
The announcement over the weekend that President Joe Biden will not seek re-election is just the latest turbulent political drama to unfold in America, one that arrives immediately in the wake of an attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump.
Yet amid continued rancor and instability in American society, tens of thousands of Catholics chose to focus this past week on that which is the central core of their faith – the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist – and what that centrality means in their everyday lives.
The five-day 10th National Eucharistic Congress (NEC) “followed a 6,000-mile-long, cross-country National Eucharistic Pilgrimage and drew more than 50,000 Catholics to Indianapolis,” the editors at National Catholic Register wrote Monday, noting the event was “the apex of the National Eucharistic Revival that has been renewing the Eucharistic belief and devotion of Catholics across the country for the past two years.”
But “now what?” the editors asked, following days of stirring speeches and, for many, the exhilarating experience of spiritual renewal. How to move that forward?
In his address to the multitudes at the NEC on Saturday, Word on Fire founder Bishop Robert Barron of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester provided some guidance.
Observing that the Eucharist “is not for us as a little private possession,” he instructed: “It’s meant to conform us to Christ who gives his Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity for the world.”
Barron pointed to Lumen Gentium, the great document of Vatican II:
The Light of the Nations. Who’s the Light? Well, Christ. We’re meant to be the bearers of that Light to the Gentiles, to the world. That’s the whole ecclesiology of the Church! That’s what animated John Paul II, Benedict XVI, Pope Francis. The same idea – the Church that goes out from itself.
For a moment, Barron reflected on “this throng in this room.”
“I mean it, everybody, the energy in this room could change our country!” he proclaimed, a statement that was met with a round of cheers:
It’s true. Do you know how many Catholics there are in America? Roughly 70 million. We’re just shy of a quarter of the population. Think. For one second, look around this room as you do so. Think. What if 70 million Catholics starting tonight began to live their faith radically and dramatically, became body offered, blood poured out? We could change the country!
Barron added that, while the laity received “rights and privileges” via Vatican II, he would also add a “word of challenge,” i.e., “the obligation of the laity.”
Catholics in every field and sector are called to move into “the secular order,” he explained.
“That’s your space,” he said. “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!”
In a piece Saturday that recorded the comments of numerous theologians and congress attendees, senior editor for the Register Jonathan Liedl highlighted the NEC event’s occurrence amid relentless political turmoil.
“Rather than politicizing the Eucharist, the congress’ overlap with partisan events like the Republican National Convention represented a powerful opportunity to reaffirm the preeminence of eternal things over temporal politics,” he wrote.
Liedl quoted Stephen White, the director of The Catholic Project at The Catholic University of America, who told him: “I doubt there is any place in the nation so untroubled by our tumultuous politics right now as the attendees at the Eucharistic Congress. Not because people here are indifferent to politics, but because, right now, they’re focused on something infinitely higher and better.”
Register contributor Liz Hansen commented on X about the “timing” of the NEC, acclaiming, “There are no coincidences!!”
“[T]he fact that nearly all the Catholics on my feed are posting pictures of Adoration instead of following the RNC is like next-level divine providence,” she wrote.
Michael Heinlein, biographer of the late Cardinal Francis George, told the Register that the timing of the NEC was “Providential.”
“I see such a juxtaposition between Milwaukee and Indianapolis, or, undoubtedly, Chicago and Indianapolis next month, that I’m convinced our witness of pointing to Christ is what this country needs right now,” he said. “I pray that this week can help us live up to that high calling.”
