Double blind tests, a test testing
best premises, promises state
Of recipient’s fervor after
Ingesting a Real Host or rather
A placebo - placed to gather
What is sacred - tad sacrilege
In practice - the inward signs of grace
The internal dispositions.
For forty fixed days of testing,
A fatal flaw midst the tested,
Missed the freedom to correspond
With worthy, chaste, pure, and lovely hearts,
Just and holy, a clean conscience.
Of such, unknown but to just One.
Can confinement effect the free?
The monk’s cell, the inmate’s prison cage?
Both are bound but both are free,
These and those who receive worthily.
But some are bound and not at all free
This we are certain with certainty.
Yet among the proofs, the best, the saints:
With lives of sin and near misses,
New beginnings, they begin and begin
Again, their gain their sanctity.
Gary Edward Geraci
My poem “Saints Defying Sickly Scientism” is inspired by a question (2020) Dr. Dave Anders answered on EWTN’s “Called to Communion with Dr. David Anders.” The caller wanted to know if a scientific study had ever been done to prove the efficacious qualities inherent in a real consecrated Host as held in faith by Catholics. The caller suggested that a study, lasting several months, could be conducted with two groups. One group would receive a consecrated Host during the study period while the other group would receive a non-consecrated host, a placebo, during the same study period. Neither group would know ‘in fact’ whether they were receiving a consecrated Host or a placebo. Dr. Anders responded that he had actually written a technical paper on this very topic (if you find the paper please send me the link), why it wouldn’t work, proceeded to point out the best proofs that we have that the Eucharist is the real Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, and assured the caller that Holy Communion as celebrated in the Catholic Mass is indeed the Eucharistic Sacrament that Christ himself instituted during the Last Supper and Passover meal shared with his disciples. “Scientism” being the error that all realities are reducible and/or quantifiable through the scientific method - “excessive belief in the power of scientific knowledge and techniques.” (Definition courtesy Oxford Languages)
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