The Challenge of Eucharistic Catechesis

By David G. Bonagura, Jr. ( bio - articles - email ) | May 28, 2025

Those of us who believe in the Eucharist tend to assume that simply stating what the sacrament is will induce faith on the spot. “It’s the body of Christ!” “It’s Jesus Himself!” “It’s the summit and source of our faith!” In the same vein, we expect that more public presentations of the Eucharist—holy hours and public processions—are all we need to turn wayward and lukewarm Catholics into pious Eucharistic devotees in a heartbeat.

The opposite is usually the case. Rather than fall on their knees, our fellow Catholics return our excitement with blank faces. We, in turn, scratch our heads, surprised, puzzled, and frustrated that they don’t get it.

Examples of this disconnect abound. In the last two Octobers, I have participated in the epic New York City Eucharistic procession organized by the Napa Institute that featured hundreds of Catholics walking across the world’s busiest city behind the Blessed Sacrament. Onlookers stared, then moved on. Among the prayerful participants, I asked several afterwards if the experience deepened their faith in the Eucharist; while they enjoyed the event, the answer was no. Closer to home, on numerous occasions during the elevation of the host at Mass, I have whispered to my younger children while pointing, “Look! It’s Jesus.” My five-year-old son was my most recent pupil this past Sunday. He, like his elder siblings before him, experienced neither epiphany nor ecstasy. He looked up impassively for a second, then returned to his inner world from which I had roused him.

This winter I taught nine high school students a three-month course on the Eucharist. We covered every aspect of Eucharistic theology and practice; we even had a holy hour with benediction. Then during Easter week I entered an adoration chapel in Tyburn, England, site of the martyrdom of many Catholic priests in a viciously Protestant land, with three of these same students. Only one of them knelt before the exposed Blessed Sacrament.

I’m not relating these anecdotes to dissuade believers from Eucharistic processions or catechesis. Far from it. Such efforts are noble, holy, and necessary; they are part of the missionary character of our faith. My hope is to put these efforts into context. They have to be coordinated and sustained, encompassing both educational and liturgical spheres. Once-and-done presentations and events rarely sprout lasting fruit. Repetitio est mater studiorum, for the Eucharist as for anything else. We who are teaching and witnessing need patience, persistence, and prayer, along with recognition that growth in faith is primarily God’s work, to which we add our works.

My own Diocese of Rockville Centre is about to kick off an admirable effort of Eucharistic catechesis. It is a week-long event that includes Eucharistic revival nights at many of the diocese’s 132 parishes and two processions per evening, one beginning from the west and the other from the east, that, moving several miles per clip, will come together on Pentecost Sunday for a culminating Eucharistic congress.

Spreading the event over a full week across multiple parishes, rather than create a one day, one location chance, increases opportunities for participation and, critically, helps generate attention from local television and newspapers. The media attention creates excitement that, we pray, will bring in souls who would not have come otherwise.

What also makes this event more likely to generate spiritual growth is its grass roots origins: students from local Catholic grammar schools, in exchange for a beloved “no uniform day,” contributed two dollars each to purchase a special monstrance for the event. Students, quite literally, have bought into the event and will want to see the fruits of their contributions.

But for this seed to bear fruit, teachers and principals must do some serious teaching beforehand. Traditional Eucharistic catechesis, along with visual explanations of monstrances and Eucharistic processions—including a photo of the monstrance they helped purchase—must connect what the Eucharist is to why the diocese is celebrating it next week, and how they can participate in that celebration. Pushing a slogan such as, “Yes, you bought that,” transports the Eucharistic events from the ether to their everyday lives.

This, I believe, brings us to the crux of Eucharistic catechesis in an age when few Catholics practice their faith: the traditional doctrine has to be made tangible to those who are less inclined to attend Mass on Sunday. Lovers of the Eucharist often struggle to articulate their love to others. The Eucharist is the bread that feeds the human need for love, for belonging, for meaning, for truth. Even the busiest Millennial and Gen Z parents, pulled all over creation for their children’s various activities, feel this need. If only they would leave the soccer field to fulfill it.

The Diocese of Rockville Centre’s Eucharistic week, by harmonizing liturgical practice with Eucharistic education, provides both water and sunlight to grow the seeds of faith. Too often the two are separate when they are designed to be complementary—lex orandi, lex credendi. My students did not remember to kneel in adoration most likely because they had not had the liturgical practice in the months between the end of my course and entering the monastery chapel.

A practical problem too often prevents this harmonization. In almost all parishes, Eucharistic practices fall far short of what we declare the Eucharist to be in homilies and classrooms. Actions speak louder than words. When the faithful receive the Eucharist as they receive any worldly good—standing in line, in our hands, from a fellow lay person—the sacral character of the Eucharist vanishes before our eyes. Will a non-practicing Catholic, amazed at how solemnly the Eucharist is treated in procession with incense and canopy, notice the contradiction of how nonchalantly it is treated inside the parish during Mass? If so, the efforts of Eucharistic catechesis will not bear fruit.

Bishops, priests, teachers, music directors, parents, and the lay faithful all play critical roles in Eucharistic catechesis. They all have to work together for the fire of Eucharistic love to be enkindled in the next generation of Catholics. If any one of these should be lacking, we end up with our current mess of two-thirds of Catholics not believing in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Bold and creative events are necessary to spark Eucharistic faith, but their success hinges upon inspired liturgical and catechetical practices that take place daily and weekly, year after year. To love the Eucharist is the work of a lifetime.

David G. Bonagura, Jr. is an adjunct professor at St. Joseph’s Seminary and Catholic International University. He is the author of 100 Tough Questions for Catholics: Common Obstacles to Faith Today, and the translator of Jerome”s Tears: Letters to Friends in Mourning. He serves as the religion editor of The University Bookman, a review of books founded in 1960 by Russell Kirk. See full bio.

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