One Body of Christ

Crowd at the National Eucharistic Congress 2024

Dear friends in Christ, 

I’m so excited to share with you my experience of attending the National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis last month. Everything about the five days I spent there was incredible; I really felt that God had called me by name, in every capacity of my person, to be in that particular place during that time. I can’t possibly describe every aspect of what happened to me there—there were so many great presenters sharing their witnesses of Christ’s presence in their lives, their scholarship, and their gifts. Many of the talks are available to watch on YouTube, and my top recommendations are included at the end of this blog post. Instead of trying to summarize so much content, in my reflection here, I’ll focus on what it was like to be there in person. 

The first thing that struck me was just the sheer number of people! They told us toward the end that they had over 60,000 people register—I'll take their word for it, I didn’t count them myself. If you’ve ever been to a rock concert or sports event in a large stadium, you have some idea of the size of the crowd. The difference here though was that we were all there because of Christ! When we all knelt in Adoration in that giant stadium, there was complete reverent silence for the True Presence of Jesus. When we joined our voices in songs handed down through the Church for generations, I had tears in my eyes at the immensity of the Body of Christ. At Mass on Sunday, after receiving Jesus in the Eucharist, I returned to my seat and knelt on the floor. I discovered that I wasn’t directly facing the altar, but instead my eyes rested on the long snaking lines of others who were about to receive Him, or who were returning to their places after. There, I thought; there is His Body. 

Eucharistic Procession through the streets of Indianapolis with many orders of Religious Sisters

I was particularly struck by the diversity in the ways we expressed our shared faith: there was such a variety of kinds of prayer, genres of music, specific devotions, and ways of encountering Christ. Some of those ways corresponded to my own preference and the desires of my heart; others did not, but I felt totally free to participate in the things that were “for me” and leave the other things to other people whose hearts were moved by those methods. For me, this was a living example of our Catholic, i.e. universal, unity in diversity. It was so clear to me that we are One Body of Christ with many different gifts and perspectives. 

Fr. Mike Schmitz giving a talk.

I was sometimes overwhelmed by the huge number of people all together in one place. (Earplugs helped a lot!) But at the same time, I was conscious of how small a group we were compared to the whole Catholic Church, on Earth and in heaven. One evening I was sitting next to an engineer who helped me do a little math: 60,000 Catholics at the Congress represent a little less than 0.1% of all US Catholics. To put that in perspective, if we had ten Eucharistic Congresses like the one in Indianapolis going all at once, that would still represent only 1% of US Catholics. So small! Don’t even get me started on Catholics worldwide, or those already united with Christ in heaven. This gathering, which seemed so huge, was in fact only a tiny, miniscule, infinitesimal fraction of all believers! 

One further thought occurred to me while I was at Mass. It was incredibly beautiful and moving to be united in worship with so many others. But I have also had the experience, during Covid, of serving as cantor at a livestreamed Mass where only myself, a lector, Sebastian, and Father Mahon were present. That was a painful time for many Catholics, when we were not able to receive the Body and Blood of Christ as we were accustomed, and I was honored and blessed to be asked to serve in that way. What occurred to me was this: it is the same Jesus who gave Himself to 60K people at the Congress, and it is the same Jesus who gave Himself to the four of us during Covid, and it is the same Jesus who gives Himself to us at every Mass in every time and place! As special as it felt to be part of something so huge, our mystical reality is that we are united to the immensity of the Body of Christ every time we come to Mass, regardless of how many others are physically present with us. 

May God bless you in your everyday encounters with Him—in the Eucharist, and in one another. 

Laura's recommended videos from the National Eucharistic Congress: 

The full playlist of videos is available here.