By Sean Gallagher / The Criterion, The Criterion, OSV News
INDIANAPOLIS (OSV News) — On the morning of May 18 at his Mass of inauguration as bishop of Rome, Pope Leo XIV called Catholics around the world to “build a church founded on God’s love, a sign of unity, a missionary church that opens its arms to the world.”
“Together,” he said in his homily, “as one people, as brothers and sisters, let us walk toward God and love one another.”
Those were, in a sense, the marching orders for the eight young adult Catholics sent forth hours later from St. John the Evangelist Church in Indianapolis on a 36-day National Eucharistic Pilgrimage that will cross 10 states — Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. It will go through 20 dioceses and four Eastern Catholic eparchies before concluding on June 22 in Los Angeles.
“That’s the mission of the church, to walk with love, walk with truth and to share the good news of the Gospel,” said Charlie McCullough, the team leader of the eight “perpetual pilgrims” taking part in the pilgrimage. “We’ll get to carry out that mission of the church here in the United States.”
This year’s National Eucharistic Pilgrimage — on its St. Katharine Drexel Route from Indianapolis to Los Angeles — builds on the four routes of the pilgrimage last year that started on the feast of Corpus Christi in Northern, Southern, Eastern and Western points of the U.S. and converged on Indianapolis at the start of the National Eucharistic Congress.
This year’s pilgrimage will conclude on the same feast in Los Angeles, which also marks the conclusion of the three-year National Eucharistic Revival.
Perpetual pilgrims Cheyenne Johnson and Rachel Levy grew in their faith as college students respectively at Butler University in Indianapolis and at Indiana University in Bloomington.
For the past two years, each has begun to give to others the gift they received, with Johnson serving as the Catholic campus minister at Butler and Levy ministering as the archdiocese’s young adult ministry coordinator.
Now they’re going forth from the Indianapolis Archdiocese to share their love for Christ in the Eucharist with people across the country.
“I’m blown away by what God’s doing in the archdiocese,” Johnson told The Criterion, the news outlet of the Indianapolis Archdiocese. “The grace from the congress last year has been so tangible. Hopefully, it will continue to spill out and help to build up the church in the United States.”
“Being able to work for the archdiocese and pouring out what I’ve received in college in Bloomington has been a gift,” Levy added. “I’m excited to be able to continue to pour it out to people across the country.”
Levy described the pilgrimage as “a unique opportunity” to carry out Pope Leo’s call “to love all the people that we’ll be encountering along the pilgrimage and be a light of Christ to them.”
At the same time, she also noted that the pilgrimage will give her and her fellow perpetual pilgrims a chance to witness to those they’ll meet along the way how “to love God alone … in all the times that we’ll have in adoration and prayer.”
“There are so many ways that we’re able to witness to people across the country,” she said, “by loving them very intentionally, but also by showing them how to love God very intentionally in the Blessed Sacrament.”
Perpetual pilgrim Leslie Reyes-Hernandez grew up in a Chicago suburb not far from Pope Leo’s boyhood home. So, she was excited to begin the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage on the same day as his Mass of inauguration at the Vatican.
“This is big, not only for the Catholic Church, but for our country as well,” she said.
Reyes-Hernandez, 26, also knows from experience the impact that the National Eucharistic Congress had on people across the country last year.
She attended the event last summer that drew more than 50,000 people to Indianapolis. The changes that have happened in her life since then have amazed her.
“The seed was planted in my heart here,” she said.
Last July, she couldn’t have imagined that just 10 months later she would be setting off on a nationwide Eucharistic pilgrimage like the perpetual pilgrims she saw process into Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.
“I would have been in total disbelief if someone would have told me that,” Reyes-Hernandez said in wonder.
Back then, she wanted to speak with the pilgrims and hear their stories. Now, she’s hoping to have stories to share of how people she will meet along the pilgrimage route will be drawn close to Christ in the Blessed Sacrament.
“I’m looking forward to seeing all that God will do in my heart, as well with everyone that we encounter,” said Reyes-Hernandez, a teacher at Barry Goldwater High School in Phoenix. “Maybe someone hasn’t encountered the Eucharist before. We’ll just be planting that seed.”
McCullough was one of those pilgrims that Reyes-Hernandez saw at the congress last July in Indianapolis. He took part in the pilgrimage’s St. Juan Diego Route, which started in Brownsville, Texas.
He laughed as he said coming to Indianapolis without 50,000 people gathered there was a change for him. At the same time, returning to the city brought back so many memories. “I shed a couple of tears of gratitude for all the good work that I had seen the Lord do and all the good work that he had done in my life,” said McCullough, 23, a native of Texas.
Barbara Costa made a special trip to Indianapolis for the Mass from her home in Longwood, Florida, where she is a member of Nativity Parish.
She was amazed by seeing the perpetual pilgrims at the Mass preparing to begin their journey across the country.
“I was kind of in awe at their dedication,” Costa said. “It just made me realize that I need to do my part, which is making more people aware of the power of the Eucharist.”
Capuchin Franciscan Father Christopher Iwancio was glad to come to Indianapolis to be a concelebrant at the Mass at the start of the pilgrimage. He’ll later join the perpetual pilgrims for two weeks during their travels.
He ministers in Los Angeles and lives where earlier this year a wildfire roared through Altadena, California, a stopping point of this year’s pilgrimage.
“We’re going to walk past the homes of my students, colleagues and friends who lost their homes in the fires,” Father Christopher said. “So, in this Jubilee year of a pilgrimage of hope, to bring that hope to people in different areas is powerful.”
He also said that the hope he saw in the way that Catholics and others responded so positively to the recent election of Pope Leo was similar to the hope he experienced in many people in the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage last year, something he would like to see repeated in this year’s pilgrimage.
“This is what the hope of the Eucharist brings us,” Father Christopher said. “We are still walking with Christ. We’re not walking alone in our troubles and difficulties. God is with us.”
Indianapolis Archbishop Charles C. Thompson was the principal celebrant of the Mass that started this year’s pilgrimage.
“We’re honored to be celebrating this Mass today and sending off these pilgrims,” he said in an interview with The Criterion. “I think it’s just as much an honor to send them off as to receive them.”
Archbishop Thompson noted that the perpetual pilgrims “represent all of us” as they go across the country to bring Christ in the Eucharist to so many communities.
“They’re representing the church and the unity we share in the body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ,” he said. “He is the living Word of God made available to us so that we can carry out his mission of transforming the world, by proclaiming the good news by the witness of our lives.”
In his homily at the Mass, Archbishop Thompson invited the approximately 700 people gathered for the liturgy to carry out in their own lives the mission that the perpetual pilgrims will embrace in their journey of faith to Los Angeles.
“Wherever any of us are headed, each of us are meant to go forth as missionary disciples of Jesus Christ,” he said. “Wherever that immediate stop may be, our ultimate destination is heaven, which is why we constantly preach the kingdom of God through both word and example.
“While eight special pilgrims, along with chaplains and other companions, embark on a 36-day pilgrimage to cover some 3,300 miles through 10 states, we do not necessarily have to physically travel to faraway places to be missionary disciples,” he said.
“We need only be willing to step out of comfort zones, focus outward to recognize the needs of others and then act as Jesus commands, namely, by loving one another as he loves us.”
This story was originally published by The Criterion and distributed through a partnership with OSV News. Sean Gallagher is a reporter and columnist at The Criterion, newspaper of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis.
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