“Where do you celebrate the Eucharist?” Glenmary asked. Three thousand people answered.
Deacon Joseph Maundu looked around at the thousands of people gathered on the streets of downtown Indianapolis. “Have you ever been around this many people in your life?” he asks Pat Ioas, a parishioner of Glenmary’s St. John Paul II mission in Grainger County, Tennessee.
Parishioners from four Glenmary missions were waiting outside for the eucharistic procession to begin. Inside the Indiana Convention Center, Fathers Dan Dorsey, Aaron Wessman, and Glenmary coworkers invited Catholics from all over the world to mark where they celebrate the eucharist on a 10-by-10-foot map. It was all part of the five-day National Eucharistic Congress in July.
Sharing the joy
Children, parents, college students, seminarians, bishops, retirees: Catholics of all ages came by Glenmary’s booth to hear about its mission and share their love of the eucharist. “People are joyful. There’s a great spirit here,” says Father Dan Dorsey, before waving down a passerby to put their pin on the map of where they celebrate the Eucharist. By day four and five, several people return to the booth to see if other Congress attendees are from their same county and how the map has progressed.
Sharing the faith
“That’s the reason why I go to church—because of the Eucharist,” says Johcel Hughes, one of eight women from Glenmary’s St. Joan of Arc mission in North Carolina. Adoration at the Congress has moved her deeply. “It gives me goosebumps,” she says, to see the large monstrance on the stadium floor surrounded by thousands of Catholics in prayer.
Sharing the mission
A middle-aged woman walked up to the map in Glenmary’s booth to place her pin in the county where she grew up in Indiana. She was surprised to see that it was red—in fact the only red county in Indiana—indicating there is no established Catholic eucharistic presence. “I had no idea!” she says. Her family lived close to the neighboring county and always went there for Mass, not realizing there wasn’t a single Catholic church in their own county. Her surprise was echoed in the thousands of people whom Glenmary met at the Congress. “Wow, your ministry is so needed,” they tell us.
This story first appeared in the Autumn 2024 issue of the the Glenmary Challenge.
