Eucharistic Revival events poised to stir ‘amazement’

The Eucharistic Revival is not merely an event or program, but a way of drawing people into what the Church teaches is the source and summit of the faith. 

This is the message that speakers will deliver at several Eucharistic Revival gatherings in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis next month. Father Tim Tran, parochial vicar of St. Stephen in Anoka and the archdiocesan point person for the revival, said he is excited that Catholics locally will be able to take time to focus on the Eucharist and have its meaning and significance penetrate more deeply into their hearts. 

“We are the body of Christ, … baptized members of Christ’s body,” Father Tran said. “This revival, ultimately, is meant to revive us as members of that body. And, when we receive Communion, we become one with him. We become that bread. And when we’re one with Christ in our belief of his true presence among us and within us, we can spread his fragrance to those around us.” 

Father Tran will attend several of the gatherings in November, including a Cor Jesu event at the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul Nov. 4 led by Archbishop Bernard Hebda. Cor Jesu normally takes place on first Fridays of every month during the academic year at The St. Paul Seminary. But it was moved to the Cathedral for this occasion. Father Tran said the music team from the seminary will lead music at the Cathedral event, which begins at 7:30 p.m., and at least 15 priests will attend, including Father Joseph Taphorn, rector of the seminary, and Father David Blume, director of vocations for the archdiocese. 

The event coincides with a National Eucharistic Revival Relics Tour featuring relics of St. Manuel Gonzalez Garcia and Blessed Carlo Acutis, the two patrons of the national revival chosen by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The relics currently are in Minnesota, and they will be in the Twin Cities for three days, Nov. 3-5. 

The first revival event featuring the relics will be Nov. 3 at Immaculate Conception in Columbia Heights, beginning at 5:30 p.m., and it will bring athletics into talks about the Eucharist. It was organized by Kelly Scott of St. Charles Borromeo in St. Anthony, who played basketball at the University of Minnesota and created an organization called Spirit and Sport that helps youth grow in their basketball skills and faith. The evening will feature Father Craig Vasek of the Diocese of Crookston, who is serving full-time on the Eucharistic Revival at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Father Vasek and Scott will give talks connecting the Eucharist to sports. 

“There should be blood, sweat and tears so that we can become saints,” Father Vasek said. “If we look at athletics, our life in Christ should be like (that), but unto the Lord.”

But the goal of the spiritual life is not a championship trophy. Rather, it is the Eucharist, something that should be central for Catholics, Father Vasek said.

“If the Eucharist is the source and summit of our lives, which the Second Vatican Council says, then the eucharistic life needs to touch upon everything that I do,” he said. “So, we want the Eucharistic Revival to take root absolutely in every domain of human life.” 

Renowned speaker and Catholic apologist Scott Hahn will give a pair of talks at Epiphany in Coon Rapids Nov. 12 during an all-day event from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. called “The Eucharist: Our Source and Summit.” He said he wants to help Catholics continue what should be “an ever-deepening conversion” of the importance of the Eucharist in their lives. 

“(Pope) John Paul (II), in his last encyclical, ‘The Church of the Eucharist (‘Ecclesia De Eucharistia,’ 2003),’ said we want to renew eucharistic faith, we want to revive eucharistic devotion, but we ought to cultivate eucharistic amazement,” said Hahn, founder and president of the St. Paul Center and the Father Michael Scanlon Professor of Biblical Theology and the New Evangelization at Franciscan University of Steubenville (Ohio). “It’s amazing how unamazed we are” by this sacrament, the body and blood of Jesus, he said. 

He hopes to help Catholics develop a practice of receiving Communion each week “as though it’s the first time.” 

Father Tran will be involved in two other revival events, one at St. Stephen Nov. 4 from 9 a.m. to noon, and one later that day at the parish where he grew up, St. Anne-St. Joseph Hien in Minneapolis from 2-4 p.m. At the latter event, he will talk about the Vietnamese Eucharistic Movement in Minnesota and developing a eucharistic spirituality. The relics will be present at both events, and then at the NET Center in West St. Paul for a Lifeline event that evening from 6-9:30 p.m. 

Since being appointed in the summer as the point person for the revival in the archdiocese, Father Tran said he already has noticed an enthusiastic response, with several parishes promoting it and holding gatherings in recent months. One parish incorporated a eucharistic display into its parish festival, which was “really awesome to see,” Father Tran said. 

“That’s what the Eucharistic Revival is all about, these grassroots movements,” Father Tran said. “I think it’s a wonderful, wonderful opportunity, a great gift.” 

As he tries to help others deepen their love and devotion to the Eucharist, Father Tran expects the revival to impact him as well. 

“I see it as a moment for my own eucharistic faith to be revived,” he said. “So, not only am I guiding this or leading this… but I honestly see it as God’s invitation for me as a priest to have my own eucharistic hunger revealed to me so that I can live out my priesthood in such a way that I can spread Christ’s fragrance to others and attract them to the one thing necessary, which is the body and blood of Jesus Christ.”