February 23, 2023 // Diocese

Tour of Relics Across Diocese Ends with Votive Mass of the Holy Eucharist

Joshua Schipper

Video/Digital Content/Graphic Design Producer

The diocesan-wide tour of the relics of Blessed Carlo Acutis and St. Manuel González García came to an end at St. Vincent de Paul Parish, Fort Wayne, on Tuesday, Feb. 14. The first-class relics toured seven churches in the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend beginning on Wednesday, Feb. 8, as part of the National Eucharistic Revival.

Parishioners of St. Vincent de Paul and surrounding parishes venerated the relics before and after Bishop Rhoades celebrated Mass at their final stop. In his homily, Bishop Rhoades talked about recognizing the Lord in the Eucharist. Both Blessed Carlo Acutis and St. Manuel González García are known for their devotion to the Eucharist, so the homily was very fitting for the end of the tour in a Votive Mass of the Holy Eucharist.

“We just heard the Gospel of the appearance of the Risen Jesus on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias to seven of His disciples. The hungry and exhausted disciples had been on their boat all night fishing but had caught nothing. From the shore, Jesus, whom they did not recognize, told them to cast the net to the other side of the boat and they caught so many fish that they struggled to pull the net into the boat.”

Photos by Joshua Schipper
Bishop Rhoades celebrates a Votive Mass of the Holy Eucharist at St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church in Fort Wayne on Tuesday, Feb. 14, with the relics of Blessed Carlo Acutis and St. Manuel González García on display for veneration at the last stop of the relics tour through the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend as part of the National Eucharistic Revival.

At that moment,” he continued, “the disciple whom Jesus loved, the disciple who rested his head on Jesus’ heart during the Last Supper, the apostle who was the only one of the 12 who did not abandon Jesus at His crucifixion, recognized that the man on the shore was Jesus. He exclaimed to Simon Peter: ‘It is the Lord!’ The beloved disciple is, of course, St. John the Apostle.”

Bishop Rhoades said that, with this miraculous catch of fish, they came to the shore where Jesus had prepared breakfast for them, and that the other disciples also then recognized that it was the Lord.

“And what did Jesus do? He took the bread and gave it to them, and also the fish — the same thing that He had done at that site a year or two earlier when He had multiplied the loaves and the fish. It’s the same gesture Jesus did at the Last Supper — He took the bread, broke it, and gave it to them. Also, it was when Jesus took the bread, broke it, and gave it to them that the two disciples on the road to Emmaus recognized that the stranger who had been walking with them and explaining the Scriptures to them was Jesus, the Risen Lord.”