From the house of the first Ecuadorian saint, 66,500 hosts leave for the International Eucharistic Congress

Some 65,000 hosts, which as of this Sunday are being consecrated in the masses of the Quito 2024 International Eucharistic Congress, could not have come from a better place: the house of the first Ecuadorian saint, Santa Marianita de Jesús, which was converted into a Carmelite monastery a few years after the death of the young woman.

The Monastery of the Old Carmen of San José, known as El Carmen Alto, is located in the historic center of Quito, where the Ecuadorian saint lived between 1618 and 1645, who was a great devotee of Saint Teresa of Jesus.

As the story goes, the young Mariana de Jesús Paredes had expressed the desire for her home to become a Carmelite monastery. Now, it houses 21 nuns who in recent weeks have dedicated themselves to the task of completing 133 packages of 500 small hosts each, and 130 packages of 25 medium hosts each, in addition to the large forms that have a special measurement.

“Making the forms is bringing Jesus into our lives, bringing Jesus to the hearts of people,” Mother Verónica de la Santa Faz, prioress of the Monastery of El Carmen Alto, told ACI Prensa.

How are the hosts made?

The wheat flour dough with water, from which the hosts will be made, first passes through a machine with which sheets are formed, from which the irregular edges are manually removed.

Subsequently, the sheets are taken to a room to be moistened and then to another for drying, in order to prevent lumps from forming.

Afterwards, the sheets are introduced into a cutting machine from which the small hosts come out. From another come the medium forms, which are used by priests in consecration. The cutting stage can take about three hours.

Finally, the forms are placed on a table so that the nuns can carefully examine them and only the perfect ones are selected. The irregular or batch ones are separated for sale to the public.

In a regular period, the Monastery of El Carmen Alto produces 70 packages of 400 hosts each, that is, 28,000 forms, the sales of which serve to support the nuns.

However, Mother Veronica clarified that “it’s not like we spent the whole day here.” “In the morning it’s all the cooking, and now with the Congress, the little sisters are working a little more, so we are doing one more hour of cooking, so in the afternoon we dedicate ourselves to studies, because each one has her training,” he explained. she.

We want people to know Jesus Eucharist

In her conversation with ACI Prensa, Mother Verónica indicated that, at least in Ecuador, all monasteries make hosts for their daily sustenance, “and at the same time so that people can receive Jesus, because it is food.” “If it were not our food, what would become of us?” She expressed.

In that sense, he said that “unfortunately we do not realize the great value of the Eucharist” and the gift it means to receive the Lord himself with it. “Why are we experiencing so much confusion now? Because the soul has distanced itself from God,” he indicated.

For this reason, the Carmelite nun stated that “man, now more than ever, needs this spiritual food.”

Mother Veronica recalled that many saints fed only on the body of Christ, as was the case of Saint Mariana de Jesús, “our first Ecuadorian saint.”

“She, precisely in the last few months, no longer ate anything at all, as the story goes.” She was “a Eucharistic soul who every day attended the Society of Jesus, the Holy Mass, to receive the body and blood of Christ,” she said.

In that sense, he recalled that Jesus “has stayed, above all, to accompany us in the Blessed Sacrament,” so that we go “to Him as a friend, a brother who is at our side and who tells us, as Martha would say to “Mary: the Master is there, he is calling you.”

“He’s calling all day for us to come. But what happens? The churches, now more than ever, empty, forgotten, the tabernacles abandoned. Before there were so many people looking for him.” Instead, “now what are we looking for? Digital media,” she observed.

For this reason, he assured that the nuns, “as women of contemplative life, more for our Carmelite spirit, what we want is this: to make them know Him, so that they can receive Him so that they feel that strength, and in this way they can also gain much more.” .