Quito, Ecuador, Sep 14, 2024 / 08:00 am
The presentation by Bishop José Ignacio Munilla at this year’s International Eucharistic Congress in Quito, Ecuador, was considered one of the most impactful so far, containing inspiring reflections that resonated in the hearts of the nearly 5,000 people gathered to hear the prelate.
The bishop of Orihuela-Alicante, Spain, called for spiritual renewal centered on the heart of Jesus and the Eucharist as the only ways to “Christify ourselves” and “transform our heart of stone” into one like that of Jesus.
Below are 15 quotes that left their mark on attendees from more than 50 countries.
1. “If they don’t teach you to love, you confuse loving with possessing, loving with desiring. Learning to love is quite a challenge. We need Jesus Christ, the heart of Jesus, to learn to love.”
2. “I am loved, therefore I am. If I had not been loved by God, I would not exist.”
3. “How many people suffer because they do not have a well-founded self-esteem! … If God loves me and wants me, and this is what the heart of Christ has revealed, I have no right to despise myself or think that this life has no meaning.”
4. “The heart of Jesus is a school of love. Allow me this expression: It is the human school of divine love and it is the divine school of human love.”
5. “We all have a holy guardian angel. Not just those of us who are baptized. An atheist, even if he doesn’t know it, has a guardian angel; you’ll find out.”
6. “The Church is not an NGO [nongovernmental organization]; it is the family of Christ that continues the message, extending the message of Christ’s salvation to the entire world.
7. “We are weakened by sin. We are not capable of love. We need the heart of Jesus as a school of love.”
8. “Without the grace of Christ, it is impossible to heal the emotional wounds that characterize the present time and that make us suffer so much.”
9. “In God’s plan we are all necessary. There is not a person that is not needed.”
10. “My enemy is Satan, it is not this one who is making my life impossible, or this one who is next to me.”
11. “It is said that abortion is a right, that killing a child in the womb is a right. That is unnatural.”
12. “Conversion is a forgetting of ourselves, it is to stop pretending to be the center of the universe… and saying: ‘Lord, sit down, now the center is going to be you.’”
13. “From the heart of Jesus springs the Eucharist, and from the Eucharist springs that transformation of my heart of stone into a heart like that of Jesus.”
14. “Frequent Communion well carried out and Eucharistic adoration will be the keys to the miracle of interior transformation.”
15. “Let us be in love with the Eucharist, because the Eucharist will be responsible for Christifying us. We Eucharistize ourselves to Christify ourselves.”
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
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