There are many, many ways to instill a knowledge of and a relationship with the Blessed Sacrament within our children. Below are a few ideas to get started. Consider inviting your child to learn or try something new!

• Spend 30 minutes in Eucharistic adoration. For guidance, use My Time With Jesus or My Time With Jesus (short version)
• Reunite with Christ in the Sacrament of Reconciliation 
• Watch “Sophia Sketchpad: The Eucharist.” 
• Watch “The Veil Removed,” a short film that reveals the coming together of heaven and earth at Mass.
• Watch the Brother Francis episode, “The Bread of Life,” one of many videos for children found on formed.org. Many parishes have free formed.org subscriptions. Visit formed.org/signup to see if yours does!
• Watch one of the many free video resources for kids from learn.eucharisticrevival.org/for-kids
• Make a visit to the Blessed Sacrament outside of a structured event.
• Participate in a Eucharistic procession.
• Attend daily Mass
• Choose something to do or learn from “Eucharistic Miracles Stories and Activities“
•  Read:
  • The Weight of a Mass read by the Sisters of Saint Francis of Perpetual Adoration or another faith-based book from Storybook Corner.
  • Father Ben Gets Ready for Mass read by Fr. Bart in Madison, WI
  • One of the many, many other books that help children foster an understanding of and devotion to the Eucharist.

Watch the following from formed.org – Many parishes in our diocese offer a free formed subscription. To see if your parish is one, visit formed.org/signup

• “The Eucharist as Sacrifice and Communion” found on formed.org. (8 min)
• “The Eucharist for Little Children” found on formed.org. (20 min)
• Brother Francis Cartoon: “The Bread of Life: Celebrating the Eucharist!” (28 Min)

• “Eucharistic Concert” from April 23, 2023 at St. Pius X, Granger.
• “Real Presence,” a Theology on Tap Talk by Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades 
• “Why is the Eucharist a Mystery?” from Truth in Charity with Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades 
• “Why is the Eucharist a Sacrifice?” from Truth in Charity with Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades 
• “Why Do We Believe in the True Presence?” from Truth in Charity with Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades 
• “What Does True Presence Mean?” from Truth in Charity with Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades 
• “The Eucharist: Communion with Jesus” from Truth in Charity with Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades 
• “The Eucharist: Communion with the Church” from Truth in Charity with Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades 
• National Eucharistic Congress talks – listen to the replays from EWTN

• “The Eucharist: the New Manna from Heaven” by Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades
• “The Mystery of the Eucharist in the Life of the Church” by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops 
• Ecclesia de Eucharistia, an encyclical letter by St. Pope John Paul II
• Sacramentum Caritatis, an encyclical letter by Pope Benedict XVI
• Read and meditate on these scripture passages: John, Chapter 6, Matthew 26:17-30, Acts 2:42, 1 Corinthians 10:16-22, 1 Corinthians 11:20-34
• Read the National Eucharistic Revival blog

• Eucharistic Formation Day talks with Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades. Each of the three talks is roughly one hour.
• National Eucharistic Congress talks – watch the replays from EWTN
• Watch one of the many free video resources from learn.eucharisticrevival.org/browse 
• “Learn How to Embrace the Gift of the Eucharist” with Bishop Andrew Cozzens. This two-hour course presents on the incredible reality of the Real Presence. 
• “The Veil Removed” is a short film that reveals the coming together of heaven and earth at Mass.
• “Lectio: Eucharist” is a course by Dr. Brant Pitre. There are 10 lessons, each of which lasts ≈10-15 minutes.
• “After Holy Communion, Do This!” is a two-minute lesson on thanksgiving after Communion.  

You can be a Eucharistic Missionary. 

Learn what the church teaches about the precious gift of the Most Holy Eucharist and discover practical ways to share this with those in your community.

View here

“The Church is an evangelizer, but she begins by being evangelized herself. She is the community of believers, the community of hope lived and communicated, the community of brotherly love, and she needs to listen unceasingly to what she must believe, to her reasons for hoping, to the new commandment of love. She is the People of God immersed in the world, and often tempted by idols, and she always needs to hear the proclamation of the ‘mighty works of God’ which converted her to the Lord; she always needs to be called together afresh by Him and reunited. In brief, this means that she has a constant need of being evangelized, if she wishes to retain freshness, vigor and strength in order to proclaim the Gospel. The Second Vatican Council recalled and the 1974 Synod vigorously took up again this theme of the Church which is evangelized by constant conversion and renewal, in order to evangelize the world with credibility.” – Pope St. Pope Paul VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi 15

“Those who sincerely accept the Good News, through the power of this acceptance and of shared faith therefore gather together in Jesus’ name in order to seek together the kingdom, build it up and live it. They make up a community which is in its turn evangelizing. The command to the Twelve to go out and proclaim the Good News is also valid for all Christians, though in a different way. It is precisely for this reason that Peter calls Christians ‘a people set apart to sing the praises of God,’ those marvelous things that each one was able to hear in his own language. Moreover, the Good News of the kingdom which is coming and which has begun is meant for all people of all times. Those who have received the Good News and who have been gathered by it into the community of salvation can and must communicate and spread it.” – Pope St. Paul VI, Evangelli Nuntiandi 13

“The specific character of catechesis, as distinct from the initial conversion – bringing proclamation of the Gospel, has the twofold objective of maturing the initial faith and of educating the true disciple of Christ by means of a deeper and more systematic knowledge of the person and the message of our Lord Jesus Christ.

But in catechetical practice, this model order must allow for the fact that the initial evangelization has often not taken place. A certain number of children baptized in infancy come for catechesis in the parish without receiving any other initiation into the faith and still without any explicit personal attachment to Jesus Christ; they only have the capacity to believe placed within them by Baptism and the presence of the Holy Spirit; and opposition is quickly created by the prejudices of their non-Christian family background or of the positivist spirit of their education. In addition, there are other children who have not been baptized and whose parents agree only at a later date to religious education: for practical reasons, the catechumenal stage of these children will often be carried out largely in the course of the ordinary catechesis. Again, many pre-adolescents and adolescents who have been baptized and been given a systematic catechesis and the sacraments still remain hesitant for a long time about committing their whole lives to Jesus Christ – if, moreover, they do not attempt to avoid religious education in the name of their freedom. Finally, even adults are not safe from temptations to doubt or to abandon their faith, especially as a result of their unbelieving surroundings. This means that ‘catechesis’ must often concern itself not only with nourishing and teaching the faith, but also with arousing it unceasingly with the help of grace, with opening the heart, with converting, and with preparing total adherence to Jesus Christ on the part of those who are still on the threshold of faith. This concern will in part decide the tone, the language and the method of catechesis.” – Pope St. John Paul II, Catechesi Tradendae 19

“Christ, the great Prophet, who proclaimed the Kingdom of His Father both by the testimony of His life and the power of His words, continually fulfills His prophetic office until the complete manifestation of glory. He does this not only through the hierarchy who teach in His name and with His authority, but also through the laity whom He made His witnesses and to whom He gave understanding of the faith (sensu fidei) and an attractiveness in speech so that the power of the Gospel might shine forth in their daily social and family life. They conduct themselves as children of the promise, and thus strong in faith and in hope they make the most of the present, and with patience await the glory that is to come. Let them not, then, hide this hope in the depths of their hearts, but even in the program of their secular life let them express it by a continual conversion and by wrestling ‘against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness’.

Just as the sacraments of the New Law, by which the life and the apostolate of the faithful are nourished, prefigure a new heaven and a new earth, so too the laity go forth as powerful proclaimers of a faith in things to be hoped for, when they courageously join to their profession of faith a life springing from faith. This evangelization, that is, this announcing of Christ by a living testimony as well as by the spoken word, takes on a specific quality and a special force in that it is carried out in the ordinary surroundings of the world.

In connection with the prophetic function is that state of life which is sanctified by a special sacrament obviously of great importance, namely, married and family life. For where Christianity pervades the entire mode of family life, and gradually transforms it, one will find there both the practice and an excellent school of the lay apostolate. In such a home husbands and wives find their proper vocation in being witnesses of the faith and love of Christ to one another and to their children. The Christian family loudly proclaims both the present virtues of the Kingdom of God and the hope of a blessed life to come. Thus by its example and its witness it accuses the world of sin and enlightens those who seek the truth.

Consequently, even when preoccupied with temporal cares, the laity can and must perform a work of great value for the evangelization of the world. For even if some of them have to fulfill their religious duties on their own, when there are no sacred ministers or in times of persecution; and even if many of them devote all their energies to apostolic work; still it remains for each one of them to cooperate in the external spread and the dynamic growth of the Kingdom of Christ in the world. Therefore, let the laity devotedly strive to acquire a more profound grasp of revealed truth, and let them insistently beg of God the gift of wisdom.” –  Lumen Gentium (Decree of the Second Vatican Council on the Church), 35

“In virtue of their baptism, all the members of the People of God have become missionary disciples (cf. Mt 28:19). All the baptized, whatever their position in the Church or their level of instruction in the faith, are agents of evangelization, and it would be insufficient to envisage a plan of evangelization to be carried out by professionals while the rest of the faithful would simply be passive recipients. The new evangelization calls for personal involvement on the part of each of the baptized. Every Christian is challenged, here and now, to be actively engaged in evangelization; indeed, anyone who has truly experienced God’s saving love does not need much time or lengthy training to go out and proclaim that love. Every Christian is a missionary to the extent that he or she has encountered the love of God in Christ Jesus: we no longer say that we are ‘disciples’ and ‘missionaries’, but rather that we are always ‘missionary disciples’. If we are not convinced, let us look at those first disciples, who, immediately after encountering the gaze of Jesus, went forth to proclaim him joyfully: ‘We have found the Messiah!’ (Jn 1:41). The Samaritan woman became a missionary immediately after speaking with Jesus and many Samaritans come to believe in him ‘because of the woman’s testimony’ (Jn 4:39). So too, Saint Paul, after his encounter with Jesus Christ, ‘immediately proclaimed Jesus’ (Acts 9:20; cf. 22:6-21). So what are we waiting for?” – Pope Francis, Evangelli Gaudium, 120

“In catechesis too, we have rediscovered the fundamental role of the first announcement or kerygma, which needs to be the center of all evangelizing activity and all efforts at Church renewal. The kerygma is trinitarian. The fire of the Spirit is given in the form of tongues and leads us to believe in Jesus Christ who, by his death and resurrection, reveals and communicates to us the Father’s infinite mercy. On the lips of the catechist the first proclamation must ring out over and over: ‘Jesus Christ loves you; he gave his life to save you; and now he is living at your side every day to enlighten, strengthen and free you. ‘This first proclamation is called ‘first’ not because it exists at the beginning and can then be forgotten or replaced by other more important things. It is first in a qualitative sense because it is the principal proclamation, the one which we must hear again and again in different ways, the one which we must announce one way or another throughout the process of catechesis, at every level and moment. For this reason too, ‘the priest – like every other member of the Church – ought to grow in awareness that he himself is continually in need of being evangelized’. – Pope Francis, Evangelli Gaudium, 164

“Friendship with Jesus will also lead you to bear witness to the faith wherever you are, even when it meets with rejection or indifference. We cannot encounter Christ and not want to make him known to others. So do not keep Christ to yourselves! Share with others the joy of your faith. The world needs the witness of your faith, it surely needs God. I think that the presence here of so many young people, coming from all over the world, is a wonderful proof of the fruitfulness of Christ’s command to the Church: ‘Go into all the world and proclaim the Gospel to the whole creation’ (Mk 16:15). You too have been given the extraordinary task of being disciples and missionaries of Christ in other lands and countries filled with young people who are looking for something greater and, because their heart tells them that more authentic values do exist, they do not let themselves be seduced by the empty promises of a lifestyle which has no room for God”  – Pope Benedict XVI,  Homily for World Youth Day, 2011.

“Since, like all the Christian faithful, lay persons are designated by God for the apostolate through baptism and confirmation, they are bound by the general obligation and possess the right as individuals, or joined in associations, to work so that the divine message of salvation is made known and accepted by all persons everywhere in the world. This obligation is even more compelling in those circumstances in which only through them can people hear the gospel and know Christ.” – Code of Canon Law, Canon 225