Fr. Roger J. Landry
Wall Street Journal Houses of Worship Feature
July 11, 2024
Catholics have long been accustomed to pilgrimages, traveling on foot, on horseback or by plane to sacred sites in Jerusalem, Rome, Santiago de Compostela and elsewhere. For the past eight centuries, they have regularly held Eucharistic processions, in which they have carried the consecrated host they believe is Jesus Christ under the appearance of bread. Yet these typically cover short distances, often through a neighborhood before returning to the parish’s tabernacle.
This year’s 6,500-mile journey has never been done in the bimillennial history of the Catholic Church. Starting May 18, four groups set off from New Haven, Conn., San Francisco, Lake Itasca, Minn., and Brownsville, Texas. On each route are at least five young adults and one or two seminarians and priests. Many others have joined for an hour, a day or several days; some have stayed for the entire journey. They and 40,000 more will converge on July 16 in Indianapolis, where the following day the first National Eucharistic Congress in 83 years will begin.
Our journeys—and our endpoint, the congress—are part of a three-year national Eucharistic revival in the U.S. The intention is simple yet profound: to jump-start knowledge of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist, as well as faith, gratitude and vigor among American Catholics.
There’s a clear need for it. Surveys have shown that about 1 in 6 Catholics in the U.S. attends Mass weekly. Pew in 2019 revealed that only 31% of Catholics believe what the church professes—that after the words of consecration at Mass, there’s a double miracle: the bread and wine are transformed into Jesus Christ, and, lest we eat and drink what looks to be human flesh and blood, he humbly maintains the appearances of bread and wine.
Worshipping what the naked eye perceives as food may strike many as idolatry, blasphemy and folly. To the Catholic eye, the Eucharist is the world’s greatest treasure. By following Jesus’ command during the Last Supper to “do this in memory of me”—to “take and eat” and “take and drink” his body and blood—they engage in a most ennobling activity. As St. Thomas Aquinas wrote in his Panis Angelicus, “O what a mind-blowing reality: a poor and humble servant eats the Lord.”
Our secular age seeks to structure itself as if God doesn’t exist, emptying public spaces of religion. Many believers, too, live as practical atheists, behaving indistinguishably from nonbelievers when they aren’t in church. One aim of the pilgrimage is to show that the Eucharist is the greatest antidote to the despair and restlessness that attends a life without God—that by his own design, he is still with us in a mysterious and tangible way.
Along our journey we have seen the best of the church, past and present. We have visited countless sanctuaries built with devotion and sacrifice for the celebration of Mass. We have also seen moving examples of living faith: enormous crowds even on weekdays, enthusiastic participation amid downpours and sweltering heat, months of exquisite preparation for brief visits, fireworks in city centers to herald Jesus passing by.
On our journey through the heartland, we have engaged with many communities, sharing with each the joy of the Christian life. In Philadelphia we processed along Kensington Avenue—an open-air drug market—where some addicts joined our ranks. One of my fellow pilgrims has since repeated in interviews: “That shows that Jesus wants to enter whatever darkness and addictions any of us has.”
We brought Jesus into prison at the Pickaway Correctional Institute in Ohio, where men lined up for confession to receive communion at Mass and then courageously processed with us on prison grounds. We invited homeless, unemployed young people to walk with us in Xenia, Ohio, and they invited us to process to a trash can where they emptied their pockets of drugs and committed to live new lives.
We’ve processed through nursing homes with seniors joining us in wheelchairs, teary-eyed as they gripped the monstrance holding the consecrated host. We’ve traveled along the Hudson and Ohio rivers, blessing those assembled on Liberty Island, bridges and river banks. In many towns we saw people traveling in opposite directions stop their cars and get down on their knees in the middle of the street as the Eucharist passed by. Many have asked us what we’re protesting, why we were parading, or simply what we were doing. When we say, “We’re walking with Jesus across the country,” the vast majority, Catholic or not, honk in support.
As the journey concludes, our hope is to achieve a secondary aim: to help Catholics grasp better that earthly life is a pilgrimage—to Indianapolis this month, but someday to the heavenly Jerusalem. After months of being in Jesus’ presence, Catholics here and elsewhere can rejoice that in the Eucharist he walks with us.
Father Landry is a Catholic chaplain at Columbia University and a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Mass.
