May 9, 2025 // Bishop

Students Organize Eucharistic Procession Around ND Campus

Kasia Balsbaugh

“Today is like the feast of Corpus Christi at Notre Dame,” Bishop Rhoades said before clarifying that the actual feast of Corpus Christi occurs in June. However, a student group organized a Eucharistic procession (a traditional feature of Corpus Christi celebrations) to occur on Monday, April 28, before students leave campus for the summer.

This annual Eucharistic procession at the university is sponsored by the Notre Dame Militia of the Immaculata (NDMI), which includes students from Holy Cross College, Saint Mary’s College, and the University of Notre Dame.

“The goal, aside from worship of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, was to invite others, especially those with little interest in faith, into a public display of worship and to be drawn to Christ,” wrote junior Juan Lawas, NDMI student president, and senior Matthew Hansen, president emeritus, in a statement to Today’s Catholic.

A worldwide organization founded by St. Maximilian Kolbe, the Militia of the Immaculata’s mission is “to bring all souls to Jesus’ Sacred Heart through Mary,” as Lawas and Hansen wrote. Some of the ways the Notre Dame chapter does this on campus is through promoting Marian consecration, hosting a daily Rosary at the campus Grotto, and handing out thousands of Miraculous Medals to Grotto visitors during home football games. They have also organized yearly pilgrimages to the National Shrine of St. Maximilian Kolbe in Illinois.

This is the third consecutive year the group has sponsored the Eucharistic procession. According to Lawas and Hansen, it began when the organization’s student officers had the idea to plan a procession on campus. They then discovered that the university used to have an annual Eucharistic procession, beginning with Mass at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart and winding around campus to altars sponsored by different student groups. The tradition died out by 2013. Partly inspired by the National Eucharistic Revival, the students of the NDMI decided to revive it, in collaboration with the ministry departments of Saint Mary’s College and Holy Cross College.

“Each year, we’ve added different elements to enhance the beauty and sanctity of the procession,” Lawas and Hansen wrote. “The result has been an outpouring of grace within our tri-campus community.”

Approximately 100 students and community members walked this year’s procession behind the Blessed Sacrament and a statue of Mary. The route around campus stopped at three temporary altars bedecked with candles and flowers. Each altar was sponsored by a different college: Holy Cross College’s near a statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Saint Mary’s College’s near the statue of university founder Father Edward Sorin, and Notre Dame’s at the foot of the famed Golden Dome. Each altar stop featured a hymn, Scripture reading, prayer, and benediction.

In his homily in the Mass before the procession, Bishop Rhoades pointed out that the Eucharist has been a controversial teaching from Jesus’ day, calling it a “tremendous mystery that surpasses our understanding.” As Bishop Rhoades illustrated in his homily, a model of someone striving to grow in understanding came from the Gospel of the day: the Pharisee Nicodemus, who seeks out Jesus and asks questions to better comprehend His teaching. (From confirmations the day before at the basilica, Bishop Rhoades had discovered Nicodemus is actually a Catholic saint. “I’m always learning new things from Notre Dame students!” he said.)

“When it comes to the holy Eucharist, our feeble senses fail us, St. Thomas Aquinas says, but we still believe because we trust in Jesus and His words,” Bishop Rhoades said.

Freshman Elizabeth Kreuger is co-vice president of the NDMI and helped with the procession. She became a group officer after attending many of the NDMI’s events and meeting several of her friends at them. “It’s great to have a club with a Marian devotion specifically, especially with Notre Dame being named after Mary,” Kruger said.

Kreuger said she was struck by the way the Eucharistic procession and benediction took the place of the closing prayer for Mass that day, because of the physical “taking the Lord out into the world, which is what the final blessing is anyway, because you’re all being sent out into the world,” she said.

Holy Cross Father Brian Ching, rector of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, helped the NDMI revive and plan the procession. He said in an email that “it has seen a steady growth in participation as well as in planning and execution.”

He continued: “Our faith is not meant to be a completely private and personal affair but meant to be shared with the people around us. To process the Blessed Sacrament out of the basilica and around campus is a sign of what we seek to do each day in bringing Christ to others in our community.”