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The Catholic New World
Grant Park Glory!

By Michelle Martin
Staff Writer

With banners flying, ribbons fluttering and bells ringing, thousands of people welcomed the Eucharist to Chicago’s Grant Park Aug. 5 in a celebration in honor of the Year of the Eucharist.

The crowd participated in a downtown eucharistic procession that stopped traffic briefly on Michigan Avenue, as well as closing Balbo and Jackson drives to vehicles.

Once the Eucharist reached the altar erected on Butler Field, the congregation listened to a passage from the Gospel according to John about the Bread of Life and Cardinal George’s homily.

“Eucharist is about change, about transformation,” the cardinal told the congregation, encouraging the practice of eucharistic adoration. “The result of giving time to the Lord is transformation. He will give us courage to transform ourselves and to transform the world.”

What needs transformation in individual lives, he said, is anything that keeps people from being free to love God: addictions to alcohol and drugs, to sexual sin, to anger, to racism or other prejudices.

“These are habits of sin,” Cardinal George said, “Christ will change us, Christ will transform us, Christ will free us.”

The world will be free when it is at peace, the cardinal said, as those who love the Lord are at peace when they are with him. He invited those present to join him in praying for peace, “peace in our streets, peace in Iraq, peace in Afghanistan, peace in the Holy Land, peace in the United States of America.”

Later, the cardinal said that as he walked, he was pleased by the turnout, which he estimated at 8,000 to 10,000, and grateful to the people who came, as well as those whose work made it possible. But he tried to spend his time walking in prayer.

“I was following behind the Lord,” Cardinal George said. “That’s where a bishop should be.”

The procession immediately followed a Mass at the Chicago Hilton marking the end of the Knights of Columbus’ third eucharistic congress.

Cardinal George carried the Blessed Sacrament out of the hotel behind an honor guard of hundreds of fourth-degree knights in full regalia.

Several bishops, including the Knights of Columbus Supreme Chaplain, Bishop William E. Lori of Bridgeport, Conn., carried the monstrance with the Eucharist along the route, which stretched for nearly a mile through the park.

Choirs stationed along the way provided music, and groups from several parishes, youth groups and lay ecclesial movements met and joined the procession at Buckingham Fountain.

Brother Joshua Caswell of the Society of St. John Cantius in Chicago stood near the fountain, smiling at the array of people walking past him. There were sisters in a variety of habits, priests in clerical clothing, elderly people with canes and young mothers pushing strollers.

“We were wishing that we had brought our banners,” Caswell said, although the long black cassocks he and his companions wore, ruffled in the breeze against a sunny sky, drew plenty of attention.

Caswell said the large turnout did not surprise him.

“We thought it would be really good,” he said. “America needs to see this.”

Father David Simonetti, a newly ordained priest assigned to Queen of Martyrs Parish in Evergreen Park, said he came to add his presence to “a public show of adoration for the eucharistic Lord.”

“We come to honor and worship the Lord,” said Simonetti, as members of his congregation prayed the rosary as they followed a parish banner. “Those who are in it will be uplifted, and if those who are watching get something out of it, that’s a benefit, too.”

Laura Peterson of LaGrange trekked downtown with her daughters Ann Marie, 4, and Elizabeth, 9, and their friend, Erin Walsh, 8.

The small group stopped at a station where an archdiocesan volunteer was handing out drinks before walking along to the adoration site. The Office for Black Catholics Mass choir sang gospel hymns nearby.

“I thought this would be a wonderful experience for them,” said Laura Peterson, a member of St. John of the Cross Parish in Western Springs. “I want them to see that our faith isn’t just something we do in church.”

Anita Hernandez, a member of St. Andrew Parish on the North Side, said such public events are necessary to bring Christ to the world.

“As Catholics, we should participate in things like this,” she said. “There are lots of people who don’t come to adoration in church, so we need to do it here.”

Mary Strom, executive director of the Women’s Center, said being surrounded by so many fellow Catholics gave her strength. She needed it as she carried a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary over her head.

“It’s the Body of Christ,” she said. “It’s very reassuring and very encouraging to be in the midst of so many of my brothers and sisters.” The Women’s Center helps women in crisis pregnancies and has its own adoration chapel, Strom said.

“We’re out here to honor Jesus and the Eucharist,” she said. “The Eucharist is the source of our life that matters.”

Edward Mroz, a Knight of Columbus from Nova Scotia, and his wife, Margie, said it’s important for Catholics to make their devotion public.

“We tend to isolate ourselves and do our thing in a building,” Mroz said. “I think the public expression of faith is very beneficial.”

Christians live their faith in public all the time, Cardinal George said, when they feed the hungry, care for the sick and otherwise do as Jesus told them. But worship must also be part of that.

“There’s nothing in the world that is divorced from faith,” he said. “The church is not a club. It’s not private.”

In his homily at the Knights of Columbus Mass, Cardinal George spoke of the reasons people look for Jesus, and why they avoid him. People look for Jesus, he said, because they have a problem they want him to fix, or because they come to realize they are incomplete without him.

But even those who want to seek Jesus often draw back, he said, from the Lord’s insistence on conversion.

“We want to approach the Lord like we pay taxes,” the cardinal said, suggesting that people want to meet their obligations, but keep the rest of their lives separate. “We do it willingly and with good heart, but there are areas of life we don’t bring before the Lord because we don’t want to.”

To get over that, Cardinal George said, Christians must remember that Jesus did not hold his life back from them.

“He comes to us because he loves us,” the cardinal said. “Free to be where he wants to be, having overcome the last boundary of death, he comes to us because he loves us. … Count on that love. Lean heavily on the Lord.”

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