The Moment My Heart Broke Open

I attended the 10th National Eucharistic Revival Congress July 15-21 and I have SO MANY THINGS TO REFLECT ON!!! I won't flood you the reader with them all at once, but I will be releasing reflections over the next couple of months. Please enjoy, and let me know if you were also there and what your thoughts were!

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I had so many uncertainties about going to Indianapolis for the Revival Congress. I’ve attended Catholic conferences before, and even enjoyed my fair share of Christian Rock concerts, so I was used to gathering around a big stage to get people excited for the Lord. I love being in a stadium filled with dancing nuns and children, crowds singing praise and worship with a band on fire with the Holy Spirit, and individuals whose hearts of stone are broken open from the silent and vocal witnesses of others. I even praise God for the moments in the same full stadium filled with total, reverent silence. I’m here for it all. But for some reason I still had my reservations.

Maybe I wasn’t wanting to mentally prepare for the tens of thousands of people that were said to be there—the final number was around 60,000 in attendance! Maybe I wasn’t wanting to get lost in a city that I wasn’t familiar with? Maybe I wasn’t sure I would actually be able to treat it like a time of revival, or wouldn’t get anything out of it? The list went on in my little anxious heart, but God has a funny way of reassuring us that He has incredible plans for our lives! From the moment I arrived in Indianapolis, I had a sense of joy wash over me, and I KNEW Christ was already present in a whole new way, right here in this busy city.

I ended up heading down a couple days early with my mom to welcome the pilgrims who had been traveling the Elizabeth Ann Seton Route, the route that passed through my family’s diocese in the Appalachian region. Six young men and women began in New Haven, Connecticut, and for the past 60 days they had partaken in countless Eucharistic processions for roughly 1,600 miles with those who joined them along the way. They even had a small altar constructed inside their van—AND on a boat—to remain in perpetual adoration during their days of travel! 

On Tuesday morning of July 16, the Seton Route pilgrims processed from St. Philip Neri Parish to St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church in downtown Indianapolis. Instead of processing with the group, my mom and I wanted to meet up halfway with the pilgrims heading to St. John, but no one could tell us where the procession’s official route was between the churches. So we just started walking to find Our Lord. 

We knew the procession would take about 2 hours, so we looked up potential routes they could take and figured we would meet up with them on one of the paths after an hour. We found ourselves getting close to the hour mark without any sign of the procession, and finally stopped to catch our breath. It was hot, we weren’t exactly sure where we were anymore, and we started to lose hope we would find them at all. 

Just when we were about to turn around and head back from where we came, we heard the faintest sound of singing. Then we saw the decorated canopy. Christ was coming! HE had found us, and I knew at that moment all we had to do was let Him come. One of the nuns who had traveled a good bit of the Seton Route ran up to us ahead of the group shouting, “Jesus is coming”! This nun did the same thing to any passerby she saw along the procession, and had been doing it the entire pilgrimage. Homeless men and women, folks walking to work, business owners and customers who came out to the streets to see what was happening. Although I was already on my knees and knew it was Jesus passing by, this nun was still able to fill my heart with Christ in a way that made my heart rejoice. 

We joined the procession for the rest of the way back to St. John downtown, and there we were greeted by hundreds of people already waiting outside of the church for our group to arrive with Christ! They fell to their knees as we passed by with Our Lord, and once we reached the entrance of the church I also fell to my knees and began to silently weep with a smile on my face. I’ve been to various nights of worship and have prayed many holy hours before, but this was somehow different. For the first time I felt a flood of heavenly bliss as I saw Our Lord lifted up in the monstrance and taken into the oldest church in Indianapolis.

We weren’t the only ones traveling to this spot! Each of the four routes processed to the same church doors so that all four routes could meet up on Tuesday and come together for Mass. The Juan Diego route from the south and the Junipero Serra route from the west had arrived just before us, with the Marian route from the North arriving last just before Mass, bringing all of the routes together at last. The first time in U.S. history that a country-wide eucharistic procession had successfully come to completion.

Coming early to greet the pilgrims in Eucharistic procession and Mass was what truly made my heart ready to receive Christ in a powerful way throughout the rest of the week at the congress. Throughout the week we heard from countless individuals at impact and revival sessions like Fr. Mike Schmitz, Bishop Barron, Sr. Mariam James Heidland, Dr. Scott Hahn, Mother Olga of the Sacred Heart and Mother Adela Galindo (my two new favorite nuns), Gloria Purvis, Jonathan Roumie—the LITTLE Jesus, not the REAL Jesus as he reminded each of us—and countless more. As amazing as it was to hear from so many incredible speakers and familiar voices during the Congress, nothing impacted my week more than the Blessed Sacrament, as we began each day with Mass and ended in Adoration. I’m sure any one of them would rejoice in me saying this—I even got to sing praise with my guy Matt Maher, and I can still say the same exact thing with full confidence! It was truly in the Eucharist at Mass and Adoration that I felt the Holy Spirit come alive all over again in my heart.

And the best part? There are already plans in motion for the 11th Eucharisitc Revival in 2033! The revival that truly took place this week made us realize we can’t wait another 80 years for the next one. As Cardinal Tagle encouraged us in his homily at the closing Mass of the congress on Sunday, we have received a gift and now we must go out to BE that gift to the world.

“The Eucharist for me is HEALING. The Eucharist for me is PEACE. The Eucharist for me is my GROUNDING. The Eucharist for me is His heart WITHIN me.” Jonathan Roumie, National Eucharistic Revival 2024

You can find the full keynote talks from the Congress at Relevant Radio

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