Category: News

 

INDIANAPOLIS (OSV News) — “Sweet anointing, cleansing love, merciful healer, unending love.”

Tony Meléndez sang to his guitar, telling the audience gathered at Lucas Oil Stadium July 19 for the National Eucharistic Congress’ Encounter session that Jesus can heal them. And he was living proof.

The 62-year-old guitarist, who was born without arms and with a clubbed foot, talked about his life and how God used for his glory the differences that had caused his mother to cry for her baby after his birth. The seven surgeries that were required to correct his foot physically optimized his ability to play the guitar with his feet, he said. Meléndez showed a video of playing in 1987 for Pope St. John Paul II, who kissed him and told him to share his gift with the world. He has since played in 45 countries.

The third day of the national congress, held July 17-21 in Indianapolis, had as its theme “Into Gethsemane” — and it saw wide encouragement for congress-goers to experience healing in the Eucharist and then to bring Jesus’ healing to others.

“Healed people heal people,” Mary Healy, a Scripture professor at Detroit’s Sacred Heart Major Seminary, said. She spoke about Jesus’ healings in Scripture and shared powerful examples of people living today who have been healed of serious medical conditions through prayer.

What Jesus did 2,000 years ago “he is still doing now, today, and he wants us to know it, and he wants us to experience it,” she said, adding, “the Lord wants his church to be healed people, set free, made whole, so that we can go out and be his instruments of healing.”

The Cultivate impact session for families focused on healing through the sacraments.

“Healing is an ongoing encounter with God’s love that brings us into wholeness and communion,” Bob Schuchts, author and founder of the Tallahassee, Florida-based John Paul II Healing Center.

“Think about the little girl that Jesus brought back to life,” he said. “Think how joyful her parents were and how their faith in God might have been restored.”

He encouraged children to “believe everything in the Bible, including the healings.”

“Every time we receive Jesus in the Eucharist, we can say, ‘Jesus, heal this part of me that’s dead inside; this part that’s grieving; heal this relationship I have,’ and he answers those prayers,” Schuchts said. “If he’s really truly present, is there anything he can’t do now that he did back then?”

It might happen as a miracle, or it might happen over time — such as for Schuchts and his siblings decades after their parents’ divorce.

“When you lose the love in families, hearts get broken,” he said, adding it was only after returning to the sacraments that he and his family experienced healing and peace.

Before a crowd of about 5,000, Mari Pablo of Evangelical Catholic reflected on the difficulties of living out the faith and helping others to do so in ministry at the Renewal impact session.

“Being Catholic doesn’t mean that you don’t suffer or have struggles,” she said. “We’re the religion that has crucifixes everywhere. But the story doesn’t end there. He conquered death and the grave. I know suffering, pain, death and healing are hard. But we’re created for so much more. We’re created for heaven.”

At the Awake youth impact session, more than 1,000 teenagers raised their voices in song to God and heard a message of healing for their hearts.

“My soul needs a friend, so I’ll run to the Father,” they sang along to the popular Matt Maher worship song.

“You are here turning lives around. You are here healing every heart. I worship you. I worship you.”

Catholic motivational speaker Jackie Francois Angel, in her presentation, told the youth that God “loves us so deeply, but unfortunately so many of us don’t know how good we are. So many of us don’t think we’re good enough.”

“God’s love is unconditional. He proved his love for us. And while we are all sinners, Christ died for us. He doesn’t stop loving us when we do bad things. He loves us in spite of that,” Angel said. “He loves all of us because he created us. We don’t earn God’s love, which also means we can’t lose God’s love. God’s love is unconditional.”

The clergy Abide impact session continued with a focus on forming men and women as Eucharistic missionaries and laying the groundwork for them to bear fruit as evangelizers in an increasingly secularized culture. Pastors were encouraged to build a culture in their parishes and dioceses in which the families in their flocks can be formed and equipped to live and share the Gospel in a new “apostolic age.”

Nearly 2,000 Latino Catholics joined the morning Mass in Spanish attended by Philadelphia Archbishop Nelson J. Pérez, and then heard the Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller of San Antonio preach on how the Eucharist, as Christ’s medicine, heals “our inability to love” and gives us hope.

“Through our full, conscious and active participation in the Eucharistic celebration, we are transformed in God’s love,” he said, and we are “empowered to practice the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, which are, as Pope Francis reminds us, the protocol on which we will be judged.”

Thousands of Catholics gathered in Lucas Oil Stadium at the early morning Mass in English heard Cardinal Wilton D. Gregory of Washington reflect on St. John’s words: “God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.”

He reflected that while theologians and scholars have focused on Christ’s presence in the Eucharist historically, it is often “the uncomplicated faith of ordinary people that serves as an assurance of the wonder of this gift.”

He emphasized that believing in Jesus’s real presence in the Eucharist “must also prompt our equally important active response to that presence in charity, in each of our lives offered in 
service and with care for others.”

Congress-goers that day had an opportunity to live out “the determined pursuit of social justice and the genuine compassionate outreach toward the poor and the neglected” Cardinal Gregory said comes from a belief in the Real Presence, by joining in packing several hundred thousand meals that afternoon for Indianapolis’ people suffering from hunger and homelessness. Many participants walking around the surrounding area of the congress could see people in poverty sleeping under highways or asking for help to get a meal.

In fact, the day saw a powerful testimony to the power of belief in the Real Presence and radical commitment to the Gospel at the Empower session from Martha Hennessy, the granddaughter of Servant of God Dorothy Day.

Hennessy, who remains active in the Catholic Worker movement at the Maryhouse Catholic Worker community in New York City, said that her grandmother’s devotion to the Eucharist stays with the movement “as we continue to practice corporal and spiritual works of mercy as Jesus gave of himself to us.”

Hennessy noted her grandmother’s practice upon receiving the Eucharist in holy Communion was to remain silent for 20 minutes after “to allow herself to absorb the presence of God within her before returning to her work.”

She shared comments from Day about her devotion to the Eucharist, such as this one: “Scripture, on the one hand, and the Eucharist, the Word made flesh, on the other, have in them that strength which no power on Earth can withstand.”

Hennessy also shared Day’s reflection that “our need to worship, to praise, to give thanksgiving makes us return to the Mass daily. The Mass begins our day. It is our food, drink, our delight, our refreshment, our courage, our life.”

After the morning sessions concluded, the expo hall in the Indiana Convention Center was packed at lunchtime for a performance of the three-piece Dominican friar band, The Hillbilly Thomists. People sang, danced and clapped along to the friars’ much-anticipated performance, which had been delayed a day due to travel difficulties.

Philip and Melissa Smaldino, from Yorktown, Indiana, who are expecting their seventh child in October, watched the band from the sidelines along with their six little ones.

“My wife and I came back to Christ in the Catholic Church about 10 years ago, and Eucharistic adoration and confession were really important for that,” Philip Smaldino told OSV News. The couple said they especially enjoyed the periods of Eucharistic adoration, both at Lucas Oil Stadium in the evenings and also the “absolutely packed” family holy hour at St. John the Evangelist Church, where the children got to bring Christ flowers.

“Our hope is we grow in our faith and devotion to Christ and the Eucharist through it all,” he said. “Melissa and I, but especially the kids, too.”

At the midmorning press conference at the nearby Crowne Plaza Hotel, reporters learned that the mass disruption in flights due to a software glitch was not expected to impact attendance. With tens of thousands already participating in the congress, what congress organizers did note, however, was that many participants with one-day passes were now changing their registration for the full five-days after experiencing one day of the congress.

“I’ve been a priest 35 years, 12 years a bishop. And other than a papal visit … I don’t remember an event like this,” Archbishop Perez said.

“You can sense the energy, right?” he added. “You can sense the energy of what’s happening here, which is touching hearts.”

 

 

INDIANAPOLIS (OSV News) — On the second night of the National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis July 18, close to 50,000 Catholics prayed together, listened to touching personal testimonies and were invited to reflect on how to turn away from those obstacles dampening the fire of their love for Jesus Christ.

But while Father Mike Schmitz and Mother Mary Olga of the Sacred Heart moved participants with their inspiring keynote exhortations — the last word was given to the Eucharistic Lord. In the darkness of the stadium, with only beams of white light illuminating the Blessed Sacrament, people prayed and contemplated before Jesus, while the air resonated with Latin chants set to Eastern-styled melodies.

The keynotes given by Father Schmitz and Mother Mary Olga helped prepare congress-goers for this transcendent night of revival centered around Eucharistic adoration.

“Knowledge can make us great, but only love can make a saint,” Father Schmitz said. Father Schmitz, director of youth and young adult ministry for the Diocese of Duluth, Minnesota, who also hosts chart-topping podcasts “The Bible in a Year” and “The Catechism in a Year,” was a much-anticipated speaker, with several attendees telling OSV News earlier in the week that they were especially eager to see him in person. As Patrick Kelly, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, introduced him the audience stood and cheered.

“You know this love story already, but what if you didn’t?” asked Father Schmitz, as he began what can only be called a Scripture studies class. Opening a worn Bible, he read from Luke 24 about the two travelers on the road to Emmaus who did not recognize Jesus and were mourning his loss in Jerusalem. He recounted how Jesus explained the ways Scripture pointed to him as the Messiah, beginning with God making the world good, and human beings breaking their bond with God through sin, and their need to somehow restore that relationship.

Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross reconciled humankind and God, Father Schmitz said, and at Mass, Catholics participate in that moment on Calvary.

While one aim of the National Eucharistic Revival is to bring people from ignorance to knowledge, Father Schmitz suggested that the deeper problem is indifference — and the remedy required repentance.

“Too often we say, ‘We have the real presence,’ but our hearts are far from him. Too often, we just don’t care,” Father Schmitz said, speaking rapidly and with characteristic energy.

The remedy to indifference is love, he said, and the road to love is repentance.

For her part, Mother Olga of the Sacred Heart, the founder and servant mother of the Daughters of Mary of Nazareth in the Archdiocese of Boston, moved people to tears with her touching keynote as she shared stories of Eucharistic miracles of love and healing amid suffering.

She began by sharing her own experience of being healed by Jesus in her own suffering as a survivor of four wars in the Middle East. She experienced abuse in her home and recalled as a teenager having to bury people slain by war.

“All these years of suffering led me to the foot of the cross, because I thought the one who had suffered so much will understand my suffering,” she said. “As I was kneeling at the foot of the cross, crying my heart to Jesus to help me bear the crosses of my own life, I encountered the pierced heart of Jesus — and that’s what I heard in my heart on that day: That even on the cross and through the cross, we can still choose to love.”

Mother Olga shared the story of a little boy named Quinn who was fighting cancer when she met him in her ministry at age 4. She felt Jesus say to her “give me to him” with such intensity that she received special permission for Quinn to receive his first holy Communion despite his young age. The doctors were surprised when he suffered few side effects during his radiation treatment, but Mother Olga knew that the Lord was with Quinn amid the treatment.

“His whole life became around the Eucharist,” she said, adding today he is free from cancer.

She concluded by reminding those gathered that Jesus is always with them “whether in big processions like we have encountered here” or “in hospitals, NICUs, nursing homes, prisons, recovery centers.”

The two keynote speakers were preceded by two testimonials, the first from pro-life activist Lila Rose, founder and president of Live Action, who shared how her life was transformed after an encounter with Jesus in the Eucharist. After becoming Catholic and asking the Lord for him to “use (her) to do something to save lives,” Rose started the pro-life organization Live Action at age 15, which reaches millions of people each month, according to its website.

After marrying her husband six years ago and having three children — one of whom was sleeping backstage — the mission of life has become her family mission, Rose said.

“We pray together, not just for an end to abortion, but we pray for our children, that they may grow big and strong and healthy, that they may become saints, and that they may help lead many souls to heaven,” she said.

Also present were Ken and Mary Ann Duppong, who raised six children with faith as the core of their lives.

They shared their love story with the audience, explaining how they felt called to move back to their home state of North Dakota for the sake of their family and began deepening their faith. Mary Ann Duppong talked about how they started praying the family rosary when Ken Duppong’s mother got sick, developed a devotion to Our Lady of Fatima and consecrated their family to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

The love for Jesus they instilled in their children had a great impact on their daughter, Michelle Christine Duppong, who loved the Eucharist immensely and became a FOCUS missionary. Before passing away in 2014 amid a battle with cancer, she “consecrated her suffering to those who needed to encounter the love in the Eucharist,” shared emcee Montse Alvarado of EWTN. In June 2022, Bishop David Kagan of Bismark, North Dakota, announced his intention to formally open the diocesan phase of investigation into Michelle Duppong’s life, a preliminary step toward her potential canonization.

When asked for advice for families who want to raise their children in the faith, Ken and Mary Ann Duppong encouraged them to pray a lot and remember that children watch everything their parents do.

“I tell people that your example for your children is a real big influence,” Ken Duppong said. “If you use bad language, they will use bad language. If you go to Mass, they see you do that. They will do that in the future. … And that is probably the best thing you can do is give them a good example of what to do.”

The words certainly resonated with the many parents in the stadium that night, who were recognized that night for the sacrifice and dedication it took to bring their families to the congress in Indianapolis.

Daniel Cabrera of Camby, Indiana, told OSV News the revival evening’s speakers were good — but the experience of Eucharistic adoration was “totally awesome.” So much so, he said, that he wept.

“I’m not even considering myself worthy of being here,” he said. “It’s totally a privilege to be here.”

Cabrera and his wife, Maria Hernandez, are attending the July 17-21 congress with their six children, ages 3 to 17.

Cabrera said he experienced “that silence that only allows you to be with God on a personal level, like no other silence in the world.”

He said, “That silence says a lot, because it’s a direct communication to your soul.”