Bishop Robert Barron, who founded Word on Fire Catholic Ministries, was the keynote speaker Saturday, July 20, at the National Eucharistic Congress at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. (Photo by Colleen Jurkiewicz)
Popular evangelist Bishop Robert Barron issued a challenge Saturday to not just the 50,000 Catholics in his live audience Saturday, July 20, but to the 70 million across the United States.
“Think – what if 70 million Catholics, starting tonight, began to live their faith radically and dramatically, and became body offered, blood poured out. It would change the country,” he told people taking part in the National Eucharistic Congress revival night at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.
Bishop Barron, the bishop of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester in Minnesota, was the keynote speaker on the final night of the five-day congress held at the stadium and Indianapolis Convention Center. The bestselling author is the founder of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries media apostolate. His most recent book, “This is My Body,” sold more than 1 million copies.
(Barron also was the head of the Evangelization Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2020, when the conference decided to initiate the three-year National Eucharistic Revival, which began in 2022.
“What a sight this is,” he said. Bishop Barron described the five-day congress as “one of the great moments of my priesthood. How could you deny that the Holy Spirit is among us?”
He told the audience that when Catholics take in the Eucharist, “We become what we eat. We become a body given for others. We become blood poured out on behalf of others.”
Our Christianity is meant to be for others, he said. “Christianity is not a self-help program, something designed just to make us feel better about ourselves. Your Christianity is for the world,” he said to applause. “The Eucharist is not for us a little private possession. It’s meant to conform us to Christ, who gives his Body, Blood, soul and divinity for the world.”
Echoing Vatican II, all three popes of the last 45 years have highlighted that Catholics are to go out on mission as the light of the world, sent out to be Christ to others.
“The energy in this room could change our country,” he said. “It’s true.”
“Vatican II said the secular order — that’s your space. Move into it with panache and energy and intelligence and enthusiasm and become Body given, Blood poured out. We’d set the country on fire. Look at us,” he said to cheers.
But for anything to truly change, the laity empowered after Vatican II needs to embrace the “sacred obligation” that comes with their rights and prerogatives.
These obligations include poverty, chastity and obedience. Those ordained as priests or who take religious vows are sometimes called to live out those ways more strictly, but they take on a different form for the laity.
For the laity, to live with poverty means to live a God-centered life, and remain detached from other ever-changing wants such as wealth, pleasure, power and honor. “Fellow sinners, we live so much of our lives chasing after these worldly goods that will not satisfy us.”
By chastity for the laity, Bishop Barron said he meant “living one’s sexual life in a morally and spiritually responsible way.” This means acting sexually for the good of the other in a loving way. “Everybody is called to that.”
“What would happen, fellow Catholics, if beginning tonight, 70 million Catholics decided to live according to chastity? Abortion, sexual abuse, pornography, the hook-up culture, objectification of women and men — all of that would be attacked. All of that would be undermined. When we wring our hands at our wicked, fallen society — it is in many ways — but do we turn the blame on ourselves. It’s 70 million of us that have not lived according to this great evangelical council.”
Obedience may be the most important, he said. “What voice do you listen to? There are so many voices.” They are saying wealth, pleasure, power and honor are the most important things. “Do you listen to those, or do you listen to a higher voice?” God’s voice says do the right thing.
“This revival will have been a failure if we don’t change our society, if we don’t stream forth from this place with the light of Christ,” he concluded. “Become the people you’re meant to be.”
