Pope Benedict XVI once described the Eucharist as “the genuine reality.” Nothing and no one is more real than Jesus in the Eucharist, and it is through Jesus in the Eucharist that we learn to see ourselves as we truly are.

A Eucharistic Missionary continually forms their identity in Jesus Christ through ongoing spiritual formation, education, and service to their parish and community, especially those on the peripheries. The National Eucharistic Congress provides resources and formation materials for Eucharistic Missionaries. This formation includes an annual period before the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.

Pope St. JPII taught in Salvifici Doloris that “in the mystery of the Church as his Body, Christ has in a sense opened his own redemptive suffering to all human suffering.”

A Eucharistic life unites itself to the Eucharistic sacrifice—a life broken and given for others. A Eucharistic Missionary is grounded in their family, neighborhood, and parish. They both contribute to and are nourished by these communities. They form intentional relationships with those closest to them, stepping out of themselves to truly love their neighbors.

Pope St. Paul VI, in Evangelii Nuntiandi, wrote, “Evangelizing is in fact the grace and vocation proper to the Church, her deepest identity. She exists in order to evangelize…” A life that has been fed and nourished by the divine life of Jesus in the Eucharist must go and bring others to the Lord’s Table.

A Eucharistic Missionary desires to give what they have received by Jesus. This Eucharistic Mission is sustained by periods of fasting and almsgiving and is lived out explicitly by a Eucharistic Missionary walking with one person in his or her journey of faith.