From the city to the country to coastal communities on Delmarva, Catholics in the Diocese of Wilmington are embracing opportunities for eucharistic adoration.
The year of parish revival during the National Eucharistic Revival began June 11, and several diocesan parishes are seeing increased attendance at times and places dedicated to fostering eucharistic adoration. The year of parish revival concludes July 17, 2024.
From small rural parishes to large urban churches, young and old are attending designated hours set aside for adoration and chapels dedicated to spending hours with Jesus.
Anne Marie Duld calls the time she spends in adoration “my time to spend with Jesus,” as a brief respite from her busy schedule.
Her pastor, Father Christopher Coffiey, of the rural St. Benedict-St. Elizabeth Parish in Ridgely and Denton, said, “It always impresses me to see so many people” attend eucharistic adoration, offered after Mass on Tuesday mornings and before Mass Wednesday evenings.
People even come from Delaware and other parishes, making up about 25% of adorers, Father Coffiey said.
Father Coffiey also offers the sacrament of penance during these times. The evening time of adoration tends to draw more younger people who work during the day, he said.
According to eucharisticrevival.org, the “National Eucharistic Revival is a movement to restore understanding and devotion to this great mystery here in the United States by helping us renew our worship of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist.”
The revival, which was launched during the Feast of Corpus Christi June 19, 2022, will conclude on Pentecost as the universal church enters her jubilee year in 2025.
In his June 15, 2022, letter to the diocese regarding the National Eucharistic Revival, Bishop Koenig encouraged the flock in the Diocese of Wilmington to “Fall in love anew with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.”
The revival will “be a special time for us to focus on the importance of the Eucharist – the source and summit of our own spiritual lives,” Bishop Koenig wrote.
Al Hanley, founding coordinator of perpetual Eucharistic Adoration at St. Jude the Apostle Church in Lewes, said the program, now in its 13th year, offers 154 hours of adoration each week, from 6 a.m. Sunday to 4 p.m. Saturday.
He credits St. Jude’s pastors for promoting Adoration. “If you talk to people who are in leadership in the Eucharistic Adoration community and you ask, ‘What is the one single factor for a successful program? they will say, ‘The pastor,’” he said.
Father Jim Hreha, founding pastor of St. Jude, established the only chapel of its kind in Sussex County. He was succeeded by Father Tom Flowers, who expanded the hours, and “now we have Father Brian Lewis, who is a very active adorer himself and totally committed to eucharistic adoration,” Hanley said. “Without those pastors, we would not have eucharistic adoration.”
Father Lewis, who said the chapel “has become a beacon of eucharistic light to the faithful of our diocese,” gives credit primarily to “the ongoing endeavorings of the members of our parish’s Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration Committee.”
Hanley’s team of nine meets monthly to plan coverage in the chapel, so that the exposition of the Blessed Sacrament is always attended by at least one of 300 assigned adorers in the parish. “We’re estimating very conservatively that there are 3,000 separate visits per month to the chapel.”
“It is especially heartening to see full families from our parish and other parishes come in to adore our Lord,” Father Lewis said. “Husbands and wives with several children ranging from newborn to adolescence to families with adult children come to honor and adore our Lord and to pour out their souls to him and to open them to receive his mercy and grace.”
A Sept. 29 story by the Catholic News Agency cited a recent study reporting almost two-thirds of adult Catholics in the U.S. believe in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.
The hunger for eucharistic adoration “shows that we’re all sinners in need of God’s merciful love,” Father Coffiey said. “People take advantage of (the opportunity), and so they seek it out and they look for it, and they believe in it.”
At St. Ann Church’s Divine Mercy Adoration Chapel in Wilmington, parishioners can come and go from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily. Bibles, the catechism, prayer, and devotional materials are available, but it’s not unusual these days for adorers to access prayers on their cell phones, said Chris Eckrich, one of the chapel’s co-leaders.
“We get all kinds of people – families, kids, everybody,” Eckrich said. “It’s really amazing how well attended it is.”
“We have a number of adorers that are in their 80s that have been part of the chapel decades, and we’re getting a kind of a turnover of the young people and, but they’re just being really reverent. Some of the young women wear veils,” Eckrich said. “Even when parents bring their children in – which I love – if they get rowdy, they’ll just get up and take them out in the vestibule.”
“I always encourage parents,” she said. “I just say, ‘You’re doing such a wonderful thing bringing your children here.’”
The “cozy chapel” seats about 12, but many kneel before the Eucharist, Eckrich said. It opened on the Feast of St. Ann in 1997, but Eckrich’s six-member committee has been overseeing the chapel since 2013.
Eckrich is encouraged by the increasing number of young people, who have “a desire to be before Jesus and to praise him, to give him the worship that he deserves because of his dying on a cross for us,” she said. “We’ve grown as a parish; we’ve got a lot of young families that have come into the parish. And so, I just think eucharistic adoration is just so beautiful, and so grace-filling for us as a parish.”
“It’s just been a wonderful, wonderful experience,” Eckrich said. “It’s just beautiful, and I just am so happy and thrilled to be a part of this ministry.”
Even in St. Ann’s sanctuary, efforts during the summer to bring more focus to the Eucharist in the Mass resulted in refinishing the tabernacle in gold and moving it to behind the altar.
“The big story is a sizable increase in visits” to the chapel in the coastal community,” said Hanley of St. Jude’s.
“It cannot be stressed enough how very much our parish lay coordinators for adoration – and the grace of God – have contributed to the great success of our adoration program,” Father Lewis said. “Because of the Adoration Chapel, our parish is truly a eucharistic parish.”
“The Holy Spirit is moving to bring the faithful to adoration, and it is phenomenal,” Hanley said.
“It is my hope that this time of the Eucharistic Revival will not only be a moment for us to grow in our understanding of the Eucharist, but also be a time for us to personally encounter Jesus in the Eucharist and deepen our relationship with our Lord,” Bishop Koenig wrote.
For more information about the National Eucharistic Revival, visit www.eucharisticrevival.org
