ROXBURY -- Two years ago, St. Patrick Parish in Roxbury held a 24-hour Eucharistic vigil for the son of parishioner John Barros. Barros's son was dying of cancer, and parishioners were praying for a miracle. Barros later realized that the miracle was not saving his son's life, but giving Barros the grace to accept God's will.

"He did work on our hearts," he said. "Worked on my heart, to accept the death of my son as something that I couldn't believe (or) understand, but had to be willing to accept."

When he was younger, Barros would go to adoration and not understand why he was staring at the wafer kept in the beautiful monstrance.

"I learned later with Jesus that the question is not what you're there to do," he said. "The question is actually who you're here to be with."

On April 8, Barros gave a witness talk during a night of prayer and adoration at St. Patrick's. It was part of the 2026 Boston Eucharistic Congress, which incorporated over a dozen parishes in Boston and adjacent cities for a week of Masses, adoration, and processions during the Octave of Easter from April 6 to 12. After Mass at St. Patrick's, celebrated by Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley, a procession took the Blessed Sacrament through Roxbury to Mission Church. Parishioners filed out of the church in a long line, illuminating the night with their electric candles. The Eucharist was held in a brilliant monstrance that sparkled in the streetlights. Hymns and prayers were sung in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. The canopy covering the Blessed Sacrament scraped the low, empty branches of trees, requiring the volunteers and priest to occasionally duck. Volunteers quickly genuflected before the Eucharist before rushing into place.

On the way to Mission Church, the procession passed storefronts with apt names, like Stop and Taste pizzeria and Theophilus Apparel and Home Furnishings.

This year's Congress tripled the number of processions and parishes from last year.

"The Kingdom of God is always growing and advancing," said Father Michael Zimmerman, assistant director of the Archdiocese of Boston Office of Vocations.

On April 6, adoration, Mass, confessions, music, witness talks, and Divine Mercy Novenas simultaneously took place at St. John's Seminary in Brighton, St. Anthony of Padua Parish in Allston, and St. Ambrose Parish in Dorchester. That night, Eucharistic processions took the Blessed Sacrament from those parishes to St. Columbkille Parish in Brighton, St. Paul Parish in Harvard Square, and St. Katharine Drexel Parish in Dorchester, respectively. The next night saw the same events in those parishes, followed by processions to St. Mary of the Assumption Parish in Brookline, St. Francis of Assisi Parish in Cambridge, and St. Patrick's, respectively. The following night, those parishes were the site of processions to St. Clement's Eucharistic Shrine in the Back Bay, St. Joseph Parish in Boston's West End, and Mission Church, respectively.

"This year, we sought to get more parishes and more young adults, more communities involved, to help plan these processions," Father Zimmerman said. "And so it is much more ambitious."

In his witness talk, Barros recalled a conversation he had with a woman who left the Catholic Church and became a Jehovah's Witness. He asked her if she missed Christ's presence in the Eucharist.

"Once you're transformed here in front of Jesus, you are fused with Christ," he said.

He said that a Catholic cannot be truly Catholic unless they spend time with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.

"You can pray to God anywhere," he said. "When you have the body, the blood, the soul, and divinity of Christ here in church, this is a special place of prayer."

He said that the night of adoration at St. Patrick's was a time "to continue to be unified at a time when we need unity in our world."

He also mentioned that someone in the parish had been desecrating the Eucharist by leaving it on the floor. He told the assembly to do penance for the act and other such offenses, and to pray for the soul of the person who did it, so they may see the error of their ways and learn to honor God.

Cardinal O'Malley began his homily by recalling Father Morty Fox, a "zealous and talented" priest who was a close friend of the cardinal. When Cardinal O'Malley was bishop of the Virgin Islands, he received word that Father Fox had died. Shortly after Father Fox's death, the cardinal received a letter from him in the mail that had arrived posthumously. It was as if Father Fox was speaking from beyond the grave.

"I trembled as I opened the letter, and when I read his words, I could picture his smile and his laughter," the cardinal said. "Suddenly, he was alive. He was present again."

Later that day, Cardinal O'Malley was praying before the Blessed Sacrament and came to the conclusion that the Eucharist was just like the letter he received from Father Fox; "a sign of love and friendship." Jesus sent himself like a letter, and the Eucharist keeps him present in our lives.

"Forgetting God is too dangerous," Cardinal O'Malley said. "We are here today because 2,000 years ago, Jesus said, 'Do this in remembrance of me. Never forget my love. I will always be with you if you acknowledge me when you break bread.'"

He said that the current culture is suffering from "spiritual amnesia," and that is the root of suffering in the world.

"The people that do not go to church because of spiritual amnesia have either forgotten God, or have forgotten about what the Mass actually is," he said.

To illustrate his point, he told a story from the life of Southern writer Flannery O'Connor, who was Catholic in a part of the U.S. that is overwhelmingly Protestant. She took a Baptist friend to Mass, which was still celebrated in Latin then. The friend told O'Connor that she found the Mass "boring" and impossible to understand. However, she recognized that "something really, really special" brought Catholics to Mass. That something was the Eucharist.

"I hope God gives us the grace to deepen our love for the Eucharist, the center of our life as Christ's disciples," the cardinal said.

If people think the Mass is boring, he said, it is because they have forgotten how to pray properly.

"If each day and every day of the week is punctuated by time and space for God in prayer, then, and only then, we can enter into the mystery and be absorbed in the Eucharist," he said. "Then everything will make sense."

The cardinal said that the Eucharist was created by God because he loved the world and wanted a way for people to be close to him.

"We have the joy of acknowledgement when we break the bread," he said.

Father Zimmerman said that "it's been a real blessing" to work with "an army of volunteers" to coordinate the processions. Three times as many parishes means three times as many people to work with.

"We are an Easter people," he said. "Hallelujah is our song. We're a Eucharistic people as well. And so in the Easter octave, to really celebrate the gift of the Resurrection and the gift of the Eucharist, I think it's, Jesus is our life. He's our salvation. And here's a chance for us to worship him, to accompany him, and to bring him to the streets."

On April 9, all three Eucharistic routes met at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross for prayer and all-night adoration. On April 10, Archbishop Richard G. Henning celebrated Mass at the cathedral for almost 1,000 people. A procession then took the Blessed Sacrament to St. Leonard of Port Maurice Parish in Boston's North End on April 10. The next day, the procession visited Our Lady of Good Voyage Shrine in Boston's Seaport District, then St. Augustine Burial Chapel in South Boston, the oldest surviving Catholic church in the archdiocese, for an all-night Eucharistic vigil. At 6 a.m. on April 12, the procession went to its final destination, Gate of Heaven Parish in South Boston.