June is the month of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the Roman Rite, and among some Eastern Catholics. This is a presentation I did in March on Science, the Heart of Jesus, and Eucharistic Miracles. Enjoy –
Adrian Sisneros, a 3rd year Seminarian for the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, put together an exposition on Eucharistic Miracles, along with a display of chalice sets, icons, vestments, relics in reliquaries, and other Catholic items, both Roman and Byzantine. It was all in the Student Union Building, and concluded with Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament.
I gave this pre-recorded talk, which ran all day long, plus a live talk during the lunch hour. The Eucharistic Miracles that have taken place in Italy, Poland, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Holland, France and Argentina were all shown on panels.
A young Italian teen, Carlo Acutis, traveled across Europe, dragging his agnostic parents with him, to catalogue these miracles. He taught himself computer programming to make a website of them. Even better though, he brought his parents back to an active Faith life. He was a regular teen, with friends and a joy for life. When he developed a painful form of leukemia, he bore it with patience and peace. Appropriately, the miracle approved for his beatification was the healing of another young boy, in Brazil, after prayers to Venerable Carlo. Soon he will be Blessed Carlo.
From Women of Grace:
According to The Catholic Miscellany, the newspaper for the diocese of Charleston, South Carolina, Carlo Acutis was only 15 years-old when he researched and compiled the “Vatican International Exhibition of the Eucharistic Miracles of the World” from a collection of 140 officially recognized Eucharistic miracles. Carlos’ mother, Antonia Salzano Acutis, who is a curator at the Pontifical Academy Coltorum Martyrum in Rome, helped him in the project.
Carlos died in 2006 from an aggressive type of leukemia, but is remembered as being a pleasant and thoughtful boy who had a variety of interest. His strong faith manifested itself in daily Mass and in the way he defended the moral teachings of the Church whenever they were contested in school.
In the book, The Eucharist: My Road to Heaven: A Biography of Carlo Acutis, author Nicola Gori calls him a “teen of our times.”
“He tried hard in school, with his friends, [and] he loved computers. At the same time he was a great friend of Jesus Christ, he was a daily communicant and he trusted in the Virgin Mary. Succumbing to leukemia at the age of 15, he offered his life for the Pope and for the Church.”
In the book, his mother recalls how, as a little boy, especially after receiving his First Communion, Carlos “never missed his daily appointment with the Holy Mass and the Rosary, followed by a moment of Eucharistic adoration.”
She remembers how he offered his sufferings for the Pope and the Church as his young life was coming to an end.
“Surely the heroism with which he faced his illness and death has convinced many that he was truly somebody special,” she said. “When the doctor that was treating him asked him if he was suffering a lot, Carlo answered: ‘There are people who suffer much more than me!’”
Carlos’ exhibit is currently on tour throughout the world and is sponsored on U.S. campuses by The Cardinal Newman Society, an organization dedicated to restoring the Catholic identity to the nation’s Catholic institutions of higher learning.
“He is still spreading his faith and devotion universally as a youthful eucharistic evangelizer, especially helping those who are skeptical about the sacramental realities of our faith,” writes Fr. Stanley Smolenski for the Miscellany. PS His body is still incorrupt after 14 years in the grave.
Father Christopher Zugger 
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