‘Let God work’ - Measuring the success of the Eucharistic Revival
“I feel like the revival is God putting down a deposit on the work He wants to do over the next 20 years.”
This fall marks four years since the U.S. bishops’ conference voted overwhelmingly in favor of a National Eucharistic Revival.
The initiative – sparked in part by a Pew poll showing that fewer than 35% of Catholics believe in the True Presence of the Eucharist – aimed to rekindle devotion to the Eucharist among Catholics in the United States.
“My goal all along was to motivate Catholics who were in the pew to become more missionary and to ask the Lord to bring revival to the Catholic Church in our country,” said Bishop Andrew Cozzens, chair of the National Eucharistic Congress board. “Revival is something that the Lord does. It is a work of the Holy Spirit.”
The strategy was simple — give God space to work.
“We thought that if we hold up Jesus and invite people to encounter Him and be sent on mission, then he will do that,” said Tim Glemkowski, who served as CEO of the National Eucharistic Congress.
But did it work?
And, four years after its inception, how can organizers even measure the success of such an initiative?
There’s not really an easy way to gauge the revival’s success through quantifiable statistics, acknowledged Glemkowski.
He noted that the revival is not like an app that can track concrete subscription or engagement numbers.
“I have heard of some initiatives in the Church where they say, ‘We have an app and we ask people to pray and we have reached 2 billion people.’ That’s good and beautiful, but that's easy, it is shallow,” he told The Pillar.
“If you want deep cultural change in the Church, you are talking about people's lives being given over to God, and that long, faithful discipleship from those lives bears fruit over decades.”
“There was a certain sense in which we felt like what was going to happen could not be quantified,” he said.
“The goal always was sort of this spiritual movement of God working in His people.”
But while concrete statistics are difficult to formulate, one thing that is clear is that the Eucharistic Revival has seen high levels of support and engagement from bishops and dioceses across the United States.
From when it was first proposed by Bishop Robert Barron, then-chair of the USCCB’s Committee on Catechesis and Evangelization, it was clear that most of the bishops in U.S. saw a need for a National Eucharistic Revival.
The proposal was put up for a vote at the Fall 2021 USCCB meeting – and more than 90% of bishops voted yes.
“Having over 90% support does not happen all the time,” Bishop Cozzens told The Pillar. “The fact that so many bishops voted in favor is a powerful testament to the widespread support from bishops across the country.”
But the widespread buy-in was not limited to the bishops’ conference. Much of the work of the National Eucharistic Revival took place not at the national level, but locally.
Gelmkowski shared that 80% of dioceses in the U.S. assigned a point person to lead the diocese’s efforts connected to the Eucharistic Revival. And more than 8,000 parishes – roughly half – assigned a local leader.
“I have had different leaders from various countries asking, ‘How did you all do what you did there?’” Glemkowski said. “To us, it might have felt disjointed but foreign leaders are looking at the revival and saying, ‘To have the whole Church do one thing for three years and to have it go so beautifully with such an impact is almost unheard of’.”
In the Diocese of San Angelo, a 35,000 square mile Texas diocese with only 125,000 Catholics, Bishop Michael Sis decided to make the Eucharistic Revival the main pastoral priority of the diocese.
“I see how critical the issue of deepening our Eucharistic faith is,” Sis told The Pillar. “It is critical to people being Catholic, remaining Catholic, or becoming Catholic. It's at the core of our faith practice. We must celebrate it and invite people to share this precious gift that we have.”
Sis began by appointing Father Ryan Rojo, the diocesan vocations director, as the revival’s point person. Rojo then assembled a team of lay people to start dreaming and developing a robust plan, including a media and education campaign, and a few large-scale events.
In June 2023, the diocese hosted two Eucharistic congresses – one in English and one in Spanish.
“There was a lot of enthusiasm for having those Eucharistic Congresses, it was a really big deal for us, especially being able to have a big name personality, like Scott Hahn present [as a keynote speaker],” Rojo told The Pillar.
Throughout the three-year revival, Sis emphasized the importance of reverent liturgies. The diocese produced a series of videos explaining the liturgy and the Eucharist. It encouraged pastors to hold “teaching Masses” where they would explain what was happening at different points in the Mass.
“We have all kinds of links, talks and workshops that you can plug into. We also did Eucharistic liturgical ministers training, so they could better train local liturgical ministers,” Sis said.
In addition, the diocese launched a media campaign, inviting both Catholics and non-Catholics alike to attend events, with a billboard campaign inviting people to return to Mass.
Sis and Rojo both indicated that they saw a strong response to the revival.
“People had a lot of enthusiasm to learn more and grow their devotion to the Eucharist,” Rojo said. “I know a few people who, because of the advertisements, made a decision to come back to the Church.”
He added that some of the 50 lay people who traveled with the bishop to the National Eucharistic Congress returned with a visibly renewed zeal.
“A lot of those folks came back very much excited to spread the good news of the Eucharist, of the power of the Eucharist to the people of West Texas,” Rojo said. “Some of those people are actually on my local committees now helping to plan events.”
And another positive sign – the diocese welcomed a multitude of new converts to the Church this Easter.
“This year, we had a huge bump in our number of people who entered the Church at the Easter Vigil,” Sis said. “So much so that…we had to schedule an entirely extra Rite of Election Mass to accommodate the crowd.”
Far from West Texas, in the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire, three religious sisters have also been at work bringing the Eucharistic Revival to local Catholics.
The sisters – Mother Mary Maximilian Cote, Sister Teresa Marie Jude, and Sister Mary Fatima Pham – are all Daughters of Mary, Mother of Healing Love.
The three sisters had traveled the duration of the Seton pilgrimage route last summer, living out of an Airstream Trailer.
“One of the things that we were talking about within the first few weeks of the national pilgrimage was, wouldn't it be beautiful if we could bring something like this to our own diocese?” Cote told The Pillar.
After they concluded last summer’s pilgrimage, the trio of sisters presented a bold vision to the bishop: a 33-day pilgrimage that would visit every parish and school in the Diocese of Manchester, along with four college campuses, two abortion clinics and the men's state prison.
Bishop Peter Libasci approved the idea, and the diocesan Eucharistic pilgrimage was planned.
“The goal is to bring back what we saw happening at the national level and help local Catholics become better formed in their understanding of who the Lord is, what the Eucharist is and revive our faith in the diocese,” Cote said. “Our theme for this pilgrimage is Revive, Ignite, Transform. We want people to be awakened, and to be unapologetically Catholic.”
While processing through the Northeast last summer, the sisters say they experienced profound encounters and saw many moments of conversion.
This summer has been no different.
At one point, Cote said, the group stopped at a gas station to refill their van, which was outfitted with a small altar that had the Blessed Sacrament exposed. There, a woman watched in curiosity as the pilgrims sang and prayed while at the pump.
“One of the perpetual pilgrims went over and found out that she is a lapsed Catholic, fallen away,” Cote said. “They invited her to come onto the van, and she sat right in front of the altar face-to-face with the Lord. And she just began to weep.”
“It was a really moving experience for her, and it was clearly the beginning of her journey back to the Lord.”
To Glemkowski, stories like this may prove to be the legacy of the Eucharistic Revival.
The whole goal of the initiative, according to Glemkowski, was not to create a trendy evangelical program, but to have a lasting, profound impact on lives and on the culture – through prayer and through encounter.
Bishop Cozzens compared the revival to the 1993 Denver World Youth Day, a moment that made a lasting impression on the American Church.
“During listening sessions in the spring of 2021, a lot of people said that the Church in the United States needs a World Youth Day moment,” Cozzens said. “So we were aiming for that. We thought that it would be a success if a large enough group of Catholics came together and gave thanks to God for the gift of the Eucharist, and asked God to send his Holy Spirit upon us.”
If the revival was in fact a “World Youth Day moment,” it will likely take years or decades for the fruit to be realized, Cozzens suggested.
“So many of the stories that you heard from the 1993 Denver World Youth Day - the impact that it had on Curtis Martin, the founder of FOCUS, on Tim Gray, the founder of the Augustine Institute. The impact it has had on so many religious callings and the way that people were captivated by God in these moments, it just takes time to unfold in their life.”
In the meantime, while the three-year National Eucharistic Revival officially concludes this weekend, the National Eucharistic Congress continues its work as an organization.
Plans are already in the works for another National Eucharistic Congress gathering — scheduled for 2029. Glemkowski expects it to be even better than the last.
“This is just getting started,” Glemkowski said. “There were so many things that we learned logistically that can now be put into practice for the next ones. We also have more time. I took the job 27 months before the Congress and we had to raise $12 million and get 60,000 people there and do all the logistics.”
“Now that this is up and running, I think people are going to be blown away by 2029.”
Cozzens hopes that the work of the revival will continue to “fan the flame” in the hearts of Catholics and inspire them to take up a missionary spirit.
“I hope that we continue this movement with future congresses and events,” Cozzens said. “I just think that the Holy Spirit is bringing renewal in the country. I just think there are a lot of signs of that, and I think the Eucharistic Revival is part of that.”
Glemkowski said the increase in converts reported across the country and the stories of people returning to their faith are evidence of the Eucharistic Revival’s early success.
“But,” he added, “I feel like the revival is God putting down a deposit on the work He wants to do over the next 20 years.”
The National Eucharistic Revival is what kicked my anxious butt into gear to actually enter religious life and, God willing, become a priest. I begin formation in a month. So as far as I'm concerned it was success. :3
When is the next Pew Poll? It would be great to see if it had an actual impact on the numbers of the next poll.