March 15, 1345: A Fire Cannot Burn Or Damage A Dutch Eucharistic Host In Amsterdam
Some Christian miracles occur on the big stage, some on the small. But some of those 'small' stage miracles become widely known and impactful.
**The Dutch are some very wonderful Christians and have shown in hard and desperate times a willingness to risk, even give, the full measure for Christ. Yet no nation anywhere has a population that cannot be made savage of heart (in short order, really) when they turn away from Jesus and cease listening to the Holy Spirit. In 1672 there were riots of a political nature right outside of The Hague, the center of Dutch government. In those riots two brothers, Johannes and Cornelis de Witt, important Dutch political figures, were hung up, and parts of their flesh, even parts of their livers, partly eaten in cannibal fashion by the rampaging crowd. Again, The Netherlands is a very respectable Christian nation, as much so as others. America's eventual "Pilgrims" fled what they considered religious oppression in England and took shelter in the Netherlands for a short time only about 53 years before this cannibalism because the Dutch were more accepting than the English in the Pilgrim's Christian viewpoint. In this account that follows it is clear that the Dutch were very amazed and impressed by Jesus, and very devoted to him. But all nations must fan the embers of their faith constantly, because Satan works constantly among all peoples of the world.
Satan could, has, and probably will do this again to the hearts of certain groups of people in many nations. Once Satan controls a heart it is capable of almost any horrendous thing. Once Satan stirs a situation up and controls angry or terrified minds, the mind is then capable of holding almost any sinful philosophy, no matter how bizarre or twisted. Every people of every single nation are always very close to outbreaks or even widely adoptions of such behavior, though we might claim otherwise. Martial Luther came from Germany to inspire millions to a purer and simpler devotion to Jesus, but later Hitler did come and was likewise embraced. All nations can have terrible periods of insanity like that. The USA certainly has. Every nation is vulnerable. But Christianity, retained in mind and heart, will not allow it. This is why we must always stay plugged into Jesus, because imposing political figures of our various times, or strange but suddenly widely accepted social viewpoints, can cause influential humans to become so inhabited by evil influences that they purposely stir people to horrible actions that they can hardly believe they allowed themselves to be a part of later. We should listen to the words of our selected leaders, who God has caused to become installed, and consider them and obey them with seemly respect where they do not oppose our Christian faith. But our stronger, deeper faith we must always keep in Jesus' words where and when the two should greatly depart. **
Today, the city of Amsterdam in the Netherlands (some say it's the world's tallest people living in the world's lowest-elevation nation!) is not so famous for Christian piety. But the 'Dutch' are a truly marvelous people with mighty accomplishments and a stubbornly feisty reputation for telling it how it is. They are unfortunately more widely mentioned for the laxness of their drug laws I think. But they have been a quite Christian nation at times, and America's Pilgrims fled to the Netherlands (Holland) to escape persecution from the English before finally deciding to emigrate to dangerous North America for even greater freedom to exercise their faith. So, the Netherlands has been a Christian refuge at times, and God bless them for it.
Before the Protestant Reformation the Dutch were Catholic like nearly all of Christian Europe. It was during these days that a famous miracle occurred. A sick man named Ysbrand Dommer in the city of Amsterdam in 1345 realized that he might die and told his family that he wanted to take communion (to eat a purposefully blessed piece of bread that Christians call the 'body of Christ' once it has been blessed) because his health situation seemed pretty grim and his future uncertain.
A Priest came bringing the sick man a communion host, as the piece of bread is called, which he swallowed. But the family warned the Priest that the man vomited up everything. The Priest instructed them that if the communion host was vomited up there was guidance for that situation about how to treat 'the body of Christ' respectfully in such an instance...they were to place the holy communion wafer into the fire in the fire place.
The man, Ysbrand, couldn't keep the host down as the family feared, soon vomiting, so they set the host into the flames and coals of the family fireplace.
The next day a woman cleaning out the ashes of the fireplace found the wafer of bread setting on the fireplace grating in the ashes, unharmed, clean, and emitting light. Startled, she took a clean cloth, grabbed the wafer, and placed it on the cloth in a small locked box and took it home to show her husband. Upon hearing her story he was quite curious and asked to examine it. She gave him the box and he took the lid off and attempted to grab the wafer off of the cloth to examine it more closely, but it 'resisted' his attempts to handle it, clinging tightly to the cloth by some strange power. They understood this to mean that it was holy and not to be handled by common hands.
A Priest was summoned, and the bread 'allowed itself' to be lifted out of the box by the hands of the Priest, so he placed it in a special carrier box called a 'pyx' which is made for the exact job of carrying a blessed wafer to the sick, for instance...a holy manner of transport for the holy communion wafer which is held to be the body of our Lord. He then transported it to a nearby church.
An example of a pyx.
It ended up being found back in the locked box which the cleaning lady had originally placed it in. It 'wanted to stay there' they decided.
Because a fair number of people had seen these miraculous things, the house in which the sick man had lived became a place of pilgrimage and by 15 years later had become somewhat widely famous and visited by the sick hoping for cures. One successful pilgrim was Archduke Maximilian who later became the Holy Roman Emperor. His malady was cured. In gratitude he built a beautiful 'holy room' to contain the venerated bread. Eventually the holy room holding the bread was inside of a church that was built there. It was famous throughout Amsterdam and even widely in all of Holland and somewhat beyond. A place you could go for a possible miracle!
In the late 1500's, during the unfortunately violent conflicts between Protestants and Catholics, the Protestants gained the upper hand over the Catholics in Holland and that church was torn down. This holy relic was lost. But even today there is a local ceremony every year, called the Stille Omgang (silent procession), commemorating this 1345 A.D. Amsterdam miracle of the Eucharist at a church in Amsterdam nearest to where the church with the 'holy room' holding this Eucharist once stood. And there is still a pillar outside of the original church's location on the sidewalk.
The commemorative column for this miracle, on an Amsterdam sidewalk.
It is an interesting Dutch miracle and strengthened many in their faith back then and still does even today. God gives signs and proofs to His disciples here and there, in this time and the other as He sees fit.
The Catholic Church has apparently substantiated over 100 Eucharistic miracles over the centuries, in a wide variety of locations. Here is a site to look at some of them if you are intrigued: https://eucharisticmiraclesoftheworld.weebly.com/#:~:text=The%20Vatican%20International%20Exhibiton%20The%20Vatican%20International,the%203rd%20century%2C%20the%20latest%20in%202001.
Here is a link to a site where you can read about it in more detail. http://www.therealpresence.org/eucharst/mir/holland.html