Colombia celebrates 120th anniversary of Eucharistic miracle that stopped a tsunami

The Colombian Diocese of Tumaco celebrated the anniversary of the Eucharistic miracle that 120 years ago saved the town from a tsunami that threatened to destroy the municipality on the Pacific coast.

“Today we gather to celebrate the 120th anniversary of that Eucharistic miracle. The miracle of the wave, when Father Gerardo and Father Julián went out from here with the Blessed Sacrament to confront the terrible wave that was coming to destroy this territory,” said Bishop Franklin Misael Betancourt of Tumaco during the Mass he celebrated on Jan. 31 at St. Andrew the Apostle Cathedral.

The bishop was referring to the miracle that occurred on the morning of Jan. 31, 1906. The diocesan website recounts that on that day, a strong earthquake shook the region and caused the sea to recede approximately 1 kilometer (over a half a mile), threatening to return in a massive wave.

In response, the then-parish priest of Tumaco, Father Gerardo Larrondo, “rushed to the church and took a large consecrated host and a ciborium from the tabernacle to protect it. He quickly went to the people and, raising the Blessed Sacrament, exclaimed: ‘Come, my children, let us all go to the beach, and may God have mercy on us.’”

The people followed the priest to the beach, praying “as they spotted in the distance a terrifying wall of water advancing at great speed.” The priest raised the Blessed Sacrament, making “a large sign of the cross.”

“Miracle! Miracle!” the villagers began to shout. “The immense wave that threatened to destroy the town of Tumaco suddenly stopped, as if blocked by an invisible force greater than that of nature, while the sea returned to its normal state,” the website recounts.

“From that date,” the bishop said in his homily, “the people began to gather in the parish church every year to give thanks for the wondrous miracle performed by the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, a miracle comparable in greatness, we dare say, to those recounted in sacred Scripture.”

Beyond this extraordinary event, the prelate emphasized that the Eucharistic miracle takes place at every Mass, in which the bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of Christ.

Betancourt therefore urged the faithful not to stop attending Mass because “just as I need daily food and the air to live, I equally, and even more so, need the Eucharist for my life.”

Regarding the miracle that occurred more than a century ago, the bishop of Tumaco noted that it was also known to St. Carlo Acutis and is part of the exhibition he created about Eucharistic miracles.

Before concluding the homily, the prelate expressed his desire “to make this cathedral the shrine of the Eucharistic miracle.”

“We are going to create a shrine here, a beautiful shrine, a magnificent shrine,” he said.

“I ask you to pray that we may be able to accomplish this. And that everyone will come to visit us” in this “Eucharistic diocese,” Betancourt encouraged.

The Mass on Jan. 31 also concluded the 40 hours of adoration of the Blessed Sacrament that the diocese organized in commemoration of the 120th anniversary of the Eucharistic miracle of 1906.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.

Source: https://www.ewtnnews.com/world/americas/colombia-celebrates-the-120th-anniversary-of-the-eucharistic-miracle-that-stopped-a-tsunami