BROTHERHOOD TO HEAL THE WORLD

From September 8 to 15, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the consecration of Ecuador to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the city of Quito was the protagonist of an extraordinary event: the 53rd International Eucharistic Congress, with the theme “Fraternity to Heal the World”.

A delegation of our Religious Family, coming from neighboring communities, had the joy and privilege of participating in the days of joy, celebration, prayer and reflection.

The choice of Quito was significant: located in the “middle of the world”, the Equator, at 2800m altitude but with the attention to embrace from below many forms of poverty, the city is also called “small face of God”. That face that Jesus in the Eucharist showed us and continually gives us.

The Eucharist is a bond of fraternity and for Christians, as Cardinal Porres Cardozo, papal legate, indicated, “fraternity is not an option, but an evangelical imperative, it is the bond of union between human beings as an expression of authentic filiation, in respect of the dignity of the person, of the equality of rights and of solidarity towards one another, of a radical familiarity with creative fatherhood and consoling motherhood”.

Archbishop Alfredo José Espinoza Mateus, Metropolitan Archbishop and Primate of Ecuador, enthusiastically proposed a courageous challenge to the 25,000 faithful gathered in the esplanade of the Bicentenary Park: “reflecting and living the great mystery of the Eucharist pushes us to be true builders of fraternity to heal the wounds of the world and commits us to be authentic brothers in a world of violence, death, wars; not a world that unites but that divides, a world that transforms man into an enemy and not into a brother”.

Brotherhood to heal the world, like grains of wheat that, when ground, together become bread: a challenge that we want to take up as Christians, as men and women loved by the Lord Jesus, as Sacramentine Sisters.