An estimated 60,000 Catholics attended the National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis in the summer off 2024. Among them were Dominic and Murielle Blanchard and their seven children – one in utero, and six ranged in age from two to nine years old.
Dominic bought tickets for his family the day he learned of the Congress, over a year before the event was actually set to occur.
“I was like, oh, the first National Eucharistic Congress in 60 years. How can I not go if we’re able?” he recalls.
He and his wife each had a great devotion to the Eucharist which only grew after they met in college and began dating. “We would go to Daily Mass together and then we had a weekly Holy Hour together as well.”
They wanted to pass that love on to their children and felt that the Eucharistic Congress presented the perfect opportunity.
“With kids, it’s always much more powerful to show them than tell them,” Murielle said. “So, actually having the experience of making sacrifices, going on the road, physically traveling there, seeing all the people – thousands and thousands of people all together for the same thing. It’s really powerful.”
The trip was especially important to their oldest child, Leo, who studied hard to receive the sacraments of Reconciliation, First Communion, and Confirmation in time for the Congress.
“He and Murielle got to walk in the front of the procession with all the other First Communion kids from around the country,” Dominic recalls. “I had the other kids, and we were waiting at the end and as I was waiting, just [had] the sense of anticipation and what it’s like to wait on the Lord and then to have Him finally appear.”
The procession with the children who had received their First Communion took place outside, culminating the in Indiana War Memorial, and the monstrance was displayed on top of the monument so that all the thousands of people could clearly see it – even people from inside apartments and buildings near the memorial.
Because Dominic was working as a teach and on break, the Blanchards were able to turn the journey to Indianapolis into a summer road trip. Even before setting out, they gathered prayer intentions from fellow parishioners at Sacred Heart Cathedral and then from friends and family they visited along the way.
“The concept of Christian pilgrimage is never that we are going alone. If it’s a participation with Christ in His journey to Calvary, to the will of the Father, He’s carrying our sins and our weights in the cross,” said Dominic. “Not everyone had an opportunity to go, not everyone has the time or the money or the health even, to go halfway across the country. And so just being able to carry those intentions and kind of help people remember that we’re all united in the body of Christ.”
Some friends and family would join then in Indianapolis, including Dominic’s sister, a member of the Dominicans of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist. But one special moment happened when he was surrounded by strangers.
“One of the days we were just in the exhibit hall…during the Hillbilly Thomists’ performance. I was just sitting there watching the kids…and just listening to the music and seeing all of these joyful people, some of whom hadn’t met each other before, everyone talking and feeling that palpable joy. I was like, ‘oh, so this is what Heaven is like’. It just felt like a glimpse of Heaven because when we make it, everybody who’s there will be there for the same reason – being with God, and that sense was just very palpable for me in that moment.”
Murielle’s special moment came during a healing prayer.
“Since my fourth pregnancy on, I had a really sensitive spot in one of my muscles in my stomach area. And so I did pray and asked for that to be healed.”
She then picked up her 4-year-old daughter, and realized the sensitivity was gone.
“Since then, I haven’t really felt pain there anymore. They told us to ask with faith and that can be hard for me to do, but I did my best. So I do feel like the Lord healed me because I was still pregnant up until right about Christmas [2024]. And during both ultrasounds that I had, since then, it’s been fine.”
The Blanchards enjoyed the variety of speakers and presenters – not just priests, nuns, and bishops, but people like Jonathan Roumie, star of TV Series The Chosen, and Colonel Mike Hopkins, an astronaut who became the first person to carry the Eucharist into space.
For Dominic, each of their stories reminded him of the way God calls each person to be a unique saint.
“I think a lot of people get caught in the trap of ‘oh I don’t look like St, Francis of Assisi or St. Therese of Lisieux’ and then they make the mistake of thinking ‘it’s not meant for me’”, he said. “But the reality is that God wants a whole army of saints, and no two saints will ever be the same. They all have the same endpoint and the same goal of being united with God, but God is so manifold and creative and each of us really is His unique creation and He’s calling us to lean into that.”
There were times when the trip was difficult – events that went late into the evening, or their children being tired and hungry after waiting in long lines, or suffering through the Midwest heat and humidity – but the Blanchards believe the challenges were more than worth the effort.
The Eucharistic Revival is now in its final phase, which calls on pilgrims to take their faith out into the world and their communities.
But both Dominic and Murielle hope that even if a trip to Indiana wasn’t possible, Catholics will still be inspired to cultivate a relationship with God in simple, accessible ways.
“One of the takeaways was that being a Eucharistic people doesn’t end at the end of Mass or at the door of the adoration chapel because God is outside of time, right?” Dominic said. “And so when we receive Him – whether it’s at Sunday Mass or during the week – remembering that there’s grace that you can draw from, from His infinity and His fullness. Just having that trust in in His power in every situation we find ourselves, present with us and in us through the Eucharist and through our receiving Him.”
“Times can feel difficult or scary but there really is a people of God, and we got to see that and experience that,” Murielle said. “We’re not doing this alone by ourselves. There’s a very large community of believers, and that that gives me hope for the future, too.”