[Gocamino] The miracle of "O Cebreiro"

[Rosina]

Hello you all,

In Spain of the 1400s a poem, by A.E. Molina, a lawyer, was published and widely circulated throughout the Camino. Loosely translated it says:

 

“I want to tell you a miraculous story

about a host that was being consecrated and revealed,

in perfect flesh,

its hidden nature.

An idiot of a priest who was offering the host at Mass

doubted the truth of the consecration.

The holy vision was demonstrated to him

as it is, today and always, in O Cebreiro.”

 

 

One Christmas Eve in medieval times a farmer from Barjamayor struggled up the 1,293 meters-high mountain to the O Cebreiro church in the middle of a raging snowstorm to hear midnight Mass. He walked into the church as the priest was elevating the host for the consecration. The annoyed priest berated the farmer for daring the storm to come up the mountain just for a bit of bread and wine. At that precise moment the bread and wine on the altar literally became flesh and blood.

The miracle has been celebrated in songs, poems, paintings and sculptures, and in the year 1487 was certified as truth by Pope Innocent VIII.

 

The particles remaining from the host’s offerings were collected by the priest and were eventually placed in a silver reliquary donated by Queen Isabel herself; the reliquary can be seen today on the niche to the right of the church’s main altar. The image of the Virgin that had been venerated in the church for centuries is said to 
have leaned her head forward to observe the miracle. Today the image is known as the “Virgen del Milagro” (Virgin of the Miracle) and is the object of a “romeria” that takes place on September 8 and 9. 

 

Hugs!



Rosina