Eucharistic pilgrims sing, clap and sway their way through Atlanta

“We believe this music reaches heaven.” 

That’s what Kevin Johnson, the music director of a Catholic student center serving historically Black colleges and universities in Atlanta, told a group of visitors this past weekend. From his place at the piano in the Lyke House chapel, and helped by a trio of young singers, a bassist and a drummer, Johnson helped a largely guest congregation who might have been a bit unfamiliar with Gospel music learn how to clap on the downbeat and allow their bodies to express the praise of God contained in their hearts.

"If you see the people in front of you swaying from left to right, join them,” he encouraged folks. 

Among Johnson’s spontaneous pupils were the perpetual pilgrims on the Juan Diego Route of the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage, who would soon be singing and clapping and swaying along with a hundred or so others in the chapel of the Archbishop Joseph P. Lyke House. The Catholic ministry serves Atlanta University Center, a consortium of three HBCUs – Clark Atlanta University, Morehouse College, and Spellman College – as well as Georgia State University.

The gathering was on Saturday, June 22, a day in which temperatures reached 99 degrees in Georgia’s capital. The pilgrims, who began their route May 17 in Brownsville, Texas, and are on their way to the National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis next month, had already experienced a wide variety of cultures, including Mexican mariachi and Cajun cuisine.

With a van that was modified to contain a traveling altar of repose for the Blessed Sacrament, they had just rolled into the Atlanta Archdiocese the day before, after a mid-pilgrimage retreat at the Shrine of the Blessed Sacrament in Hanceville, Alabama, a milieu decidedly quieter in its spiritual expression than many of the other stops they’ve made.

On Saturday morning, they participated in morning prayer at Our Lady of Lourdes, which is known as the mother church of African American Catholics in Atlanta and is close to Martin Luther King’s birthplace and burial site. Prayer time at Lourdes, a parish built with the help of St. Katharine Drexel, was followed by a time of service at the Missionaries of Charity Convent in Atlanta. Atlanta Archbishop Gregory John Hartmeyer had designated this day as a Parish Day of Eucharistic Service. 

The Lyke House, named for Hartmeyer’s predecessor Archbishop James P. Lyke, who was the second African American archbishop in US history, was the pilgrims’ only stop at a Catholic campus ministry, said Andrew Lichtenwalner, director of the archdiocese's Office of Evangelization and Discipleship.

But there were few students around, as it is now summer break. When Auxiliary Bishop Bernard E. Shlesinger III, after celebrating Mass, led a Eucharistic procession through the local streets, the academic buildings and stadium they passed were empty, and there were just a few pedestrians and a motorists out under the midday sun – nothing like the thousands of pilgrims who had turned out to greet processions in places like St. Paul and Minneapolis or the National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion in Wisconsin. Crepe myrtles and other trees offered a bit of shade.

Three perpetual pilgrims carried an ombrellino and a pair of candles, as attendees followed Christ in the monstrance held by Bishop Shlesinger. They were happy to have a chance to walk a small part of the two months of pilgrimage toward Indianapolis. One young Argentinian woman, visiting from Florida, hoped to follow the Juan Diego Route all the way to the Eucharistic Congress.

In his homily, Bishop Shlesinger reflected on the diversity of people he saw both in the sanctuary and in the congregation: Lyke House Chaplain Fr. Urey P. Mark is from Liberia, altar servers had southeast Asian backgrounds, and there appeared to be attendees from Latin America, Korea, Africa, and the Philippines, among others.

“It’s truly a universal Church, but what makes the Church is the Eucharist. We are one family gathered around the altar,” the bishop told Mass-goers, some wearing chapel veils, some holding small children.

Shlesinger then spoke directly to the perpetual pilgrims, who are in their 20s and hail from all parts of the US. He told them that they have inspired him as a bishop by dedicating two months to the cross-country trek and their decision “not to take a vacation from the Lord but to realize that "my vocation is to be with the Lord and journey with him wherever he’s leading us.’”

Turning to the full congregation, the bishop continued, “Shouldn’t that example inspire us to say, ‘Where are we going in the future, and who is accompanying us? Is this the most important event of our life, of our week?'”

As pilgrims in a procession follow the Eucharistic Lord in a monstrance, the bishop concluded, “it is Jesus, the Way, the Truth, and the Life, who will lead us to heaven.”