Deepertruth: The Eucharistic Miracle of Calanda, Spain 1640

Miguel-Juan Pellicer was born in 1617 to a poor family of farmers in Calanda, a village about 100 kilometers from Zaragoza.  At 19 years of age, he decided to go to work for an uncle near Castellon de la Plata. One day, while working in the fields, he fell under a wagon full of grain and the wheels fractured his right leg.  

He dragged himself to the Sanctuary of Pilar where he made his confession and received the Holy Eucharist. He was immediately sent to recover at Royal Hospital of Grace.  Given the status of his gangrene, the doctors established that the only way to save his life was to amputate his leg, so the limb was cut off with a saw and scalpel slightly below the knee and cauterized with red hot metal.

A young practitioner, Juan Lorenzo Garcia, took the amputated limb and buried it in the cemetery next to the hospital.   From that moment, Miguel-Juan was forced to beg for his livelihood near the Sanctuary of the Virgin of Pilar.  Every morning he went to Mass and prayed with fervor before the Holy Sacrament.  It was customary for him to rub his mutilated leg with oil from the tabernacle lamp. 

After three years away from home, he decided to return to his family, who lovingly welcomed him back.  In March of 1640, after a vigil in honor of the Virgin, Miguel-Juan, feeling very tired, went to rest in his customary spot and as usual rubbed his leg with oil from the tabernacle lamp in the Sanctuary of the Madonna of Pilar.   When his mother went to check to see if her son was okay, she saw him sleeping, and discovered that from beneath the blanket stuck out not one, but two feet. Miguel-Juan had miraculously recovered his lost limb, which was buried three years prior by the practitioner Mr. Garcia.