“Behold, the Bridegroom! Come out to meet him.” -Matthew 25:6
“Okay, we’re going now. We can go out now…” The word spread like a wave through eight hundred of us religious sisters gathered together in a conference room in Indianapolis. We were waiting and lined up in rows eight sisters wide, all of us standing together in sections with our own communities, and it felt a little bit like we were walking forward in battle ranks. As we rounded the first corner to take our place in front of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament for a huge Eucharistic Procession, a similar and even bigger line up of priests started cheering and clapping for all the sisters. As they cheered, I felt God the Father’s love and affirmation overflow right through me, and we sisters cheered right back. We were all cheering, for God and for His beloved Church. Walking on down the conference center hallway, silence settled in, and I had an image come to mind. It was an image of heaven—of the choirs of virgins walking down the halls of heaven to meet their beloved King and Bridegroom, Jesus Christ, and tears sprang to my eyes. I thought of that line from Psalm 45, “She is led to the King with her maiden companions. They are escorted amid gladness and joy; they pass within the palace of the King.” And then to make things even more glorious, in that moment a couple sisters intoned the Salve Regina and all eight hundred of us joined in. Not one person’s voice stood out from another; they blended together as one beautiful, strong voice. At this point I had goosebumps—the acoustics were amazing, and the Holy Spirit of unity was present! When the Salve ended, we clapped and cheered all over again, and then we walked outside into the sunshine where 50,000 other faith-filled Catholics were lining the streets, also cheering for Jesus. What a foretaste of heaven.
This was just one powerful experience of many from the tenth National Eucharistic Congress that recently took place in Indianapolis. I wanted to share it with the thousands of people who were not able to go to the congress in person, and to spread the great news that there is truly a “revival” happening in our country! If you would like a little fuel to enkindle your own interior fire, you can still access talks and footage from the National Eucharistic Congress online at: eucharisticcongress.org/digital. Our bishops hope to keep things going from here. Bishop Cozzens said at the closing Mass that we are just getting started! Some names you could look up for good talks from the Congress are: Mother Olga, Sr. Josephine Garret, Fr. Mike Schmitz, and Bishop Robert Barron (but there were many other excellent speakers too). I would also highly recommend looking up the Thursday night Adoration, it would be at the end of the “Day Two Revival Session.” Again, there were fifty or sixty thousand people in silent adoration in Lucas Oil Stadium, and as we adored the Lord, a group of four men were singing to Him with harmonies and drones. I’m pretty sure at one point they were even singing in Arabic or Hebrew. It was incredibly moving and peaceful.
God is on the move in our country, literally. For the past two and a half months, thirty-two young people have walked and driven with our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament across our entire country. They split up into four routes (North, South, East, and West) and converged in Indianapolis at the Eucharistic Congress. Our brothers have been chaplains for the routes, and Sr. Veronica and I also got to join the Western Route to travel with the Blessed Sacrament from the border of Oregon, through all of Idaho, and to the edge of Utah. There are so many good Catholic people in every vocation in our nation, and it really does feel like a new spring time for us as a Church.
Back to the Eucharistic Congress, one main thing that the Holy Spirit seemed to be speaking throughout it was a word of exhortation. God is calling each of us to a deeper personal conversion—not so much a conversion to the truth that the Eucharist is really Jesus, but a conversion away from indifference towards His true presence and towards each other. God calling us to repent of hard-heartedness and to be more loving, attentive, careful, open and soft-hearted, both to His presence in the Eucharist and in others. May we catch the fire!
Sr. Josephine, CFR
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