For Catholic Herald staff writer Colleen Jurkiewicz, the National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis was literally a little slice of heaven. (Photo by Colleen Jurkiewicz)
I stared at Jesus, resentfully chewing a mouthful of pizza.
The first day of the recent National Eucharistic Congress had not gone smoothly for me. For some reason, I was the only pilgrim traveling with the Milwaukee contingent whose registration materials were not delivered to our hotel on Indianapolis’ east side. That meant I had to face the three-hour line that coiled around the exterior of the Indianapolis Convention Center. A three-hour line isn’t too much fun any day, but I was here for work, and needed to get registered in time to cover the keynote address at the evening’s revival session down the block at Lucas Oil Stadium. Eventually, because of the crowds, the congress organizers waived the registration rule at the stadium, allowing everyone in, but first I had to navigate closed sidewalks and unfamiliar streets to retrieve my credentials from the media lounge.
By the time I arrived at section 225 of Lucas Oil Stadium, the opening ceremony was starting and I couldn’t find a seat with the Milwaukee pilgrims. And I still wasn’t registered; I would have to complete that process the next morning, possibly with even longer lines.
While I stood in the concourse, watching the procession bear the monstrance into the stadium on the television screen, my phone was pinging with messages from my daughter. “When are you coming home? I crided this morning. Send pictures of your dinner.” (Double-whammy of mom guilt: first, you leave your kids for five days, then you realize you never properly taught them to spell “cried.”)
We millennials are a delicate breed, and experiencing too many successive obstacles leaves us cranky and tearful and ready to run home. Or, at least, that’s how it left me.
As I was standing in the concourse, wondering how I was going to get my article written or if I would ever get registered for this congress, a woman approached me with two pizza boxes. I had long ago given up on the food line and decided I wasn’t having dinner tonight.
“Hey, do you want this pizza?” she asked me with a smile. “They gave me two by accident.”
Normally, I don’t eat food from strangers because the anxiety monster who lives inside me, nourished by a steady diet of true crime documentaries, insists that I will be poisoned. But tonight, hunger trumped anxiety, for once in my life. I smiled back at her. “Thank you so much.”
The crowd inside the stadium was kneeling now. The lights were dimmed, and a deathly hush had fallen over the entire crowd. The Blessed Sacrament was exposed upon an altar in the middle of the stadium floor. People were crying and praying and singing and swaying.
I felt like I was shut out of heaven.
I crept through the darkened walkway that led from the concourse to the stands, reluctant to enter the stadium itself — I was shoving pizza in my mouth, after all. But I had come all this way to see Jesus, and see him I would. Because I had some questions.
Why is everything a mess? Why, in the name of God, did you bring me here, all this way, to not even be able to do what I thought you wanted me to do? Why are you doing absolutely nothing to help me?
The answer came from the deepest part of my heart: But I sent you pizza.
I managed to locate the press box, with the help of some very patient ushers, and wrote my article from there. When I think back on the congress now, a week later, the anxieties of that first night seem silly and small compared to the transcendent beauty I would witness in the ensuing four days. How can I explain what it feels like when 50,000 people are totally quiet, kneeling together in the presence of God? Fifty thousand restless hearts, swelling as one in adoration and recognition?
At the closing Mass on Sunday, Archbishop Andrew Cozzens called the congress “a foretaste of heaven.” And that’s when I realized it — the reason God brought me to Indianapolis. It was to place upon my heart a longing for heaven. And the words I lacked to describe what it felt like to kneel in adoration with a stadium full of pilgrims — I don’t need to find those words. John found them already: “The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.” (Revelation 22:3-4)
The truth is, I’ve never had a burning desire for heaven before. A desire for God, certainly. A desire to do his will, to live his truth. But heaven? I always brushed the thought away, uncomfortable. There’s too much to do here first, I always felt. Heaven was a concern for another time. An afterthought.
But heaven is the whole point.
Even though I’ve been Catholic for 35 years and receiving the Eucharist for 27 of those years, and even though I know this intellectually and logically, I didn’t know it — really know it in my soul — until the congress: the Eucharist is as close as we get to heaven here on earth.
Here’s the thing, though: to get there, we have to make the choice. And some of us are so distracted by the world — by all of the things going wrong, by the disruption of all our precious plans, by the physical and spiritual aches and pains that reign over this valley of tears — to enter into his presence. We hang back, holding on to our anger, our confusion, our pride. We stare at God, and we spit the words at him: Why did you bring me here?
God forces no one. He invites everyone. And he does what he can to help them accept the invitation.
Sometimes, he even sends pizza.
