INDIANAPOLIS — Lucas Oil football stadium was packed July 17 with tens of thousands of people completely silent in prayer before a large monstrance holding the Eucharist.
Recent first communicants later walked alongside their families, their elders, laypeople from all walks of life, religious sisters, priests and bishops before the Blessed Sacrament in a joyful Eucharistic procession through the streets of downtown Indianapolis.
These were just some of the scenes from the 10th National Eucharistic Congress, which made a profound impact on the priests in attendance.
Dominican Father Patrick Hyde, who serves as pastor of St. Paul Catholic Center in Bloomington, Indiana, for the Indiana University community, told OSV News that working as a Eucharistic preacher for the congress, his hope going into the event was that attendees would "encounter the love of God" and "have their lives changed by his grace."
He said, "That was really my experience: people coming together from all over the country -- and even all over the world -- and having an encounter with the living God and it changing them and calling them to something more."
Reflecting on the power of the event opening with Eucharistic adoration, he said, "There was just this powerful silence in this place that's built to be a place of entertainment and spectacle and loud, in-your-face football. And yet, the most powerful thing I think that I could ever imagine in that place is utter silence and adoration before Jesus in the Eucharist."
Father Michael Duffy, rector of the Cathedral of St. Agnes in the Diocese of Rockville Centre, New York, told OSV News the moments of silent adoration in Lucas Oil stadium were "remarkable" because "the world is so noisy. The world says that you have to fill every moment of your life with business and with noise. And we together said, 'No, we need to be united in silence.'"
"God speaks to us in silence," he emphasized. "Our Eucharistic Lord Jesus Christ himself was present there and was speaking to each and every person in that stadium."
Father Chuck Dornquast, director of vocations for the Diocese of St. Petersburg, Florida, and president of the National Conference of Diocesan Vocations Directors, traveled to the congress with over 100 pilgrims from his diocese.
"The amount of grace that our pilgrims were receiving so quickly was unusual, like it was just this abundance," he told OSV News.
He experienced his own moments of grace from the Lord, including "a reminder of his election of me; that he really likes me was honestly one of the stronger graces, and that he delights in us drawing near to him."
Father Duffy called the Eucharistic procession through downtown Indianapolis the "most beautiful moment of my priesthood." He said processing out to "throngs of people that were standing there waiting for the Blessed Sacrament" was very moving. He added that many priests in the procession teared up because the crowd expressed "the love, the affection and the gratitude that people have for us priests," which was "really just very healing, very moving, very encouraging."
Father Kevin Gregus, an associate pastor at Two Holy Martyrs Parish in the Archdiocese of Chicago who was ordained last year, said the culmination of the congress for him was the Eucharistic procession.
"It just felt very much like this moment of the church of the United States just being there as one," he said. "You have all the laity there and then you have all these habited religious and seminarians and deacons and priests and bishops in their full regalia -- and then, the Eucharist coming in right at the end at the spot of honor."
He said the church in the U.S. had a moment of recognizing, "Here we are. This is us. This is the church."
Father Duffy was moved by the long lines for confession throughout the event and the religious sisters who had volunteered to organize the confession lines.
"The religious sisters were leading penitents to confessors," he said. "I thought that was so beautiful that these sisters were assisting thousands of souls on their journey, on their path, on their way to go to confession." He called it "a beautiful symbol, a beautiful witness of the religious sisters' love for the church and for the sacraments."
Overall, he said the congress "felt like it was my Denver 1993. World Youth Day in Denver -- when Pope John Paul II visited Denver -- sparked almost a new evangelization then and built up a lot of new ministries and really lit a fire under so many people."
"Even without the presence of the Holy Father," he said, "this Eucharistic congress feels very much in the same vein that I think something new is going to come forth from this. Everyone left this congress excited and on fire in a deeper way, with love for our Eucharistic Lord, and with a missionary spirit because the next step is then what do we do going forward?"
He said that heading home and pondering the call to be a Eucharistic missionary in his own position as rector of the Cathedral of St. Agnes, he has decided to increase access to adoration time to "get to as close to around the clock as possible."
Father Hyde said that he was inspired by "the desire from everyone I spoke to about 'how can this experience be taken beyond this congress?'"
"In the congress," he said, "we saw how when we root our entire lives in that encounter with Jesus and the Eucharist, our lives then become Eucharistic and we see Jesus everywhere, and we desire to bring Jesus everywhere."
Father Dornquast believed the congress will be a boon for vocations to the priesthood. He said that for young men discerning from his own Florida diocese "to see the bride (of Christ) like in that scale was deeply moving for them; to see the response of the bride to the Eucharist, to the life of the priest and what the priest brings deeply impacted the guys and their discernment. And it eased some of their fears, because they saw the truth. They saw the reality of what it is."
He added that while spending time at the diocesan priest booth at the congress's Expo Center, in addition to helping young men in their discernment, he encountered families, grandparents and youth ministers "who are looking for help and resources on how to foster vocations within their homes or their parishes."
The priest said it was "deeply edifying" to see so many people wanting to be able to foster these vocations in their homes through their marriage and family life.
Father Gregus said the event renewed hope in the church in the U.S., despite statistics about Mass attendance being in decline and abuse scandals being in the headlines. The National Eucharistic Congress was a "moment to truly celebrate the church," he said, and instilled the "hope of we're not in this alone."
At the congress, he said, one could see that "the church is alive. The church is one, the church is together."
— Lauretta Brown, OSV News