After Mass, Perpetual Pilgrims share experiences at St. Joseph Parish
Worshippers pray during the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage Mass celebrated by Bishop Michael Olson on June 6, 2025 at St. Joseph Church in Arlington. (NTC/Juan Guajardo)
ARLINGTON — Among the approximately 750 faithful gathered at St. Joseph Parish in Arlington for a Mass with the perpetual pilgrims of the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage, two groups stood out.
Filling seven rows on the west side of the altar, about 60 members of St. Joseph’s Nocturnal Adoration Society wore white shirts with a thick, red and white ribbon around their necks. A large medallion of a monstrance hung from each ribbon.
The group of Hispanic men and women pray before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, covering 24 hours in shifts on the first Friday of each month.
“There’s nothing else more important than to adore Jesus in the Holy Eucharist,” said Veronica Franco, who helps organize the chapter with her husband, Martin Franco, its leader.
The Nocturnal Adoration Society began in Mexico more than 200 years ago, and it now has more than 500 chapters in the U.S.
The second group also shared their love for Jesus in the Eucharist. Seated opposite the Nocturnal Adoration Society was the music ministry team from Our Mother of Mercy Parish in Fort Worth, dressed in black with a kente cloth shawl.
Donald Walker Jr., a saxophone player and assistant choir director, said, “It’s a real honor to be able to do this. It’s such a fundamental part of our faith — core to the Catholic faith to be here with Jesus in the form of the Eucharist.”
He continued, “At Adoration, at every Mass, we want to draw more attention to [the Real Presence] and remind people. It’s easy to forget the miracle of transubstantiation at every Mass.”
In the homily, Bishop Michael Olson encouraged the faithful, “We must always keep Christ as the central part of our focus: Christ present in the elements of the bread and wine consecrated at Mass; Christ present in the Word proclaimed; Christ present in the priest celebrant; and Christ present in all of us together that gather in the assembly, made so by the grace of the Holy Spirit.”
After the bilingual Mass, attendees could choose to attend a talk by a perpetual pilgrim. Leslie Reyes-Hernandez spoke in the parish hall in Spanish, and Stephen Fuhrmann spoke in the main sanctuary in English.
For Fuhrmann, a perpetual pilgrim from Lindsay in the northern part of the Diocese of Fort Worth, the three-day visit to the diocese was a homecoming of sorts, and his parents were able to attend the Mass and Fuhrmann’s talk.
During the pilgrimage from Indianapolis to Los Angeles, Fuhrmann has experienced “so many different places and people, different cultures and different rites within the Catholic Church. There’s this sense that us pilgrims are experiencing the universality of the Church.”
As they travel through urban and rural lands, the pilgrims see “Jesus really wants to be taken everywhere and in all places,” Fuhrmann said.
Their travels have also reinforced the call of all baptized Catholics to missionary discipleship. Fuhrmann concluded, “I invite you to continue to come to our Lord each and every day, to receive more of Him, to become more like Him, but ultimately to go out and continue to make disciples of all nations.”