A Simple Prayer You Can Memorize
During this week of retreat, Carmelite Quotes is sharing several reader favorites from the Substack archives. Today’s featured reflection:
🔗 A Simple Prayer You Can Memorize
Regular daily publications resume May 16.
#BlessedChiquitunga #Substack
Quote of the day, 28 April: Blessed Chiquitunga
I offer you everything… we offer to you, Jesus! Help me to give due thanks to my heavenly Father, and so increase, Jesus, my fervor, my union with you in the Holy Sacrifice; and let it truly increase in me day by day through prayer and sacrifice, until I die, but die of love!
Blessed Maria Felicia of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, “Chiquitunga”Our Chiqui, beatified only a few years ago in Paraguay in a beautiful celebration in the stadium of Asunción before thousands of people, is a very timely example of that “holiness next door” of which Pope Francis speaks in Gaudete et exsultate (Rejoice and Be Glad), the apostolic exhortation on the universal call to holiness. Her life reminds us that the holiness of a consecrated woman can speak to the heart of all, even the laity.
Chiquitunga was a laywoman who immersed herself in the streets of her native Villarrica and Asunción, to the point of being called callejera (a woman constantly out among the people): a Catholic activist, a teacher, and a worker of charity, passionately in love first with her fiancé and then, later, with her cloistered consecration, lived as the fulfillment of all that had gone before.
How she succeeded in this adventure is her mystery, her wisdom—the originality of her message, which is found in her Carmelite religious name: of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. That is, the total offering of self in the Eucharist—another path to holiness that Pope Francis has indicated for the modern world in his motu proprio Maiorem hac dilectionem (Greater Love Than This), a path she embraced to the full.
We need the freshness of Chiquitunga to walk the path of faith with boldness and without fear, with a passionate and vigilant heart that allows itself to be won over, integrating the human and the divine in a covenant of creative and healing friendship.
I ask Chiquitunga to infect us with her passion, totally in love with Jesus—the true key to setting the world ablaze as the first disciples did, transmitting through life and word this incarnate and Eucharistic Love, and welcoming all into this communion.
Let Chiquitunga herself grant you the gift of awakening to this passion.
Father Miguel Márquez Calle, o.c.d.
Tutto ti offro, Signore, Preface
Barco, JF 2025, Tutto ti offro, Signore: vita di María Felicia di Gesù Sacramentato (Chiquitunga), Edizioni OCD, Rome.
Translation from the Italian text is the blogger’s own work product and may not be reproduced without permission.
Featured image: Blessed Maria Felicia of the Blessed Sacrament—Chiquitunga—on the day of her clothing in the Carmelite habit, 14 August 1955. Image credit: Discalced Carmelites (Used by permission).
#BlessedChiquitunga #BlessedMariaFeliciaOfJesusInTheBlessedSacrament #MiguelMárquezCalle #passion #selfGiving
My God, Most Holy Trinity! Crucified Jesus, Virgin Mary of Carmel! I will ask you for only one thing, because the rest will be given to me, and you will grant it to me as a surplus: I only ask for Love to love, because with this nothing will be lacking, nothing will be left over.
Blessed Maria Felicia of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament (Chiquitunga)
Pensieri, 217
Note: In this episode, we mention that Chiquitunga entered the Carmel of Asunción in 1954. This was a mistake. Blessed Chiquitunga actually entered Carmel on 2 February 1955. Our apologies for any confusion this may have caused, we appreciate your understanding. We’ve also corrected the biographic note in the liturgical office for her feast day.
Maria Felicia 2019, Pensieri, Edizioni OCD, Roma.
Featured image: This detail of a photo of Blessed Chiquitunga was taken on 14 August 1955, the day of her clothing in the Carmelite habit in the monastery of the Discalced Carmelite nuns of Asunción, Paraguay. Image credit: Discalced Carmelites
https://carmelitequotes.blog/2024/05/27/mdj2024-ep28/
#BlessedChiquitunga #BlessedMariaFeliciaOfJesusInTheBlessedSacrament #ChristCrucified #HolyTrinity #Jesus #love #prayer #VirginOfCarmel
Jesus, my Jesus! Yes, this is your will. You see my weaknesses, my cowardice, my fears, my miseries! They cannot do it alone! Jesus into your hands I commend my vocation! Sometimes the weight of your Will is so much that I want to die! I am afraid of sacrifice and the Cross.
Blessed Maria Felicia of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament (Chiquitunga)
Pensieri, 218
Maria Felicia 2019, Pensieri, Edizioni OCD, Roma.
Featured image: Paraguayan artist Koki Ruiz created the altarpiece for Chiquitunga’s beatification Mass in Asunción from 70,000 rosaries donated worldwide. Our view is only a screenshot of the finished product, captured during the broadcast of the beatification. Image credit: ABC TV Paraguay (Fair use)
https://carmelitequotes.blog/2024/05/27/chiqui-pens218/
#BlessedChiquitunga #BlessedMariaFeliciaOfJesusInTheBlessedSacrament #cross #fear #Jesus #misery #sacrifice #vocation #weakness #willOfGod
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