# The Story of America’s Three-Year Eucharistic Revival: What It Changed

An episode of [Daily Sermons With Bishop Robert Barron](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6783446284), 24 Sep 2026, 17 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/73911047/the_story_of_americas_three_year_eucharistic_revival.mp3



## Transcript

[0:03] Speaker 1: After the consecration.
[0:05] Speaker 2: It's incorrect to say, oh, there's bread and there's wine.
[0:09] Speaker 2: It's correct to say, no, there's the body and blood
[0:11] Speaker 2: of Jesus. Because at the deepest level they have changed.
[0:38] Speaker 1: It was that study.
[0:40] Speaker 2: And I can say this with complete authority because I'm
[0:41] Speaker 2: the one that brought it up at the administrative meeting
[0:44] Speaker 2: of the USCCB, and I said, this is a serious brothers,
[0:48] Speaker 2: and enough of them came together that we launched. In fact,
[0:51] Speaker 2: we're in the midst of it right now, a Eucharistic
[0:53] Speaker 2: revival which is meant to reawaken our eucharistic faith, devotion,
[0:58] Speaker 2: and service. We're expecting five thousand people, which will be
[1:02] Speaker 2: they've assured me, the largest gathering of Catholics ever in.
[1:05] Speaker 1: The history of his diocese.
[1:09] Speaker 2: So I won everyone is that he commenced today to
[1:11] Speaker 2: do a kind of spiritual meditation. This is Jesus now
[1:17] Speaker 2: looking out at this great throng of five thousand transubstantiation,
[1:25] Speaker 2: that the substance of the bread and wine are changed
[1:27] Speaker 2: into the substance of the body blood of Christ, which
[1:30] Speaker 2: I would render as the deepest or core reality of
[1:34] Speaker 2: these things changes, even as the what they used to
[1:38] Speaker 2: say called the accidents just means appearances. Even if the
[1:41] Speaker 2: appearances remain the same. What God says is right. It
[1:44] Speaker 2: is a basic biblical intuition. So God speaks, let there
[1:47] Speaker 2: be light, and there was light. As my word goes
[1:50] Speaker 2: forth from me, it does not return without accomplishing his purpose. Isaiah,
[1:55] Speaker 2: you know, Jesus, that little girl get up, and she
[1:58] Speaker 2: gets up. Lazarus come out and comes out. But your
[2:00] Speaker 2: sins are forgiven, and they're forgiven. What God says is,
[2:05] Speaker 2: this is my body given for you. This is the
[2:08] Speaker 2: chalice of my blood.
[2:09] Speaker 1: And even look, even.
[2:11] Speaker 2: Our puny words can change reality to a degree. I mean,
[2:15] Speaker 2: if you say something encouraging to a young kid that
[2:18] Speaker 2: can change his life, you say something discouraging and punitive
[2:25] Speaker 2: to a kid that can completely change his psychology. Right,
[2:28] Speaker 2: I mean, so our words can affect reality. God's word
[2:33] Speaker 2: affects it in the most fundamental way because it's a
[2:36] Speaker 2: creative word. In the Eucharistic prayer, the priest ordained for
[2:41] Speaker 2: this purpose is speaking in the third person. Until the
[2:44] Speaker 2: night before he died, Jesus took bread et cetera, broke
[2:47] Speaker 2: the bread, gave it to his disciples, saying and then
[2:50] Speaker 2: he shifts to the first person.
[2:52] Speaker 1: This is my body.
[2:53] Speaker 2: So that shift to the first person is when the
[2:56] Speaker 2: priest is operating in persona Christy in the person of Christ.
[3:01] Speaker 2: That's why we say, you know, as one of my
[3:04] Speaker 2: great heroes, Flannel O'Connor or the novelist, you know, when
[3:08] Speaker 2: she was suggested to her, Oh, the Uchrist is a
[3:10] Speaker 2: very powerful symbol, and she said, if it's only a symbol,
[3:12] Speaker 2: I say, to hell with it.
[3:17] Speaker 1: The whole church is going through a Eucharistic revival.
[3:21] Speaker 2: And so eventually my term ended and I handed this
[3:23] Speaker 2: off to Bishop Cousins, my Minnesota colleague now up in Crookston,
[3:27] Speaker 2: who's done a.
[3:28] Speaker 1: Marvelous job I think in carrying it through this Putan.
[3:31] Speaker 3: Forum study, I was really troubling to a lot of bishops,
[3:34] Speaker 3: especially Bishop Baron. We got this idea of a three
[3:37] Speaker 3: year revival, so the diocese in year was really focused
[3:40] Speaker 3: on leaders. How do we engage those people who are already
[3:44] Speaker 3: believe in the Euchrists, who are leaders in their parishes
[3:46] Speaker 3: and in their diocese, and invite them to be part
[3:49] Speaker 3: of this revival so that when we get to the
[3:51] Speaker 3: second year we can move it deeply into the parish here.
[3:56] Speaker 3: The idea to have a Eucharistic Congress at the heart
[3:59] Speaker 3: of the revival was really one of the biggest ideas
[4:02] Speaker 3: that came in the beginning.
[4:03] Speaker 1: This movement needs a moment.
[4:05] Speaker 3: We need to be going somewhere as a country if
[4:07] Speaker 3: we're going to actually experience this as a movement that
[4:10] Speaker 3: affects us.
[4:11] Speaker 1: It needs to be more like.
[4:12] Speaker 3: World Youth Day than a convocation for leaders. Now there
[4:16] Speaker 3: is this whole Eucharistic Congress movement that began in the
[4:20] Speaker 3: Catholic Church in the eighteen hundreds, and this really began
[4:24] Speaker 3: to pick up steam in the beginning of the twentieth century.
[4:28] Speaker 1: Probably the greatest.
[4:29] Speaker 3: Moment in American Catholicism up to them to this point
[4:32] Speaker 3: was the nineteen twenty six International Eucharistic Congress. So many
[4:36] Speaker 3: people showed up for the closing Mass. They had to
[4:37] Speaker 3: build that train that runs from downtown Chicago out to
[4:40] Speaker 3: Mondolane Seminary to get people there. Almost a million people
[4:43] Speaker 3: at Mondolane Seminary for the closing Mass. I think the
[4:46] Speaker 3: bishops realized home, we could invite the Laate people to
[4:50] Speaker 3: our national Eugoistic congresses, and so the first one they
[4:52] Speaker 3: really invited lay people to was nineteen thirty in Omaha
[4:56] Speaker 3: and sixty thousand people showed up for the Euchostic procession.
[4:59] Speaker 3: And then the next on was in Cleveland, and again
[5:02] Speaker 3: like sixty to eighty thousand people showed up. At last minute,
[5:04] Speaker 3: they had to find a whole, huge, larger venue. But
[5:07] Speaker 3: what happened was World War Two shut down on the
[5:09] Speaker 3: national Lucustic congresses and they didn't happen again. It wasn't
[5:13] Speaker 3: until nineteen seventy six when we hosted once again an
[5:16] Speaker 3: international Lustic Congress in Philadelphia and hundreds of thousands of
[5:20] Speaker 3: people also came to that.
[5:22] Speaker 2: Three giants of twenty century Catholicism were present, Mother Teresa
[5:27] Speaker 2: of Calcutta, Dorothy Day, and at the time little known
[5:32] Speaker 2: Cardinal Archbishop of krocole Carl Voytiwa. It's amazing to think
[5:35] Speaker 2: all three of them spoke at that Eucharistic Congress. What
[5:38] Speaker 2: an opportunity it was to deepen our Eucharistic faith and commitment. Well,
[5:43] Speaker 2: now we have the same opportunity this summer. It's the
[5:46] Speaker 2: first time in nearly fifty years that we've hosted a
[5:49] Speaker 2: nationwide Eucharistic congress.
[5:55] Speaker 3: As we were beginning to plan this event and Christic Congress,
[6:01] Speaker 3: I think I I who had the idea that maybe
[6:03] Speaker 3: we should try to possess the Blessed Sacrament across the
[6:05] Speaker 3: whole country. And I was presenting that idea to Patrick Kelly,
[6:10] Speaker 3: the Supreme Right of the Knights of Columbus, and he said,
[6:13] Speaker 3: what you ought to do is possess the Blessed Sacrament
[6:15] Speaker 3: in a cross form across the country and end at
[6:17] Speaker 3: Indianapolis for the Congress. But then the more I talked
[6:19] Speaker 3: about it, the more people said, it's impossible, this is
[6:22] Speaker 3: a logistic nightmare.
[6:23] Speaker 1: You can't do this.
[6:24] Speaker 3: But we had a group of national Eucharistic preachers and
[6:28] Speaker 3: it was those priests who said, Bishop, we got to
[6:31] Speaker 3: do this, and we will provide priests to help you
[6:34] Speaker 3: do it.
[6:35] Speaker 2: So if you know you know what the Eucharist is,
[6:38] Speaker 2: or better you know who the Euchrist is, of course
[6:40] Speaker 2: you want to offer your praise, and of course you
[6:43] Speaker 2: want to bring incense, you want to bring flowers and songs,
[6:45] Speaker 2: and of course you want to prosess. Now that you
[6:47] Speaker 2: understand what you're talking about. At the same time, once
[6:51] Speaker 2: you understand the Eucharist, well, of course you want to
[6:54] Speaker 2: bring the cristifying impulse into the world.
[6:58] Speaker 1: You know, those are just their mutual implicated.
[7:01] Speaker 2: The dismissal at the end of Mass is not a
[7:04] Speaker 2: conclusion so much as a commission.
[7:07] Speaker 1: Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your lives.
[7:10] Speaker 2: Take advantage of this opportunity to bring your Eucharistic faith
[7:13] Speaker 2: now into the world in the form of service.
[7:17] Speaker 4: I'm so grateful to our bishops and to our priest
[7:20] Speaker 4: for bringing about this movement, for bringing about this revival.
[7:23] Speaker 4: A perpetual pilgrim is someone who walks the entirety of
[7:26] Speaker 4: the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage. There are eight of us prout
[7:30] Speaker 4: the thirty two of us that are walking this pilgrimage.
[7:32] Speaker 4: We will be the people to have walked the longest
[7:35] Speaker 4: in the farthest with Jesus physically since the disciples.
[7:37] Speaker 5: This is truly the fulfillment of what we've been praying for.
[7:41] Speaker 6: I'm originally from a town close to Reagan's spoke, Germany,
[7:44] Speaker 6: and that's about fifty minutes off of Munich. Then why
[7:47] Speaker 6: I've thought about it, Then why I saw this pilgrimage
[7:49] Speaker 6: also as an opportunity for this country that I left
[7:51] Speaker 6: so much to just really grow together and to find
[7:55] Speaker 6: some healing.
[7:56] Speaker 2: Hopefully we receive the body of Christ. We are transformed
[8:02] Speaker 2: into his body. We become his hands and feet, sent
[8:06] Speaker 2: into the world to serve our brothers and sisters. We
[8:09] Speaker 2: also become one with all the other members of the
[8:12] Speaker 2: mystical body of Christ. I think what Paul said in
[8:15] Speaker 2: First Corinthians. If one part suffers, all the parts suffer
[8:19] Speaker 2: with it.
[8:20] Speaker 1: I think two of.
[8:21] Speaker 2: The witness of the great saints. Saint Teresa of Calcutta,
[8:24] Speaker 2: she said this, unless we believe and see Jesus in
[8:27] Speaker 2: the appearance of bread on the altar, we will not
[8:30] Speaker 2: be able to see Him in the distressing disguise of
[8:33] Speaker 2: the poor. Or what Saint John Christism said so challengingly
[8:37] Speaker 2: many centuries ago.
[8:39] Speaker 1: Do you want to show honor to Christ's body? Do
[8:42] Speaker 1: not neglect him when naked.
[8:43] Speaker 2: Do not neglect him perishing outside of cold and nakedness.
[8:47] Speaker 1: While here you honor him with silken garments.
[8:50] Speaker 2: For he that said, this is my body, and by
[8:52] Speaker 2: his word confirm the fact also said I was hungry,
[8:56] Speaker 2: and you gave me no food. And as you did
[8:58] Speaker 2: not do it to one of the least of these
[9:00] Speaker 2: you did not do it to me. We're going to
[9:04] Speaker 2: not just admire what Jesus did, We're going to ingest
[9:09] Speaker 2: what Jesus did. He's the one in whom the sins
[9:14] Speaker 2: of the world are forgiven. We who eat his body
[9:18] Speaker 2: and drink his blood, we go forth into the world
[9:21] Speaker 2: as other Christ, bearing that salvation to the world.
[9:29] Speaker 6: One thing that really I find shocking as just the
[9:33] Speaker 6: excitement in small town America for Jesus, that.
[9:37] Speaker 4: Moment when you see someone encounter the love of Christ
[9:39] Speaker 4: in the Eucharist, and you know it's happening, and I
[9:42] Speaker 4: see it every single day, time and time and time again.
[9:45] Speaker 1: It's the thing that keeps me going to.
[9:47] Speaker 5: Be growing in sensitivity to seeing the way He's moving
[9:49] Speaker 5: and appearing to me and speaking to me in the
[9:52] Speaker 5: programs alongside me, in the crowds that we meet, and
[9:55] Speaker 5: the bishops that we interact with, and just the strangers
[9:58] Speaker 5: that don't know what's going on. There's just a greater
[10:02] Speaker 5: awareness of how He is just everywhere.
[10:06] Speaker 4: We are living heaven on Earth, and we're the only
[10:09] Speaker 4: people in the entire world, in the entire history of
[10:12] Speaker 4: humanity that get to do that.
[10:29] Speaker 2: In the size of the crowd, but you know, to
[10:31] Speaker 2: sign everybody of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit I think,
[10:36] Speaker 2: from the beginning of this Eucharistic revival has wanted this
[10:39] Speaker 2: to light a fire in the hearts of Catholics all
[10:43] Speaker 2: over this country. I just handed the monstrans off to
[10:52] Speaker 2: Bishop Bannersby, who was the new Bishop of Lacrosse. We're
[10:56] Speaker 2: going to have a major celebration of big Liturgy at
[10:58] Speaker 2: eleven o'clock in their center. I want you to see
[11:01] Speaker 2: something though, as you look behind me. We've been standing
[11:05] Speaker 2: here for I think about twenty minutes, and the crowd
[11:08] Speaker 2: is not let up at all. You're seeing thousands upon
[11:11] Speaker 2: thousands upon thousands of people who are part of this
[11:15] Speaker 2: eucharistic celebration. I've always loved public displays of Catholicism.
[11:20] Speaker 1: We're a public religion.
[11:22] Speaker 2: We don't just whisper our convictions privately among ourselves, and
[11:25] Speaker 2: we resist the secularism that wants us to do that.
[11:29] Speaker 1: And I would say to secularists who think religion is.
[11:31] Speaker 2: Fading away, or Catholicism is fading away, take a good
[11:34] Speaker 2: look at these scenes. As these thousands upon thousands of
[11:38] Speaker 2: people stream across the Mississippi River.
[11:41] Speaker 1: We're not going anywhere.
[11:42] Speaker 2: The Catholic Church is here, and we're here in a
[11:45] Speaker 2: public way.
[11:52] Speaker 6: Hello are you then answer?
[11:54] Speaker 3: And I was spoking to meet you so much.
[11:56] Speaker 6: I absolutely love listening to you on the rosary and
[11:58] Speaker 6: almost change.
[11:59] Speaker 3: Some of them that I see God and love listening.
[12:04] Speaker 3: Thank us you're saying, yesterdays.
[12:09] Speaker 5: We love the work.
[12:09] Speaker 1: How you that you've done with Chile above? This is
[12:12] Speaker 1: your daughter, Yes it is Hi sounds Maximilian, Oh God,
[12:16] Speaker 1: thanks great names, thank you. Yeah, sure, Sherman's got.
[12:23] Speaker 6: Me through COVID.
[12:24] Speaker 1: If I'm well, thank you, fear You're welcome. You're welcome.
[12:29] Speaker 2: Do you see why everybody we're having this euchoistic revival
[12:32] Speaker 2: when I read that Q Forum study that said only
[12:36] Speaker 2: thirty percent or so of Catholics believe in the real presence.
[12:40] Speaker 2: We've got to remind our own people of the power
[12:44] Speaker 2: of this sacrament, of the centrality of the sacrament. We
[12:47] Speaker 2: got to call them back to a worship, indeed of
[12:50] Speaker 2: this sacrament. In that we find what Vatican two called
[12:56] Speaker 2: the source and summit of the Christian life.
[12:59] Speaker 4: You're here, We're an Indeed, we did it. And another
[13:02] Speaker 4: one of the pilgrims, Natalie said this, but there are
[13:03] Speaker 4: a couple moments where I was like, I don't know
[13:04] Speaker 4: if we're gonna make it, And that moment of all
[13:07] Speaker 4: of us getting to process into Lucas Oil Stadium before Jesus.
[13:10] Speaker 6: Came out, I was just weeping.
[13:12] Speaker 5: I feel so free to extend the hands of others
[13:16] Speaker 5: who are confused or concerned or fearful of trusting Christ.
[13:21] Speaker 5: To really get a very practical glimpse of what life
[13:24] Speaker 5: is like on pilgrimage till Heaven. The joys, the sorrows,
[13:30] Speaker 5: the brokenness, the hope to be in a position of
[13:32] Speaker 5: witness was just incredible.
[13:35] Speaker 6: Jesus heals cities, he heals states, he heals dioceses. There
[13:40] Speaker 6: were so many dioceses who I think, for the first
[13:43] Speaker 6: time in decades, really worked together, were really drawn together
[13:48] Speaker 6: and worked as a diocese. Everything is being revived in
[13:51] Speaker 6: Jesus's eucharistic love. It's not even just spiritually, but it
[13:55] Speaker 6: has so many political, cultural, social consequences of Jesus just
[14:01] Speaker 6: transforming everything, and so of your Christopher. Bible has been
[14:04] Speaker 6: so much bigger than I could have ever imagined. In
[14:08] Speaker 6: the beginning, we.
[14:09] Speaker 5: Were greeted by such a crowd of the shrine, and
[14:12] Speaker 5: it genuinely felt like a glimpse of walking into heaven.
[14:19] Speaker 2: The sacraments are visible conduits of a real, invisible grace.
[14:24] Speaker 2: In other words, they do something. The sacraments do something.
[14:28] Speaker 2: Something happens, and it doesn't happen in other places.
[14:31] Speaker 1: You have to go.
[14:32] Speaker 2: There, you have to be there to the mass. What
[14:37] Speaker 2: is the Eucharist but God in Christ coming infinitely close
[14:43] Speaker 2: to us, even to the point of allowing himself to
[14:47] Speaker 2: be consumed by us, that we take him into our mind's, hearts, souls,
[14:55] Speaker 2: and bodies.
[14:57] Speaker 1: We're not overwhelmed in the process.
[14:59] Speaker 2: He doesn't stop being God, but rather we become radiant
[15:03] Speaker 2: and luminous and beautiful.
[15:18] Speaker 1: There's the job of the lady.
[15:20] Speaker 2: Everybody, Your job bring the lumen to the gentis, bring
[15:25] Speaker 2: the light of Christ out into the sec of the world.
[15:28] Speaker 1: This great revival will there been a failure.
[15:30] Speaker 4: If we don't change our society, if we don't stream
[15:35] Speaker 4: forth from.
[15:36] Speaker 1: This place with the light of Christ, become the people.
[15:39] Speaker 1: God bless you be, and you will set the world up.
[15:48] Speaker 3: Euchistic reviible does not end with the nationalistic Congress. That's
[15:52] Speaker 3: an event which is meant to launch the church into
[15:55] Speaker 3: a missionary year.
[15:56] Speaker 2: From the Eucharist comes our devotion to the poor, our
[16:00] Speaker 2: devotion to justice, our desire to go out to the margins,
[16:03] Speaker 2: all those great Pope Francis themes. Some of my heroes
[16:06] Speaker 2: in the liturgical movement saw the connection between the altar
[16:10] Speaker 2: and the streets right that we bring what we've become
[16:14] Speaker 2: at Mass other Christ.
[16:16] Speaker 1: We now go out to christify the world.
[16:18] Speaker 2: Bring your Eucharistic faith now into the world in the
[16:22] Speaker 2: form of service.
[16:23] Speaker 1: And may God bless you.

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