The Eucharistic Congress is a pivotal moment within the three-year initiative of the National Eucharistic Revival. While it will be the largest public expression of the Revival, it is not the end of this Church-wide movement. In fact, the third year of the Revival—the Year of Missionary Sending—will take place AFTER the Congress, and Regnum Christi will be there for both of these important times!
While powerful personal encounters are a key fruit of the Congress, its impact must not stop there. Like every momentous gathering of the Church, participants will be unleashed back into the world to share their new anointing of the Holy Spirit. So when we speak about the 10th National Eucharistic Congress, it’s not only about experiencing the goodness and power of our God… we must then go out on mission to share it.
DAILY UPDATES
Click for a summary and photos from each day of the National Eucharistic Congress.
IMPORTANT INFORMATION
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- If you are going to the National Eucharistic Congress, please let us know using the link to the WhatsApp group below so we can communicate RC activities and events with you on-site!
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- We will be in Booth 1117 in the Exhibit hall. Come see us! We will have space for people to meet, information about Regnum Christi and all of its vocations, and a Holy Week Missions cross that we will be inviting people to nail their prayer intentions to so we can pray for them! We will also have brochures and a few fantastic giveaways!
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- RC Indianapolis will host a traveler’s Mass and lunch before the Congress begins on Wednesday, July 17th at 12 noon at the Our Lady of the Apostles Family Center, 2884 North 700 West, Greenfield, IN 46140. Over 50 Legionaries will be present for the celebration. Enjoy the RC family spirit and meet RC members and friends from all over the country. There is a pond on the property for those who would like to enjoy some fishing. It is a way for us to be together to celebrate before the Congress, and there will be a gathering on Sunday evening, July 21st, after its completion.
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- We invite everyone to gather at the RC booth at 12:30 daily to pray the angelus together and at 6:00 pm each day to pray for the intentions of those who have shared them with us on the Missions Cross. After this time of prayer, members are free to gather together for dinner at any of the many food venues available before the evening sessions.
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- The Eucharistic procession will begin on Saturday, July 20th, at 3 pm. The route is approximately one mile long. Groups that want to process together are asked to gather on Capitol Avenue between Georgia Street and McCarty Street by 2:00 pm. We will carry the Holy Week Cross with us, and we will have Regnum Christi hand fans available at the booth so we can all keep cool and locate each other at the procession. Communication regarding the procession will be sent out via our RC Eucharistic Congress WhatsApp group.
- Even if you can’t attend the Congress, we want to share the experience with you! We will share the RC @ the NEC experience via social media! If you are there, tag us or add us as collaborators @regnumchristi_english!
Day 1 - “May we as a church grow in our unity so we may be more fruitful in our mission.”
These are the words of Cardinal Cristoph Pierre, Apostolic Nuncio to the United States as he addressed the estimated 50,000 Catholics gathered in Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. “When we are truly revived by the Eucharist he opens us to an encounter with him in every moment of our life. It means meeting him in everything that happens in our life.” He emphasized.
Day one of the Eucharistic Congress saw hundreds of people stop to meet Regnum Christi members of all vocations at Booth 1117, nailing dozens of prayer intentions to the Mission Cross at the center of the booth. At the end of the day, Fr. Jesus Salinas, LC, and Fr. Augustine de La Vega, LC, led a gathered group of lay members, Legionary priests, brothers, and candidates, Consecrated Women, and our friends at Catholic World Mission in a prayer for the intentions entrusted to Our Lord on the cross that day.
The evening session opened with an hour of Eucharistic Adoration led by Bishop Andrew Cozzens, bishop of the Diocese of Crookston and chairman of the board of the National Eucharistic Congress.
“Just to be in stadium filled with people cheering as loudly for the Blessed Sacrament as any sports fans do in a stadium like this is amazing. Tonight isn’t about learning or intellectually knowing our faith- it’s about experiencing the reality of Christ alive among us.” -Janet McLaughin, lay member of Regnum Christi.
Visit eucharisticcongress.org for the livestream of the Congress.
Day 2 - "This Congress is the Church fully alive"
The second day of the National Eucharistic Congress opened in Lucas Oil Stadium, home of the Indianapolis Colts, with the Rosary led by Fr Rocky Hoffman, executive director of Relevant Radio, leading up to Mass celebrated by Cardinal Tomothy Dolan. More than 10 Legionary priests concelebrated the Mass for the 50,000+ attendees who filled the stadium.
Throughout the day hundreds of people visited the Regnum Christi booth, where all were invited to pray the Angelus together at lunchtime. The assembled group who came together to pray filled the 20’ wide booth, spilling out into the corridor in front of the booth. As the Mission Cross was filled to overflowing once again with the intentions entrusted to Regnum Christi, visitors spoke with Fr. Daniel Brandenburg, LC, about the Legionary vocation, with the Sacred Heart Apostolic School team about what the school offers, with Consecrated Women Elizabeth Stromberg, Carrie O’Connor, Laura Matthews, and Katie Tuttle about the Consecrated vocation. Elizabeth shared a conversation she had as she assisted a visitor in nailing her prayer intentions to the cross. “As I was nailing prayer intentions to our cross someone asked me if I was a carpenter’s daughter, and I said ‘No, I’m a Carpenter’s wife!’”
One visitor to the booth who works in Catholic Media as a photographer approached with tears in his eyes, explaining that he had to come say hello to Regnum Christi because “Br. Anthony Freeman, LC, is the reason I work in Catholic media today.” When asked if he knew Br. Anthony, he replied, “Not in this life.” Although he had never met Br. Anthony, who passed away in 2018, the visitor who lives near Br. Anthony’s hometown in Texas was deeply inspired by his writing, and his zeal to get the Gospel message out into the world. He visited Br. Anthony’s grave to pray for him and to ask Br. Anthony to pray for him as well.
In the evening session, all were captivated by the testimonies of the parents of Michelle Dupong, a FOCUS missionary who passed away of cancer and has been recognized as a Servant of God, and the Eucharistic miracles shared by Mother Olga of the Sacred Heart, founder of the Roman Catholic religious order, the Daughters of Mary of Nazareth.
Fr. Mike Schmitz, the final speaker of the evening before a time of adoration in the stadium, exhorted all present to repentance as the path for regaining our first love of Our Lord. “Knowledge can make someone great but only love can make a saint. I need more love. If I’ve lost my first love for the Lord, if I have lost that fire, what are the fire extinguishers in my life?”
“This Congress is the Church fully alive… almost another Eucharistic miracle, with Jesus so present in so many ways. 50,000+ Catholics, beautiful liturgies, impactful speakers, music, and hundreds of booths… And RC in the middle of it all. This is why we exist: to be with Jesus in his Church, to serve her with our charism!” -Fr. Daniel Brandenburg, LC
Day 3 - "The Church is alive and vibrant!”
The Theme of day three at the National Eucharistic Congress was ‘Healing.’ After Mass celebrated by Cardinal Wilton Gregory, many of the speakers focused on aspects of spiritual, mental, and emotional healing. Some even spoke of their miraculous physical healings. Fr. Vinh Pham, LC, who had been invited to speak by the Vietnamese Eucharistic Youth Movement, talked to a sold out crowd in a full room about “Mary, the Living Tabernacle: The Transforming and Freeing Power of “Fiat.” He shared his family’s story of faith, courage and suffering in leaving Vietnam to come to the United States as part of his explanation of living the FIAT.
By day three, the Regnum Christi booth has become known as the booth ‘where they take prayer intentions and nail them to the cross.’ We welcomed hundreds of people once again, humbled and honored to be entrusted with the desires of their heart as they presented them to the Lord through the petitions they wrote down and shared. Some even came with envelopes stuffed full of prayer petitions to lay at the foot of the Mission Cross. We encountered two young religious sisters who had been in ECYD as young girls, several young men discerning the priesthood, and many families seeking to follow God’s plan for their lives.
In the evening, Paula Sautre of Atlanta shared her story of healing from an infection that left her paralyzed, an intention her children ran to Jesus with and one he answered through the gifts of healing and technology. Sister Josephine Beckett, a sister of the Holy Family of Nazareth who is a nationally certified and licensed counselor, and host of the “Hope Stories’ podcast invited everyone to healing through repentance in hope and joy, and Fr. Father Boniface Hicks, O.S.B., a monk of Saint Vincent Archabbey, led all in a prayer of healing during Adoration and A Eucharistic Procession inside Lucas Oil Stadium.
“I have so much hope for the Church, knowing the intentionality of the messaging of this Congress, the investment in the experience of all of the pilgrims, and the plan for this event to launch us from the foundation of a deep love of the Eucharistic Lord into a year of Mission come directly from from our bishops. The Church is alive and vibrant!” -Kerrie Rivard, lay member of Regnum Christi.
Day 4 - ‘We were convicted that God wanted this moment for the United States.’
The main Mass at the opening day 4 was a new experience for most people here at the Eucharistic Congress- it was celebrated in the beautiful Syro-Malabar rite by Bishop Joy Alappatt of the Syro-Malabar diocese in Chicago and Bishop Borys Gudziak of the Ukrainian Catholic rite. In his homily, Bishop Gudziak spoke of his recent time in Ukraine, of the 120 people per day who are dying there, and of two priests he met who had been captured and tortured by Russian forces for 22 days. He called all present to prayer and to live our faith in this world bravely as Christians.
In the afternoon, we were a part of a massive one-mile Eucharistic Procession that ended at the Indiana War Memorial, where Jesus in the Monstrance was adored by 60,000 people. Walking as a group, Regnum Christi held high the mission cross that had collected over 1,500 prayer intentions over the course of the Congress. The 11 candidates present with Fr. Vinh Pham, LC and Fr. John van Dorpe, LC, led the group in prayer and songs while we walked.
The evening program opened with music by Matt Maher before an address by Tim Glembowski, CEO of the National Eucharistic Congress, who spoke of the challenges they faced in deciding to hold the Congress and the work involved over the last two years. “We were convicted that God wanted this moment for the United States,” he shared, “but we weren’t sure if the United States wanted this Congress.” The crowd of 60,000 present responded to this admission with rousing applause. Indeed, the Church in the United States did want this too.
Gloria Purvis, author, commentator, and host of the Gloria Purvis Podcast, spoke frankly and emphatically about the need for American Catholics to overcome divisions of different worship styles, different political stances, different opinions on the Holy Father, and the wounds caused by racism. Her printed and passionate comments challenged all to love as Christ asks us to and to offer our prayers and sacrifices for the sins that have wounded and divided this country.
Jonathan Roumie, best known for portraying Jesus in ‘The Chosen’, spoke about his faith in the Eucharist as a Catholic. He gave a beautiful reading of Our Lord’s words in the Gospel through which he reveals himself as the Bread of Life.
In the final address of the night before Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament closed the evening, Bishop Robert Barron spoke of the vocation, rights, and responsibilities of the laity in our world today. Citing Dorothy Day as his inspiration, he challenged Catholics to move past the historical ‘lay’ responsibilities of living the Ten Commandments and embrace the Evangelical Counsels as Lumen Gentium encouraged us to. Long seen as the spirituality of those in Holy Orders and Consecrated life, he emphatically spoke of them as lay responsibilities. By living the poverty of detachment, the Chastity of sexuality rightly ordered in service of love, and obedience to God, the 70 million Catholics in the United States could change this country, he said, to thunderous applause. In exhorting the Church present to go out on mission he said, “Your Christianity is not for you. It’s not a self-help program to make you feel better about yourselves. Your Christianity is for the world. We are meant to be the bearer of Christ, light of the world, to everyone. Along with the rights and privileges of the laity is the obligation of the laity- to go out into the world… Move into the secular world with Christ- as body given and blood poured out!”
I found myself desiring that everyone could see 50,000 people on their knees worshiping the Lord! So many young families are here. So much joy! Truly a Pentecostal moment for the Church! The streets are lined with locals awaiting the procession. I am certain all of heaven was smiling . -Jeff and Donna Garrett, lay members of Regnum Christi
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Check out the Featured Speakers and the Schedule
