INDIANAPOLIS (OSV News) — From the first moments of the final nighttime revival session at Lucas Oil Stadium July 20, an electricity coursed through the air with an intensity surpassing all the prior events of the National Eucharistic Congress.
Grammy-nominated Catholic musician Matt Maher led the crowd — estimated at greater than 50,000 — in making a joyful noise, on the fourth day of a conference where Catholics had been learning how to love Jesus better — and how to let him love them better. The same crowd had arrived at the stadium energized by the most public witness of faith in the United States in decades outside of papal visits, after walking a mile-long Eucharistic procession throughout the streets of downtown Indianapolis.
That evening, a prolonged standing ovation greeted Tim Glemkowski, CEO of the National Eucharistic Congress Inc., as he took the main stage.
“If you went through all the effort that it took to get here to Indianapolis, I’m convinced that it was because the Lord called you and appointed you to be here personally,” he said. “He’s after your heart and my heart. … He’s come for you. He’s come for you because he loves you.”
Throughout the night, speakers were greeted with standing ovations and cheers.
Fans of the popular TV series “The Chosen” had a surreal experience as Jonathan Roumie, beloved for his portrayal of Jesus in the show, read from a portion of the Gospel that had not been included in the series.
“Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you,” he read in the way he voices Jesus in the show. “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day.”
After reading John 6:47-69, he thanked those gathered for sharing that “very intimate moment in Scripture that I personally have so longed to see.”
Roumie gave his reflections in a striking shirt — one he reportedly designed himself — featuring the famous quote, “If it’s a symbol, to hell with it,” from Catholic author Flannery O’Connor, who gave that response after someone referred to the Eucharist as merely a symbol. The audience could not see the back of Roumie’s shirt, which quoted John 6:53, with key words in bold: “AMEN, AMEN, I say to you, unless you EAT the flesh of the Son of Man and DRINK his blood, you do not have LIFE within you.”
He shared with the crowd that he had spent the last week filming the Last Supper scene for “The Chosen.” The prospect of such a portrayal, he said, had caused him a lot of anxiety. “As a Catholic, I understand the weight,” he said, of depicting the institution of the Eucharist that night.
“I understand the reality of what it is we believe and what that host represents” and “who that actually is now that we are about to receive,” he said, adding that receiving the Eucharist and going to daily Mass has changed his own life.
“The Eucharist for me is healing,” he said. “The Eucharist for me is peace, the Eucharist for me is my grounding. The Eucharist for me is his heart within me.”
As many speakers have done during the congress, Catholic author and podcaster Gloria Purvis began by sharing a Eucharistic encounter she had. As a 12-year-old African American girl at her Catholic school in Charleston, South Carolina, she found herself in front of the monstrance with the Eucharistic Jesus exposed. She recalled feeling “completely consumed in flames,” but it did not hurt. And she was changed. She informed her parents that she would become Catholic.
“There is that unity in the Spirit because God spoke it,” she said.
Purvis listed some signs of unity in the church: the unity in celebrating the liturgy as a community, the unity in the pope’s leadership, the unity as one family of God (church militant, church suffering and church triumphant), and the example of the martyrs.
She also spoke about signs of disunity in the church: rejection of the pope, preferring idols of temporal power (such as putting political party allegiance ahead of allegiance to Jesus Christ), and the sin of racism.
She also suggested sacrifice, prayers, fasting and almsgiving as a balm for the wounds of disunity that mark the body of Christ.
“Let our witness to whom we say we love penetrate all that we do and say — and all that we are willing to undertake for the glorification of the Lord and the growth of his church,” Purvis said.
In the final congress keynote, Bishop Robert E. Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, and founder of the Catholic media apostolate Word on Fire, urged the audience to leave the stadium with “the light of Christ” to change society. It’s the job of the laity to bring the light of Christ to the secular world, he said.
Bishop Barron quoted St. Catherine of Siena’s words: “Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.”
“God tells us who we should be, how we should live — everything else is a footnote,” Bishop Barron said. “The biggest problem today in our culture is the culture of self-invention: ‘I decide who I am, I decide me and my life, I decide what it’s all about — even my gender I’ll decide.'”
Obedience is one of the evangelical counsels, along with poverty and chastity, lived by men and women in religious orders, but the bishop urged the laity to heed them all in their state of life, too.
“We have over the centuries consistently obeyed” Jesus’ command “to do this in remembrance of me,” Bishop Barron said, and “despite our failures,” we believe that Jesus is “not simply a wisdom figure, but rather God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God. … That’s the basic theology of the church, the theology of the Real Presence. That’s why we’re here.”
Bishop Barron said that “we don’t pay enough attention to” other commands from Jesus.
Regarding chastity, he said the church’s teaching is not puritanical, but is about living one’s sexual life in “a morally and spiritually responsible way” and bringing “the whole of one’s sexuality under the aegis of love.”
“If beginning tonight 70 million Catholics decided to live according to chastity, abortion, sex abuse, the objectification of men and women, hookup culture — all of that would be undermined,” he said.
Bishop Barron said when so much of the world is chasing after wealth, pleasure, power and honor, poverty helps us be detached from these things to “live in Christ.” As a guide to live out poverty, he pointed to Pope Leo XIII’s teaching: “When the demands of necessity and propriety have been met, it is a duty to give to the poor out of that which remains.”
Eucharistic adoration powerfully ended the night, with Bishop David L. Toups of Beaumont, Texas, processing with the Eucharist to the central altar on the stadium floor. He knelt before the Eucharistic Lord in the monstrance blessed by Pope Francis, for 40 minutes, with stretches of silence that flowed into worship songs from Maher and fellow musician Sarah Kroger.
People knelt, stood and sat during adoration, many with hands raised in praise. During the final period of quiet, a woman’s spontaneous song carried over the main floor, while a group elsewhere in the stadium sang a hymn.
After benediction, Bishop Toups processed with the Eucharist out of the stadium, and Maher launched into “Alive Again.”
“I’m alive, I’m alive because he lives,” Maher sang, his voice reverberating throughout the stadium. “Amen, Amen! Let my song join the One that never ends!”
Contributing to this story were Julie Asher, Lauretta Brown, Maria-Pia Negro Chin, Gretchen R. Crowe and Maria Wiering.
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