would go on to document all of these different things. As I mentioned before, every single one, one hundred fourteen I think there are, it’s always AB blood. The second thing is, there’s a cardiologist that has gone to study them, and he discovered it’s always the heart tissue. He said it was actually the myocardium. I’m not sure what that is but the inner part of the heart. If anybody is a nurse, you can tell us afterward. The other interesting thing is it always shows a heart under a condition of severe stress. It shows a heart that was either beginning to have a heart attack, that was experiencing beating or was near the moment of death. The very fascinating thing is that this continues to be tested, and every time that they test these miracles, there are still white blood cells there, which means that the body and blood, the flesh, is still alive. White blood cells apparently can’t live outside of the body. Within seven or eight minutes, they would all die. But it’s still living flesh in all of these miracles and living blood.
Carlo documented all of these miracles, and he spent 2½ years doing it. At the end of that time, it began to spread like wildfire. One day he felt like he had the flu. He was fifteen years old. It was October, early October. And finally, after a couple of days, they took him to the hospital, and by October 15th, he had died. It was an aggressive form of leukemia they discovered. Through his life he not only brought children back to the faith, but he brought his own parents back to the faith. His parents weren’t practicing Catholics. They became the first parents as a couple to ever attend their own child’s beatification ceremony. They got to be there in Rome when he was made a Blessed.
Two miracles have happened since then and so now he is on the track for sainthood. The Pope just announced this a couple weeks ago. And we have the first-ever millennial saint. First saint of the new millennium. A young boy fifteen years old. He would say at the end of his life that he didn’t regret any moment of his life because he spent every minute he could in service to God. Fifteen years old. So amazing. Before he died, he was afraid of purgatory and so he offered all of his sufferings up, not only for the Holy Father and the church, but that all might believe in this real presence of the Eucharist. Throughout his life he not only went to daily Mass, but he tried to go and make a holy hour every time that he could. So numerous times a week he would make a holy hour.
Why do I talk about all this? I think it’s really fascinating that a number of the miracles happen because of the unbelief of the priest. The priest was actually not believing. These miracles often happen in their very hands, and they were brought to believe. Blessed Carlo liked to tell people about these miracles because we live in a modern age that is all about science. He’s saying scientists have looked at these miraculous things. What he would say is that they are a miracle on top of a miracle. The first miracle is the Consecration, that they are transformed into the Body and Blood. The second miracle is that the accidents are transformed, and we could actually see it with our own eyes.
It would be good if we all had that wonder, the wonder of my nephew, to really get excited about this. I would encourage you to go online. Go to his website and start reading about these miracles, researching these miracles, and watching YouTube videos about these miracles that may stir and increase our faith. This little boy brought so many people back to church.
This next year we will be focusing on going outward to spread this good news of the Eucharist. He brought so many people back to church, and that’s what made him a Saint. The church is asking us in the United States to invite at least one person back to the faith. That’s my goal and each and every one of your goals for the next year is to think of one person who’s either been away from the faith or one person maybe who’s never even experienced the faith and to bring them into RCIA. If you’re struggling, some of us may be struggling with the belief in the real presence, I invite you to ask God for the grace. Ask him today to help you believe. Ask him to see the miracle that happened so that we may become Saints of this new millennium.
Official websites for Carlo:
Association and the Cause of Canonization of Blessed Carlo Acutis
