Congress attendees have been invited to share written prayer intentions throughout the week
From the far end of a hallway at the Indiana Convention Center, Kim Stanley, Cheryl Nelson and Tina Ferder emerged from a room cradling baskets filled with small strips of white fabric.
The women delivered the baskets to several small stands constructed of chicken wire and placed throughout the convention center. During the week at the National Eucharistic Congress, attendees have been invited to write their prayer intentions on the fabric strips and tie them to the stands.
Throughout the week, volunteers with Moses’ Intercessory Prayer Room have collected the stands and taken them back to their space to pray for attendees’ intentions. Stanley, Nelson and Ferder, members of Incarnate Word Parish in Chesterfield, are part of a team of more than a dozen people offering intercessory prayer at the congress.
“It’s a way to show that the Church cares about what people want to bring to God, and then we just kind of help lift that up to God,” Stanley said. “It helps people get closer to God who maybe wouldn’t ask for other people to pray for them in person. It allows them to bring it to God, and what God sees in secret He still acknowledges.”
Prayer intentions have included family members who have fallen away from God and the Church, relationship troubles, health concerns and addictions. As the team was praying one day during the congress, an urgent request came from a man whose niece was nearing death.
The team also has found prayers of thanksgiving and praise for God, Nelson said. “We’ve seen praise and thanksgiving for the ways God has answered or been present in somebody’s life,” she said.
While intercessory prayer lifts a person’s intentions to the Lord, it also opens the door for God to enter his or her heart, Nelson said. “He wants to know our hearts, and He always hears our prayers,” she said. “We’re just asking that He would hear these prayers and then answer according to His will, whatever that might be.”
Jane Guenther, director of the archdiocesan Catholic Renewal Center who has served on the executive team for the National Eucharistic Congress, coordinated the intercessory prayer team. She’s also been part of a smaller group that has been praying for the success of the Eucharistic Revival for the past two-plus years. That team has been meeting online once a month to offer intercessory prayers.
Intercessory prayer also will have a role in the third and final year of the Eucharistic Revival, the Year of Mission, and the Walk With One initiative designed to invite Catholics to walk with one person as they become closer to Christ and His Church.
Materials for the initiative will be shared with parish Eucharistic Revival representatives, Guenther noted. Included is a guide with four steps, which include identifying someone to accompany, followed by intercessory prayer, making a connection and then inviting them on a path to fostering a personal relationship with Jesus and the Church.
“You start by interceding for someone who God puts on your heart who should be invited, and you actually start walking with them first as a friend,” she said. “And then and then hopefully walking with them into the actual fullness of the Church.”
Several on the congress’ intercessory prayer team said they have witnessed an immense sense of joy throughout the week, “and the joy is because it’s centered in Christ,” Ferder said. “I see friendships being made, because it’s centered in Christ. I know there are hurting souls out there, but they’re here with Christ and He’s present. That’s the joy of the Eucharist — His presence.”
