“If it’s a symbol, to hell with it.”
This colorful declaration by Catholic author Flannery O’Conner was printed in simple black text on the white T-shirt of Jonathan Roumie, who stars as Jesus in “The Chosen” TV series. He delivered a talk during the Impact Session July 20 at the National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis, Indiana.
“The Eucharist has changed my life,” said Roumie. “The Eucharist for me is a feast. The Eucharist is grounding. The Eucharist has healed me.”
The real presence of Christ was carried through the streets of Indianapolis during an afternoon procession. At the front of the procession were lay associations, like the Knights of Columbus, followed by brothers and sisters in habit, then seminarians, deacons, priests, abbots, bishops and cardinals.
Bishop Andrew H. Cozzens followed with the Eucharist in a massive monstrance, towed in a trailer by a RAM 1500.
After the Eucharist came more knights, more sisters, dancers in traditional Native American dress, and dancers in traditional Filipino dress. The crowds thronging the streets joined in at the end and followed the Eucharist to the steps of the Indiana War Memorial Museum for Benediction.
Rosario Igharas, parishioner at St. Michael, Glen Allen, has been to many processions at St. Michael and at Our Lady of Lourdes, Richmond. But this experience was closer to famous public processions worldwide, like Semana Santa in Sevilla.
“It’s just so different to experience in a group of 50,000 other Catholics,” said Igharas.
During the Impact session, Roumie used most of his speaking time to read most of the Bread of Life discourse from the Gospel of John.
“I am the living bread that came down from heaven,” Jesus told the crowd. “Whoever eats this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”
With her husband, Rowen, and fellow St. Michael’s parishioners, Alvin Ho and Rey Dela Cruz, Igharas attended the Theology of the Eucharist breakout talk, which discussed how the theology of the Eucharist is embedded in the Old Testament.
“The New Testament is hidden in the Old Testament, and the Old Testament is revealed in the New,” said Rowen.
The priest says, ‘This is my body, this is my blood,’ in real time,” said Dela Cruz. “The body and blood of Christ is real and now.”
The congress comes to an end tomorrow, July 21, after closing Mass celebrated by Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle, the special envoy appointed by Pope Francis to the National Eucharistic Congress and pro-prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelization, at 10 a.m.