Angela Mills, a parishioner at Precious Blood Parish in Owensboro, collects a prayer intention from a resident in the neighborhood around the church. Mills was one of the “prayer warriors” from the parish who went out two-by-two into the neighborhood to bring Christ to the people on Dec. 8, 2024. ANDY TELLI | WKC

Parish continues Eucharistic Revival’s mission with personal visits to neighbors

BY ANDY TELLI, THE WESTERN KENTUCKY CATHOLIC

Since Angela Mills returned from the Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis this summer, she’s been looking for opportunities to bring Christ to the people around her.

“I have been praying for fruit of the Eucharistic Congress every day ever since we returned,” she said. “And then I’ve just been amazed at how God keeps opening doors and things keep opening up.”

One of those doors opened for Mills and a group of her fellow parishioners from Precious Blood Parish in Owensboro on Sunday, Dec. 8. After a period of Eucharistic Adoration and a Eucharistic procession through the surrounding neighborhood, the parishioners went out two-by-two to knock on doors and to ask the residents how they could pray for them.

They then returned to the parish to offer the prayer intentions before the Eucharist in Adoration.

“I just thought the whole thing was beautiful,” Mills said. “I loved the procession through the neighborhood with Jesus and then going out two-by-two and bringing Him personally to them, and then bringing their prayer intentions back. I just thought it was all what missionary discipleship is about. I think it’s what God expects of us.”

The event, including the Eucharistic procession through the neighborhood and then sending out the “prayer warriors,” was a part of the three-year National Eucharistic Revival, launched by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said Fr. Carl McCarthy, pastor of Precious Blood Parish.

“The National Eucharistic Revival movement is the joyful, expectant, grassroots response of the Church in the United States to the divine invitation to be united once again around the source and summit of our faith in the celebration of the Eucharist,” according to a statement on the Revival’s website, eucharisticrevival.org. “Through the Eucharist, God desires to heal, renew, and unify the Church and the world.”

As part of the Revival, the U.S. bishops are asking dioceses across the country to join their “Walk With One” initiative.”

“This is your opportunity to be God’s instrument in the life of another person. Imagine how our families, neighborhoods, and country will be transformed if every active Catholic answers this call!” the bishops stated on the Revival’s webpage dedicated to the initiative.

“This is the third year of the Revival, and this is the year we are to be missionary disciples of the Eucharist,” Fr. McCarthy explained. The mission is not to keep our love for the Eucharist inside our parish churches, he said, “but it is to take what Jesus is in the Eucharist and then do what he told us to do. He gave us a Great Commission, and that commission was to go out and to bind up the wounds of the world.”

As a parish church, Fr. McCarthy said, “We’re here to feed our neighbors,” he said. The food the parish offers is not only food for their bodies, but for their souls, Fr. McCarthy said, “through the sacraments, through the Church, through who we represent as a faith, which is Jesus Christ.

“If people have that hungry heart fed, they can respond in greater ways to the world,” Fr. McCarthy said.

“Pope Francis says that the Church should be a hospital for those who are wounded in the world, wounded spiritually, wounded physically,” Fr. McCarthy said. Some of those wounds were reflected in the prayer intentions brought back to the parish.

“It was powerful to hear the prayer intentions for people who have cancer, for a family member who died this week, for people who’ve been away from the Church, for children who were born early and still need to gain weight,” Fr. McCarthy said.

As Mills walked through the neighborhood meeting people and asking for their prayer intentions, she was struck by “how open everyone was to answering the door, to having prayers that they wanted to be heard,” she said. “Smiling faces but suffering souls too.”

While some might be anxious asking strangers for their prayer intentions, for Mills, “It’s just been kind of easy,” she said. “You know God’s at work when things come easily.”

Editor’s note: Year Three of the National Eucharistic Revival is focused on going out on mission, especially via the USCCB’s initiative called Walk With One. To learn more, visit www.eucharisticrevival.org/walk-with-one.

Originally printed in the January 2025 issue of The Western Kentucky Catholic.