Congress’ First Revival Session Shares Message of Love, UnityRead Time 10 min

If you love someone, you prove it. And if the opening night of the 10th National Eucharistic Congress had a tagline, that would be it.

The quote comes courtesy of Sr. Bethany Madonna, a keynote speaker for the first evening revival session of the congress Wednesday, July 17. Sr. Bethany, a member of the Sisters of Life, shared the story of a young actor she knew who was on the cusp of a major reversion to his Catholic faith. But the young man struggled with attending Mass, particularly with understanding the image of the cross and Christ crucified.

“He asked God in his heart — ‘Why’d your son have to die?’” Sr. Bethany told the tens of thousands of congress attendees who had gathered in Lucas Oil Stadium in downtown Indianapolis. “(He told me) ‘Sister, I kid you not, God answered me.’ He said: ‘When you love someone, you prove it.’”

If that is so, then the National Eucharistic Congress is a celebration of that love, an examination of it, a symposium on it and all the myriad ways that we interact with that proof of Christ’s self-sacrificing love. But the congress is also a question: Are we ready to accept the proof of his love? Are we ready to return it?

Earlier in the evening, when emcees Fr. Josh Johnson, Montse Alvarado and Sr. Miriam James Heidland took the stage, their message was one of fulfillment — of the long-awaited congress and the renewal it would bring to the faithful.

“We made it. We’re so glad you’re here. We just can’t wait to see all that Jesus is going to do these days,” said Sr. Miriam, a speaker, author and member of the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity.

“This is a historic event. This is the first time in 83 years that we’ve held a National Eucharistic Congress in our land,” said Fr. Johnson, who is a speaker, writer and podcast host for Ascension Press.

Fr. Johnson went on to say that it was “providential” that the evening commenced with Eucharistic Adoration, a beginning reflective of the events of Holy Thursday. ‘“After they celebrated that first Mass, Jesus Christ asked the apostles to do three things: to go with him in the Garden of Gethsemane, and to sit and watch, and to pray before his Body and his Blood, and his soul and his divinity. That was the very first mandate. It wasn’t to preach or to evangelize. It was to sit and watch and pray.”

Alvarado, President and COO of EWTN News, reminded the attendees that God had big plans for them in participating in the congress.

“The choice that you made to be here didn’t happen on its own,” she said.

All three emcees went on to offer personal testimonies of encounters with Christ in the Eucharist — encounters that led to them being onstage that evening.

“I grew up Catholic, but I’d never fallen in love with Jesus,” said Sr. Miriam. “I’m here tonight because of the witness of a holy, beautiful priest. I remember watching him say Mass. I had never seen anything like it. His face would be transfigured (during consecration). And I thought to myself: that is a man in love.”

“I’m here because of a holy layperson,” said Fr. Johnson. Fallen away from his Catholic faith, he had a friend who “would not give up” on him, and continually invited him to retreats and conferences. He kept turning the invitation down — until June 2004, when he finally consented to attend a Catholic conference where Eucharistic Adoration was led by Bishop Sam Jacobs, then-Bishop of Houma-Thibodaux, Louisiana.

“I fell in love with God. I was in adoration, and I asked God: ‘What’s your plan for my life?’ The first words I perceived were these: ‘I love you.’ Not, ‘I used to love you, before you began to sin, or I’m going to love you again after you go to confession,’” recalled Fr. Johnson. “He saw me in my mess and my imperfections and my brokenness, and he said: ‘I love you.’ And I knew in that moment, I wanted to be in a relationship with Jesus Christ.”

The evening also included an address from Cardinal Christophe Pierre, Apostolic Nuncio to the United States. “Dear brothers and sisters, I come here as the personal representative of the Holy Father in the United States,” he said. “As such, my being here is a way to express the Pope’s spiritual closeness to you and his unity with you and with this country.”

And what is the Eucharist, said Cardinal Pierre, if not for the ultimate source of unity?

“Perhaps our main prayer for this Eucharistic Congress should be this: that we as a Church may grow in our unity so that we become more fruitful in our mission,” he said. “This was the prayer that Jesus made to the Father on the night when he instituted the Eucharist: ‘That they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me, and I am in you. That they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me.’”

To realize this unity, said Cardinal Pierre, requires us to examine the question: What is Eucharistic revival?

“And to make the question more personal: how will we know that we are experiencing a Eucharistic revival?” he asked. “Over the course of the last couple of years, we have been part of a tremendously well-organized effort to focus the minds and hearts of Catholics on the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. We have made this effort in our parishes, in our dioceses and now at the national level. All of which has been building in a kind of crescendo up until now. At all levels, we have seen increased opportunities for adoration and benediction. There has been catechesis on the Eucharist, and of course, processions by displaying the Blessed Sacrament for worship and increasing our acts of devotion. We have drawn attention once more to this great sacrament in order to stir up a renewed faith both in our fellow Catholics and in ourselves. We have even attracted the curiosity of people of other faiths. And to be very clear, all that is good.”

But it is not enough, he said.

“When we are truly revived by the Eucharist, then our encounter with Christ’s Real Presence in the sacrament opens us to an encounter with him in the rest of our life,” he said. “This means seeing him everywhere we go. It means meeting him in the interactions we have with others. Not only is he present in our family, friends (and) communities but he is also present in our encounters with people from whom we would otherwise consider ourselves divided.”

In other words: Christ loves us so much that he has proved it. How can we prove it to him?