by Bishop James Conley
I would venture to guess many of you are familiar with the Nebraska Passport Program, in which Nebraskans visit featured destinations across our state, and record stamps in “passports” to recall their journeys.
This creative initiative by the Nebraska Tourism Commission is a wonderful incentive for Nebraskans, as well for those who live outside Nebraska, to travel across our great state and experience the many beautiful and inspiring sites “the good life” has to offer. According to the NPP’s official website, the purpose of the NPP “is to help travelers discover Nebraska’s hidden gems. The Nebraska Passport is special because it offers a wide variety of travel adventures, including museums, parks, restaurants, wineries, retail stores and more.”
Partly inspired by this wonderful Nebraska program, by my own love for pilgrimages and by the three-year national Eucharistic Revival inaugurated by our U.S. bishops in 2022, I’m excited to invite you to join me in traveling across the Catholic Diocese of Lincoln on a “Eucharistic Passport Pilgrimage.” From Imperial to Rulo; through Plattsmouth, Beaver Crossing and Holdrege, I invite you to visit the truly “hidden gem” of our diocese, Jesus Christ, body, blood, soul and divinity, present in the Most Holy Eucharist, “hidden” under the appearance of bread, who is awaiting your prayerful visit in the chapels and churches across our beautiful diocese.
The Eucharistic Passport Pilgrimage is a way to deepen our understanding, love and appreciation for the great gift and mystery of the Holy Eucharist and, at the same time, enjoy “a wide variety of travel adventures” alone or with family members and friends, to places in the diocese that, perhaps, you have never visited before. Here’s how it works.
Specially designed “Eucharistic Passports” will be available – for free – at the back of all our parish churches beginning the weekend of Aug. 12 and 13, throughout the Diocese of Lincoln. You may pick up an official Eucharistic passport, according to the needs of your family, along with information and a map indicating the locations of the 17 specially designated Eucharistic sites across the diocese.
At these locations, at designated times, the Blessed Sacrament will be exposed for silent prayer and adoration in a monstrance on the altar. I invite you to prayerfully visit these sites and to make a holy hour, praying for your own special intentions, for vocations to the priesthood and religious life, and to pray for a true revival of love, understanding and appreciation for Jesus in the Holy Eucharist, in our diocese and throughout the United States.
We have partnered with the good folks at the Hallow App to provide instruction, content and reflection on how best to make a holy hour. Just download the app and go to the section on holy hours. There are also prayers in the passport itself.
Once you have completed your holy hour, there will be an official stamp located at the back of the church or chapel. We ask you to stamp your passport and to write in the date of your visit to show that you’ve visited the site, much like the Nebraska Passport Program or the Camino in Spain to Santiago de Compostela.
You will have approximately 12 months to fill up all 17 spaces on your passport, if you wish. Our Eucharistic Passport Pilgrimage will conclude July 17, 2024, with the beginning of the National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis. Because of the vast distances that cover the 25,000 square miles of our diocese, and the unique times that the Blessed Sacrament will be exposed at 17 Eucharistic sites, the completion of the entire Eucharistic pilgrimage will not be an easy task. You might call this a holy competition of prayer, but there will be prizes and special recognition given to the first 10 people who complete the entire pilgrimage before July 17 of next year. If you choose to do so, use the contact information at www.lincolndiocese.org/revival.
You may want to celebrate the completion of the Eucharistic Passport Pilgrimage by joining your fellow Catholics from across the diocese and across the United States, and travel to Indianapolis for the National Eucharistic Congress. The national planning committee is now expecting more than 100,000 pilgrims to travel to Indianapolis next July. The last National Eucharistic Pilgrimage took place in 1976 in Philadelphia, where a then-unknown Polish archbishop and future pope attended as a pilgrim, the young Cardinal-Archbishop of Krakow, Karol Wojtyla who we now know as Saint John Paul II.
If you are old enough to remember seeing Saint John Paul II World Youth Day in Denver in 1993, I predict that this will be a very similar experience in our own day.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches us that the “Eucharist is the Source and Summit of the Christian Life.” In other words, the Eucharist – the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ (as our Lord revealed in the Sacred Scriptures) – is the very source of life for us as Christians, inviting us to deeper unity, peace and happiness with our God. It is this most precious gift or “gem” that we, as children of God, have been entrusted with to protect and promote in our world. What better way to do this than to go on pilgrimage across our beautiful state in a spirit of Eucharistic love and devotion.
In recent years, various surveys have indicated that a majority of Catholics believe that the Eucharist is merely a symbol of the Lord, and not what it truly is, the actual body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus, under the appearance of simple bread. The U.S. Bishops, to respond to this confusion, in 2022 initiated the three-year campaign to help people fall in love with the Holy Eucharist again, and to come to a deeper understanding and appreciation of this awesome mystery.
The Nebraska Passport Program has been a very popular way to promote Nebraska and its beautiful sites. It is my hope and prayer that our diocesan Eucharistic Passport Pilgrimage will offer an opportunity for thousands of Nebraskans to make a spiritual pilgrimage across our state. I pray that this might be an occasion of true encounter with our Eucharistic Lord, hidden in the Blessed Sacrament and an opportunity for true renewal and revival for our Eucharistic Lord. And, like the Nebraska Passport Program, we might be inspired to travel across our beautiful state in a spirit of prayer and gratitude.
