(OSV News) -- The National Eucharistic Revival is formally slated to end June 22, this year's feast of Corpus Christi. But, the three-year initiative -- which included last year's 10th National Eucharistic Congress and the 2024 and 2025 National Eucharistic Pilgrimages -- laid the groundwork for more efforts to come, its leaders say.
"The beauty of the revival is that the whole church in the United States focused on the Eucharist for a few years, and I do believe that had a powerful impact," said Bishop Andrew H. Cozzens of Crookston, Minnesota, who led much of the revival's efforts on behalf of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
National Eucharistic Congress Inc., a nonprofit organization in a partnership with the USCCB, expects to continue to build on the revival's work through annual National Eucharistic Pilgrimages as well as diocesan, regional and national Eucharistic congresses. Organizers hope to hold the next National Eucharistic Congress in 2029, a proposal on which the U.S. bishops are expected to vote when they meet in November.
Bishop Robert E. Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, first proposed the idea of a National Eucharistic Revival to the USCCB after the Pew Research Center reported in 2019 that only one-third of Catholics believed the church's teaching that the consecrated bread and wine were truly Jesus' body and blood. At the time, Bishop Barron was chairman of the USCCB's Committee on Evangelization and Catechesis.
In November 2021, the bishops voted overwhelmingly in favor of the 2022-2025 revival initiative, including a National Eucharistic Congress, making it an effort of its Secretariat of Evangelization and Catechesis. At the same meeting, they approved a new document on the Eucharist underscoring its centrality to the Catholic faith.
By then, Bishop Cozzens had succeeded Bishop Barron as the chairman of the Committee on Evangelization and Catechesis.
"The Scripture verse that has kept coming to me over and over is from St. Paul: 'The power now at work in you is able to do immeasurably more than you asked or imagined.' And that's been my experience of the Eucharistic revival," Bishop Cozzens told OSV News, referring to Ephesians 3:20. "God did immeasurably more than I have asked or imagined. I knew that the Holy Spirit was in the idea, but I didn't expect to see it take off in the way that it did, in terms of engagement across the country."
The National Eucharistic Congress Inc. nonprofit formed in 2022 to support the bishops' vision for the congress and accompanying National Eucharistic Pilgrimage, with several bishops on its board and Bishop Cozzens as its chairman.
The organization has been a key collaborator for the revival as a whole, and "they're poised now to carry forward the work of Eucharistic renewal," said David Spesia, executive director of the USCCB's Secretariat of Evangelization and Catechesis.
The revival's guiding phrase has been "that we would have a movement of Catholics who have been healed, converted, formed and unified, and then sent on mission," Spesia told OSV News. "Bishop Cozzens spent a couple of years saying, 'We're not starting a program, we're starting a fire.' … It's not to say there isn't a lot of work left to be done, but I think there's awareness that OK, missionary discipleship rooted in a living relationship with Jesus in the Eucharist is what we all need, it's what we all want, it's what we're all called to.
"And," he added, "we're all sent on mission, and I think the mission awareness maybe is going to be the greatest long-term fruit of the revival."
While Bishop Cozzens has been credited for his leadership of the revival, he thinks of himself more as its "cheerleader," he told OSV News. "The bishops engaged it at every level, and that's what made it really successful, and then also God's mercy and goodness in his Holy Spirit working through it."
In 2022, Georgetown University's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate revisited the topic of Catholics' belief in the Real Presence with a more nuanced survey. It found almost two-thirds of Catholics believe in the Real Presence, but only 17% of Catholic adults attend Mass at least weekly.
"One simple goal we had was that every Catholic in the pew would know we were having a revival," Bishop Cozzens said. "I think we pretty much got to that -- like, if you've been going to Mass for the past three years, you heard about this revival. Even just that means the church has been strengthened and that the church is experiencing some type of renewal in her Eucharistic faith.
"Now, moving the numbers of the Catholics who don't go to Mass or the Catholics who are minimally attached to Mass -- that's a generational work, which is why we want to see some of this work continue in a different way," he added. "To move those numbers is going to take time, and that's part of the whole movement of the church in the United States from maintenance to mission. But we began, and we invited the whole church to think about that powerfully through the Eucharist and revival."
Revival efforts included the development of catechetical resources and the training of both lay leaders and clergy to articulate the truth of the Eucharist and how that impacts Catholics' lives. April 2022 saw the commissioning of 58 Eucharistic preachers -- priests formed during a retreat to give missions at parishes around the United States.
That same retreat included the first discussions of what would become the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage -- a pilgrimage with four routes undertaken by 30 young adults known as "perpetual pilgrims" who launched from points in the nation's North, South, East and West to travel with the Eucharist toward Indianapolis for the 10th National Eucharistic Congress -- the first National Eucharistic Congress in 83 years.
Organizers estimate that 250,000 people participated in pilgrimage events, including miles-long Eucharistic processions.
The July 17-21, 2024, congress included nationally known Catholic speakers and musicians alongside opportunities for service, fellowship and varied forms of Catholic liturgies at the Indiana Convention Center and adjacent Lucas Oil Stadium. Across the street from the convention center's main entrance, St. John the Evangelist hosted perpetual Eucharistic adoration and a hospitality hub. Each evening culminated in Eucharistic adoration in the stadium.
While more than 50,000 people are estimated to have attended the congress, thousands more joined for a Eucharistic procession through the streets of downtown Indianapolis -- the largest of its kind in decades.
The congress was a major undertaking and a revival highlight, but the bishops were intentional about not setting it at the revival's end, Bishop Cozzens said. "We put it at the end of the second year so that we'd have a year to unpack (it) and to really discern what it means going forward."
The revival's third year has "pushed that missionary movement," he said. From the beginning, the revival focused on encounter and mission, themes drawn from Pope Francis' 2013 document "Evangelii Gaudium," or "The Joy of the Gospel."
"What we learned through it all is that it does work to invite people to an encounter, and they do experience that, and then they're ready to go on mission," Bishop Cozzens said.
That includes Catholics sharing their faith with others and joining them on their faith journey, especially through an initiative called "Walk with One," as well as Catholics committing to be "Eucharistic Missionaries" who commit to deepening and sharing their love of Eucharist.
Going forward, Bishop Cozzens hopes a national Eucharistic congress is held every four to five years in the U.S., he said. "We did this in the United States up until 1941, and we lost that tradition," he said. "At the very least, we can see the need to reestablish it, and then to look for ways to continue to revive the faithful and send them on mission."
That work falls in part to the National Eucharistic Congress Inc., which continues the revival's work as an affiliated entity of the USCCB, Bishop Cozzens said, with a bishop appointed to its board to serve as a liaison between the organizations.
"And we believe, as the Congress corporation, that it should be the bishops of the United States who call for a congress," he said. "And we've been discerning with them, as is known, the possibility of doing that in 2029."
Revival leaders also hope that the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage continues as an annual event, with accompanying regional Eucharistic events. This year, eight perpetual pilgrims are traveling five weeks between Indianapolis and Los Angeles, culminating in a Eucharistic celebration in Los Angeles on the feast of Corpus Christi.
In years of national congresses, the national pilgrimage is likely to end with that event.
"The Eucharistic revival has been a work of the Holy Spirit," Bishop Cozzens said. "And it's actually a sign of the Holy Spirit's desire to work in this time. So I think we should continue to look for the way the Holy Spirit wants to work in the church today and the world today."
