What the Eucharistic Congress Could Teach Us About Evangelization

I don’t understand how people who went to daily mass could treat me like this. That thought often crossed my mind in my final year working at a Catholic non-profit. These people received Jesus almost every day—it was central to all our conversations about evangelization—and yet these people who received love incarnate weren’t very loving to me. Their fruit of receiving the Eucharist, it seemed, was to remind me of church teaching or tell me they couldn’t talk about homosexuality, all in the name of not causing scandal.

With the National Eucharistic Congress ending over the weekend and videos and images flooding my Instagram feed, this experience came to mind. I heard speakers use words like transformation and revival, but what type of revival will this be? If it’s a continuation of what I experienced at the non-profit, I’m not excited. But it could be different. The Eucharist as a transformative movement within the United States will work if we reflect the same love we experience in adoration into the world.

I know people want this revival to be dramatic and bold, and it’s easy to get that impression from over 50,000 people singing praises in a massive stadium, but the focal point is a piece of bread (and not even very good bread at that). Jesus shows up in the form of something that can’t talk, can’t move. Yet, the experiences we have in adoration are anything but mundane. I think of the first time I encountered Jesus in the Eucharist on a freezing Florida night in January of 2010 at a FOCUS conference. Leaning against the wall of a huge ballroom, I stared up at a host that seemed to glow from dozens of spotlights. The only way to describe it is that Jesus was looking at me, I was looking at him, and my heart was at peace. A few days later, I found myself at my high school lunch table surrounded by my friends, my mind abuzz with what I’d experienced but at a complete loss for how to share this moment.

I’ve seen hundreds of students wrestle with this same type of experience, attempting to bridge the divide between what we experience in a Church and the people we interact with. So, we often resort to something akin to a PR campaign as we try to convince people of the validity of the real presence, as evidenced by our personal experience. There is a time and place for this type of conversation, but I’ve often found that they just fall flat. We weren’t meant to try to explain how Jesus is present in the Eucharist; we were made to make him present by being the monstrance that carries him into the world.

The gospel writer John understood this. In John, chapter six, he depicts what happens when we try to describe the Eucharist to people—they turn away. And if Jesus can’t convince people of the real presence, why do we think we’ll do any better? So, John goes one step further about how we’re called to live by spending almost a quarter of his gospel on Jesus’s final hours with his disciples. Instead of an institutional narrative during the Last Supper, John depicts what a lived Eucharistic experience is like. It is one of service, patience, listening, asking questions, speaking words of encouragement, and spending time with people not based on their merits or level of belief but based solely on deciding that they are worthy.

The experiences that I’ve had with Jesus at mass or in adoration, and those that people have shared with me, all share this theme that John depicts: an unconditional, overwhelming experience of love. Jesus meets us where we’re at; Jesus says it is enough to be with him, and Jesus is content to abide with us. And this ought to be what our evangelization looks like; this is what the revival could be. I’m not denying the need to grow in holiness, call people higher, or live a transformed life; I’m saying these are not Jesus’s starting or ending points, so why should they be ours? 

I’ve had a handful of people continue to remind me that my decision to date men is contrary to God’s law or similarly refuse to ask about anything that is outside the bounds of Catholicism. As a former, hard-core missionary—I get it. But can you imagine Jesus’s ministry without his meals with people the religious elites called sinners? Or his time scandalously talking one-on-one with a woman at a well? What if he never healed on a Saturday or touched someone thought to be dead? We wouldn’t have much of a savior.

You are a sinner, and Jesus is not scandalized when he spends time with you or hears about all the ways you failed to live up to that perfect life you think you have to live. If we’re called to be transformed by the Eucharist and live from the Eucharist, then we get to be Jesus to others. And it’s not flashy—it’s human and mundane like bread. As Sister Bethany Madonna said, “The most powerful love is to be chosen.” Jesus chose us, and his presence transformed our lives. When we choose to be present in someone’s life, we allow Jesus to be present and transform. Choose to be with people who might not fit that perfect Catholic box and let someone else worry about the scandal.