INDIANAPOLIS (OSV News) — For the tens of thousands of participants at the National Eucharistic Congress‘ third night of revival, Sister Josephine Garrett gave them a message loud and clear.
“This was not the finish line,” Sister Josephine said at Lucas Oil Stadium July 19, referring to the four pilgrimage routes that converged there in Indianapolis for the July 17-21 congress.
“This is the starting line.”
A member of the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth and host of the “Hope Stories” podcast, Sister Josephine and other speakers that night invited congress-goers to enter into their brokenness and let Jesus personally heal their hearts.
The two legs of the Eucharistic revival
Sister Josephine said that when it’s time to leave “together from here, we’re gonna make sure that we stand up on the two legs of this Eucharistic revival” to leave as one body.
The first leg, she said, is devotion to Jesus in the Eucharist and the holy Mass, and growing in that devotion and reverence.
The second leg “we don’t always like,” she said — and that’s repentance.
“Tonight, I am begging you on behalf of Jesus Christ: Healing begins with repentance,” Sister Josephine said, urging everyone to repent “in joy and confidence.”
“Do not be dismayed. Do not despair. Do not become overwhelmed. Do not get lost in yourself but lost in him,” she said. “We can be people who repent with joy. What a contradiction — we are broken but hopeful. We are a broken, repentant pilgrim people … journeying together to the Father as one covenant community and that means we need each other.”
“Every member of the body of Christ is necessary,” she said, adding, “We are all going to be broken pilgrims until we reach the end.”
Repent in hope and joy
Sister Josephine had the same message for everyone in the audience — bishops, priests, men and women religious, and single people of any age: “Repent in hope and joy.”
She urged bishops to remember their love of the priesthood that brought them to where they are today; she asked priests to “stay rooted in your call”; and she reminded consecrated men and women that “??our ministerial works must flow” from private and communal prayer. Single people, she said, “you do not cease to exist as a gift in the Church. … If any of your hearts are marked by worry, fear, uncertainty — I pray that is cast out in Jesus’ name.”
Following Sister Josephine’s talk, Sister Miriam James Heidland led the multitude in prayer. With tears, her voice breaking with emotion, she pleaded with them to pray and ask Jesus personally for healing.
“Could you just let him come, and bring him those places, and transform your heart just to make you free?” she asked. “Because that’s how our lives are transformed: It’s through the coming of the bridegroom — and he is here.”
Father Boniface Hicks leads Eucharistic procession and benediction
As she walked off the main stage, a spotlight shone on the opposite side of the stadium, where Benedictine Father Boniface Hicks, a monk of St. Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, was holding the Eucharist in a golden monstrance that shimmered as the spotlights tracked its progress through the crowded floor.
After processing down the stadium’s central aisle, and then placing the monstrance on the altar, the priest knelt before the Eucharist.
“Jesus, we come before you, that you might heal our hearts, that you might meet us right where we are,” he prayed.
“Each of us have places in our hearts and in our histories that have been hurting for a long time,” said Father Boniface. “There is a sacred place in each of us where we can be alone with you, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The most powerful healing can begin by bringing those places into relationship with the one who loves us infinitely: you, Jesus.”
Father Boniface, an experienced retreat-master, led attendees through a series of prayers of repentance and renunciation, with the congregation repeating phrases of love for Jesus, and asking for his healing of each one’s sin, hurt and brokenness.
After those prayers, the monstrance was lifted from its stand on the altar, and Father Boniface wrapped his golden vestment around its base. As he slowly processed through the stadium’s main floor, people bowed and crossed themselves as Jesus in the Eucharist passed in their midst. Some wept, others reached their arms towards the Eucharist and parents held babies in their arms or helped their young ones kneel quietly with their eyes fixed on the Blessed Sacrament.
“Jesus, I trust in you,” the musicians sang.
When Father Boniface returned to the altar, he led Benediction, ending with the final prayer: “May the heart of Jesus, in the Most Blessed Sacrament, be praised, adored and loved with grateful affection, at every moment, in all the tabernacles of the world, even to the end of time. Amen.”
Testimony of Paula Umana: Finding miracles in faith
The revival evening also featured moving testimonies of healing, including that of Paula Umana, a former tennis player who was ranked first in Central America and later became quadriplegic after the birth of her fifth child due to a nervous system disorder.
One day, when her son asked her if she would ever walk, she told the boy to ask Jesus. Charles, her son, ran to the cross they had at home and told him: “Hey Jesus, can my mom walk?”
In 2018, through the intercession of the Blessed Mother, she learned about some leg devices that could help her walk, which she calls a miracle. When she returned home after learning to walk with those devices, Charles — then 3 and a half years old — ran back to the cross to thank Jesus.
The message she wanted the audience to remember was to “run to Jesus when you feel anxious. Run to Jesus in adoration, in the Eucharist. Run to Jesus when you need healing. Run to Jesus when you feel hurt.”
Charles came to the stage and stood next to his mom amid loud applause and said, lifting a tennis ball, “When it seems impossible, run to Jesus.”
Attendees’ reactions and spiritual renewal
Congress-goers emerging from the nightly revival told OSV News they felt deeply moved by the experience.
Matthew Almaguer, who was attending the Congress with his wife, Brenda, and their three children from Overland Park, Kansas, said that following the procession his family “felt the Lord move in our hearts.”
Rose Johnson, a parishioner at St. Charles in Bloomington, Indiana, said she was grateful for Father Boniface’s meditation praying to Jesus for specific different kinds of healing.
“There were so many things that came to mind that I would have had trouble bringing to mind in the right way,” Johnson said. “But then, as he was having us repeat the Jesus prayers, it was just very freeing.”
Her teenage daughter Ellie agreed: “I try to think of these parts of my heart, but it’s really hard to do with the struggles of everyday life.” She said the prayers “brought back memories that I’ve kind of either pushed away or forgotten” and so the experience “was really relieving.”
Following the revival night of healing, lines for confession back at the adjacent Indiana Convention Center were long and winding. Across the street, St. John the Evangelist Church, the perpetual adoration chapel during the congress, was packed with people kneeling and adoring Jesus in the Eucharist.
Julie Asher, Lauretta Brown, Maria-Pia Negro Chin, Gretchen R. Crowe and Maria Wiering contributed to this report.
