Cathedral procession June 19 kicks off local participation in National Eucharistic Revival

On Sunday, June 19, a eucharistic procession will follow 10:30 a.m. Mass at the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul. The procession marks the feast of Corpus Christi, but it also marks the launch of the National Eucharistic Revival, a three-year initiative of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops led by Bishop Andrew Cozzens of Crookston — who was, until December, an auxiliary bishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

The Eucharistic Revival will include three main phases, with year one focusing on the diocesan level. Coordinating the effort for the archdiocese is Father Tim Tran, parochial vicar of St. Odilia in Shoreview.

He is working to convene a steering committee to focus on what form the Revival will take locally, he said, but his hopes for the procession at the Cathedral is that Catholics from across the archdiocese will join it to show solidarity and eucharistic devotion.

Appointed by Archbishop Bernard Hebda, Father Tran said his role is to implement the archbishop’s vision for the Revival locally, and to “discern the movement of the Spirit within our local Church, too.”

“I was very grateful to be asked to be part of this great movement,” said Father Tran, who was ordained a priest in 2020. “It’s very near to my heart, and I could go on and on about my own eucharistic devotion and my participation in a specific youth movement dedicated to the Eucharist as a young child. … As a young priest, it’s really the reason for my being. The only reason why I’m a priest is not only to celebrate the sacraments but to feed God’s people. I think (the Revival) is very much called for.”

In 2019, a Pew Research Center study found that 31% of Catholics said they believed that “during Catholic Mass, the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Jesus,” which is the Church’s teaching, while 69% said “the bread and wine used in Communion” are “symbols of the body and blood of Jesus Christ.”

That reality was something the USCCB wanted to address. Later that year, when Bishop Cozzens was elected chairman of the USCCB Committee on Evangelization and Catechesis, he inherited from his successor, Bishop Robert Barron of Los Angeles (recently appointed to the Diocese of Winona-Rochester), an effort still in in its infancy to address evidence of Catholics’ lack of belief in the True Presence. By the time the Eucharistic Revival was publicly announced in June 2021, planning had already been underway for a year.

“The Eucharistic Revival was born of a desire from the bishops to increase the faith and understanding and devotion and love of the Eucharist in the Catholic Church in the United States,” Bishop Cozzens said in a June 1 interview for the archdiocese’s radio show “Practicing Catholic.” “Our desire is really to renew the Church by inviting people to encounter people in the Eucharist, and we want to do that by affecting every level of the Church.”

The first year is the “year of diocesan revival,” with an aim to invite “diocesan staff, bishops, and priests to respond to the Lord’s personal invitation and equips them to share this love with the faithful through Eucharistic congresses and events,” according to the Revival’s website, eucharisticrevival.org. The second year, the “year of parish renewal,” begins in June 2023 with the goal of fostering “Eucharistic devotion at the parish level, strengthening our liturgical life through faithful celebration of the Mass, Eucharistic Adoration, missions, resources, preaching, and organic movements of the Holy Spirit.”

That year culminates in a National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis July 17-21, 2024. This event kicks off the final phase, the “year of going out on mission” “to share the gift of our Eucharistic Lord.”

Next year, the effort is expected to include parish small groups. “We want to invite especially those people who are connected to the Church — they’ve made their first Communion, perhaps they may even go to Mass somewhat regularly, but they don’t fully understand the Eucharist or they’d be there every Sunday,” Bishop Cozzens said.

After the Pew study, the USCCB commissioned a similar study from the Georgetown-based Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, or CARA, with results expected to be published soon. “Our own study has shown that there is a high percentage of people who are sitting in the pew most Sundays that don’t fully understand who Jesus is in the Eucharist and the power of the Eucharist to transform a life,” Bishop Cozzens said.

Through the Revival, “I don’t expect that we’re going to turn around completely the numbers of the Church, and that all of a sudden, the 70% of Catholics who don’t go to Church are going to start coming to Church,” Bishop Cozzens said. “I don’t expect that, but I do expect that as people are strengthened in their eucharistic love and devotion, it becomes a fire that drives them and makes them missionaries. And that that’s going to impact and strengthen families, and that’s going to prevent future disaffiliation. And that’s also going to help our Catholics draw the strength they need to witness to the love of Christ in our culture, which, as we know, is becoming more and more secular and even hostile to our Catholic faith.”

The Eucharist is “the heart of our faith,” he continued. “And if we can strengthen that, then, in fact, the Church will be find ways to be equipped to handle the other problems of the day. So, it’s a little bit like in the time of crisis, you go to focus on who you are and your heart. And this is what the Eucharist is to us. It tells us who we are. It makes us the Church. It makes us the body of Christ. And so we need to focus on our identity, so that we’re ready then to be sent on mission.”

He noted that the Diocese of Crookston is kicking off the Revival with a eucharistic procession along Lake Bemidji in Bemidji.

“Pope Benedict has a beautiful homily that he preached at an ordination where he said the Eucharist makes certain demands upon us as priests, but also as laypeople,” Bishop Cozzens said. “And if we’re open and we continue to approach the Eucharist regularly, even daily for a priest, then we can’t help but be changed by it, he says. We might lag behind, but either we shake off the Eucharist with all its demands, or we allow our lives to be transformed by it, which is what happens for those who fall in love with the Eucharist.”

ENTERING THE REVIVAL

Bishop Andrew Cozzens of Crookston said he encourages Catholics to sign up at eucharisticrevival.org to receive a weekly Eucharistic Revival newsletter with inspiration, resources and event information. The website includes a course to train laypeople to become “eucharistic missionaries” by increasing their own understanding of and devotion to the Eucharist. And, he encouraged Catholics to spend time in eucharistic adoration. Visit archspm.org/locations to find a map searchable for adoration chapels in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.