Pilgrims look forward to bringing Eucharist across Southwest, including wildfire-recovering LA

(OSV News) -- It may feel counterintuitive, but Charlie McCullough says that pilgrimage "teaches us how to live a normal life." That has been his experience after traveling the southern route of the 2024 National Eucharistic Pilgrimage from the Texas-Mexico border to Indianapolis over the span of two months.

This year, he is doing it again -- on a different route, with a different group -- as the team lead of the 2025 National Eucharistic Pilgrimage from Indianapolis to Los Angeles.

"When we go on a pilgrimage, we're taking time to set a goal and to walk towards that goal, and in regular life, we have the goal of heaven, and every single day we're taking a step towards heaven," McCullough told OSV News March 6.

Last year, he joined the pilgrimage right after graduating from Texas A&M with an engineering degree. Now the 23-year-old is preparing to take time away from his job in Austin, Texas, to travel the 3,300-mile route with seven first-time pilgrims. He is expecting to lean on his experience from last summer to support this year's pilgrims, who will accompany the Eucharist along the way.

"Last summer … I was more focused on the communities that we would encounter, on fellowship at different parishes and evangelization, whereas this summer, all those things will still be present in my day-to-day, but my primary focus will be getting to serve and take care of the seven other pilgrims and minister to their needs," McCullough said.

The National Eucharistic Pilgrimage launched last year with 30 pilgrims in four groups traveling with the Eucharist along routes from points in the nation's North, South, East and West to Indianapolis for the National Eucharistic Congress, July 17-21, 2024. Both the pilgrimage and congress were part of the U.S. bishops' three-year National Eucharistic Revival.

At the end of the congress, its chairman, Bishop Andrew H. Cozzens of Crookston, Minnesota, announced another pilgrimage in summer 2025. It begins in Indianapolis May 18 and ends with Mass in Los Angeles on the feast of Corpus Christi June 22. It also coincides with the 2025 Jubilee Year.

Unlike last year's pilgrimage, this year's event has only one route with far fewer pilgrims. They expect to focus on bringing the Eucharist to various places for Mass and adoration, accompanied by short processions, rather than last year's emphasis on walking major parts of the route in hours-long Eucharistic processions. The 2025 route, named for St. Katharine Drexel, has stops planned in 21 dioceses and four Eastern Catholic eparchies across Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.

Leslie Reyes-Hernandez, a high school math teacher in Phoenix who volunteers at Grand Canyon University Newman Center, is among this year's new perpetual pilgrims. The 26-year-old said she saw clips of last year's pilgrimage on social media, but did not understand the endeavor until the National Eucharistic Congress. When it was announced that another pilgrimage would happen in 2025, she knew she wanted to be part of it.

"Immediately, I'm like, no way. OK, God, I truly want to do that," she told OSV News.

Going on the pilgrimage means starting her summer vacation before the end of the academic year, but explaining her plans to others at the public school where she works has provided opportunities to share her faith and talk about Jesus' true presence in the Eucharist, she said.

Reyes-Hernandez grew up in a Chicago suburb and is excited for the pilgrimage to go through Illinois, stopping in her home diocese of Joliet as well as Peoria, where she went to college at Illinois State University and regularly prayed at the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception. She is also looking forward to a retreat planned for the pilgrims in Flagstaff, Arizona.

"When I think of Jesus in the monstrance, Jesus in the Eucharist, I truly think of joy, but pure joy -- not just happiness, but joy" she said. "I'm so excited to continue growing in God's joy and being able to share all of the fruits that he continues to work through me, and for the rest of the country, for the rest of the world, to continue experiencing our Lord's joy."

Traveling with Reyes-Hernandez will be Arthur Acuña, a perpetual pilgrim from Las Vegas who works for The Aquinas Institute, the Catholic campus ministry at Princeton University in New Jersey. He graduated from Princeton in 2023 with a degree in chemical and biological engineering and plans to pursue a doctorate. In the meanwhile, the 24-year-old feels called to contribute to the ministry that solidified his faith.

Last summer, Acuña -- who goes by "Ace" -- bought a last-minute ticket to the National Eucharistic Congress after seeing photos of the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage on Instagram. He had been vaguely aware of the pilgrimage -- and even attended an event with the Eastern Route pilgrims in New Jersey -- but like Reyes-Hernandez, he previously had no sense of its immense scope.

"I remember just seeing the amount of devotion breathing out of those photos," Acuña said. "You see people processing with the canopy and with the Blessed Sacrament, and you have people kneeling on the streets … praying rosaries, and you see the gaze of the public just captured in these images. … I was like, 'That's amazing. How could I miss such a big movement in the church?'"

The pilgrimage and congress inspired Acuña to apply to join this year's pilgrimage. "Since the Eucharist was such an important part of my faith coming alive, I know that I wanted to be a part of helping people encounter him all along the Drexel Route," he told OSV News.

Acuña is looking forward to bringing the Eucharist to communities in Los Angeles affected by the wildfires earlier this year, he said. McCollough also expects that part of the pilgrimage to be powerful and "to see how he (Jesus) brings hope to them (Angelenos) in a unique way."

"It's fitting that Christ would want to go to a place that has been hurt and has been wounded," he said.

Despite his experience from last year, McCullough expects this year's pilgrimage to "continue to surprise me every day."

"Every day with Jesus there is a new opportunity to fall in love with him," he said, "and to experience a unique grace."