POWELL: Eucharistic presence finds a home in college campus ministry

Simon Powell serves as director for the Sam Houston State University Catholic Student Center in Huntsville.

During the 30th National Eucharistic Congress this past summer, one of my favorite moments was attending Adoration with 50,000 other people in Lucas Oil Stadium. All of us attendees were sent out with a clear mission: Spread and deepen devotion to Christ in the Eucharist. It was a much-needed reminder of the importance of spending time with Jesus outside Mass.

As Pope Francis stated to the organizing committee of the Congress, “It is my hope, then, that the Eucharistic Congress will inspire Catholics throughout the country to discover anew the sense of wonder and awe at the Lord’s great gift of Himself and to spend time with Him in the celebration of the Holy Mass and personal prayer and Adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. I believe that we have lost the sense of Adoration in our day. We must rediscover the sense of Adoration in silence. It is a form of prayer that we have lost.”  

After returning from the National Eucharistic Congress last summer, I started the work to request permission to repose the Eucharist at the Sam Houston State University (SHSU) Catholic Student Center in Huntsville. For most of my students, Eucharistic Adoration was not something they did often, if ever. One main reason was simple: they did not have access to the Eucharist. The Catholic Student Center is housed next to St. Thomas the Apostles Church in Huntsville. The church did offer times of Adoration, but those times were not conducive to the busy student schedule (late afternoon or early evening). To change this, the first step had to be providing more opportunities for SHSU students to encounter Jesus in the Eucharist and for them to invite people to come to our Lord for regular Eucharistic Adoration. I asked several students in the community what it would mean for them.

One student shared: “The ability to have regular Adoration would serve as a beacon of conversion for our peers to be introduced into the faith.” Their feedback reminded me of what was written in the Instruction on Eucharistic Worship: “Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, either in a ciborium or a monstrance, draws the faithful to an awareness of the sublime presence of Christ and invites them to inner communion with Him. Therefore, it is a strong encouragement toward the worship owed to Christ in spirit and in truth.” The students’ active participation in this initiative is a testament to our shared responsibility to deepen our faith.   

I knew that adding the presence of the Eucharist to our chapel would immensely enrich students’ prayer experience. So, the students and I were thrilled to receive permission from Daniel Cardinal DiNardo to set up a permanent home for our Eucharistic Lord in our Catholic Student Center’s chapel. With some help from our extended community, we obtained a tabernacle, a stand (just the right size for the space and the tabernacle), and a plan for securing it in its place. These were not easy tasks, and they cost a significant sum of money, but as St. Paul wrote, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God” (Phil 4:6). So, we prayed to get what we needed. Sure enough, we received donations from a Scanlan Grant and from parents of students to cover these expenses.  

We are close to completing the new tabernacle and will hopefully have the Eucharist here in our center very soon. The students are deeply grateful for the community’s support, and their excitement for this is fantastic. I can’t wait to have our first Adoration, and I know that our community’s support will make it even more special.  

Our students at SHSU are eager to spend time with Christ in the Eucharist. I hope and pray that all young adults, all faithful also share that eagerness to spend time in Adoration with Christ in the Eucharist. Even though the National Eucharistic Congress is over, I hope and pray that all of us continue in the spirit of the Eucharistic Revival in our own lives of faith.