Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Newport News, held a 40 Hours Devotion, called “Pledge of Glory,” in the days leading up to the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, June 2. From Tuesday, May 28, to Thursday, May 30, the parish held 40 hours of Eucharistic adoration, which included praise and worship, votive Masses of the Holy Eucharist in both English and Spanish, and a Eucharistic procession.
The Eucharistic procession took place at the end of Our Lady of Mount Carmel School’s weekly Mass on Thursday morning. Students, parishioners, and parish and school staff joined the procession from St. Michael Hall to the school, where an altar had been set up for Benediction. Most of the second graders had just received their first Holy Communion in the weeks prior, and were dressed in their first Holy Communion garments for the procession.
Father Dan Beeman, the pastor, said “it was a sight to behold” with the “first Communicants in their finest dress, a sports team worth of altar boys, and the school and community walking with Our Lord.”
He said the 40 Hours Devotion, and especially the procession, was a way for the parish to take part in the National Eucharistic Revival, a three-year initiative by the U.S. bishops to increase a love for the true presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.
The Revival enters its third, and final, year this July, with the National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis. Father Beeman said he is excited for the energy that the congress will bring because it will be an incredible amount of people gathered together in the Catholic faith.
There are currently four National Eucharistic Pilgrimages underway from different parts of the country. The pilgrimages, which will meet at the National Eucharistic Congress, will be miles-long Eucharistic processions across the country. “We won’t be on the path of the pilgrimage[s],” Father Beeman told his parishioners, “so we had our own!”
