A Night of Healing at the Eucharistic Congress and Sister Josephine Explains Repentance is Necessary for Healing!

Over 50,000 fauthful at the National Eucharistic Congress’ third night of revival, heard Sister Josephine Garrett say, “This was not the finish line,” referring to the four pilgrimage routes that converged there in Indianapolis for the July 17-21 congress.
“This is the starting line.”
A convert from the Baptist tradition, Sister Josephine is now a member of the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth and host of the “Hope Stories” podcast. Sister Josephine and other speakers at Lucas Oil Stadium on July 19th invited those listening to enter into their brokenness and let Jesus personally heal their hearts.
Sister Josephine said that when it’s time to leave “together from here, we’re gonna make sure that we stand up on the two legs of this Eucharistic revival” to leave as one body.

The first leg, she said, is devotion to Jesus in the Eucharist and the holy Mass, and growing in that devotion and reverence.

The second leg “we don’t always like,” she said — and that’s repentance.

“Tonight, I am begging you on behalf of Jesus Christ: Healing begins with repentance,” Sister Josephine said, urging everyone to repent “in joy and confidence.”
“Do not be dismayed. Do not despair. Do not become overwhelmed. Do not get lost in yourself but lost in him,” she said. “We can be people who repent with joy. What a contradiction — we are broken but hopeful. We are a broken, repentant pilgrim people … journeying together to the Father as one covenant community and that means we need each other.”
“Every member of the body of Christ is necessary,” she said, adding, “We are all going to be broken pilgrims until we reach the end.”
Sister Josephine had the same message for everyone in the audience — bishops, priests, men and women religious, and single people of any age: “Repent in hope and joy.”
She called on bishops to remember their love of the priesthood that brought them to where they are today; she asked priests to “stay rooted in your call”; and she reminded consecrated men and women that “our ministerial works must flow” from private and communal prayer. Single people, she said, “you do not cease to exist as a gift in the church. … If any of your hearts are marked by worry, fear, uncertainty — I pray that is cast out in Jesus’ name.”
Following Sister Josephine’s talk, Sister Miriam James Heidland led the multitude in prayer. With tears, she asked them to pray and ask Jesus personally for healing.
“Could you just let him come, and bring him those places, and transform your heart just to make you free?” she asked. “Because that’s how our lives are transformed: It’s through the coming of the bridegroom — and he is here.”
As she walked off the main stage, Benedictine Father Boniface Hicks, a monk of St. Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, was holding the Eucharist in a golden monstrance.

“Jesus, we come before you, that you might heal our hearts, that you might meet us right where we are,” he prayed.

“Each of us have places in our hearts and in our histories that have been hurting for a long time,” said Father Boniface. “There is a sacred place in each of us where we can be alone with you, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The most powerful healing can begin by bringing those places into relationship with the one who loves us infinitely: you, Jesus.”

Father Boniface, an experienced retreat-master, led the crowds through a series of prayers of repentance and renunciation, with the congregation repeating phrases of love for Jesus, and asking for his healing of each one’s sin, hurt and brokenness.
“Jesus, I trust in you,” the musicians sang.
When Father Boniface returned to the altar, he led Benediction, ending with the final prayer: “May the heart of Jesus, in the Most Blessed Sacrament, be praised, adored and loved with grateful affection, at every moment, in all the tabernacles of the world, even to the end of time. Amen.”

The revival also heard testimonies of healing, including that of Paula Umana, a former tennis player who was ranked first in Central America and later became quadriplegic after the birth of her fifth child due to a nervous system disorder.

One day, when her son asked her if she would ever walk, she told the boy to ask Jesus. Charles, her son, ran to the cross they had at home and told him: “Hey Jesus, can my mom walk?”

In 2018, through the intercession of the Blessed Mother, she learned about some leg devices that could help her walk, which she calls a miracle. When she returned home after learning to walk with those devices, Charles — then 3 and a half years old — ran back to the cross to thank Jesus.

The message she wanted the audience to remember was to “run to Jesus when you feel anxious. Run to Jesus in adoration, in the Eucharist. Run to Jesus when you need healing. Run to Jesus when you feel hurt.”

Charles came to the stage and stood next to his mom amid loud applause and said, lifting a tennis ball, “When it seems impossible, run to Jesus.”

Following the revival night of healing, lines for confession back at the adjacent Indiana Convention Center were long . Across the street, St. John the Evangelist Church, the perpetual adoration chapel during the congress, was packed with people kneeling and adoring Jesus in the Eucharist.