EMMITSBURG, Md. — On June 6, Jesus Christ passed through Emmitsburg — an experience that gave a glimpse into the life-changing encounter behind the Maryland town’s famous saint.
Winding for almost 2 miles through the streets of the historic Maryland town, Jesus in the Eucharist was held aloft, in rotation, in a shining gold monstrance carried by Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori and several priests as the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage reached its 20th day.
From routes north, south, east and west, small groups of young people and clergy in eucharistic procession with Christ are on their way to converge on Indianapolis for the July 17-21 10th National Eucharistic Congress. The western St. Junipero Serra route will pass through the Archdiocese of St. Louis July 5-7. Find more details at www.eucharisticpilgrimage.org.
Despite its small size and just a few more than 3,000 residents, Emmitsburg — home to the National Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, the first canonized American-born saint, as well as Mount St. Mary’s Seminary, which has prepared men for the Catholic priesthood since 1808 — was unquestionably a required stop on the national pilgrimage’s Seton Route that had begun its 1,100-plus mile journey May 18 in New Haven, Connecticut, at the parish tomb of Knights of Columbus founder Blessed Michael McGivney.
Invoking St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in his homily, Archbishop Lori told an estimated 1,500 gathered for Mass at the shrine’s basilica, “The mystery of the Eucharist, the true presence of Christ’s Body and Blood had what I might call ‘a gravitational pull’ on her heart and mind and spirit.”
Born to a prominent New York Episcopalian family in 1774, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton came into full communion with the Catholic Church in 1805 and eventually founded the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph — the first U.S. community for religious women — and laid the foundation of the parochial school system in America.
Archbishop Lori reminded his listeners how, prior to her conversion, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton “spontaneously knelt in the street when a eucharistic procession passed by. It was a moment of encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ.”
After Mass, there were two pilgrimages. In both cases, several hundred pilgrims — priests, men and women religious, Knights of Columbus and other faithful — made the trek, singing hymns and reciting litanies and other prayers along the way.
One of the pilgrims has been traveling with a first-class relic of Mother Seton — provided by the Seton Shrine in Emmitsburg — each day of the journey, said Father Roger Landry, the Seton Route’s chaplain. “So we keep her very, very close as we seek to imitate her eucharistic love; follow her eucharistic fire and desire to pass it on, and try to be for others the same type of model she is for us,” he said.
