When Frances Webber and Ace Acuña stepped onto the road for the 2025 National Eucharistic Pilgrimage, they didn’t know exactly what awaited them — only that Jesus would be at the center of it all.
As two of the “perpetual pilgrims” on this summer’s St. Katharine Drexel Route, they traveled for five weeks with the Blessed Sacrament from Indianapolis to Los Angeles, joining thousands of Catholics in prayer and procession. They encountered joy, sorrow, late nights, early mornings, roadside sandwiches, moments of grace and moments of opposition.
For Webber, a convert to Catholicism and a missionary with Saint Paul’s Outreach, the pilgrimage deepened her belief in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.
“I’ve always believed in the true presence (of Christ in the Eucharist),” she told Our Sunday Visitor, “but it’s one thing to say the Eucharist is (his) body, blood, soul and divinity — and another to live your whole day next to him.”
And that’s exactly what they did. Each day began early, usually around 6:30 a.m., and included Mass, Holy Hours and processions of varying lengths. Sometimes they circled a parish parking lot. Other times, they walked 6 or 7 miles through city streets. In between, they’d spend time in parish halls or host homes, writing thank-you notes, praying the Liturgy of the Hours and laughing together as a team. Christ was with them through it all — physically present in a tabernacle built into the team’s van.
“We were just doing ordinary things like eating, talking, napping,” Webber said. And “he was right there with us.”
But when the pilgrimage ended June 22, they were left with a lingering question.
“It almost felt like the Ascension,” Acuña said. “You’ve been walking with him day after day, and suddenly you’re standing there wondering, now what?”
Keeping attention on Christ
Acuña described the pilgrimage as “a flurry of memories,” with each day full of unexpected grace. “We’d wake up in one city and fall asleep in another. What I remember most are the people — watching them drop to their knees as the procession arrived, some with tears in their eyes,” he said. “It showed how hungry people are for Jesus.”
That hunger mirrored the team’s own desire to know and follow Christ more deeply. For Acuña, one moment in the Diocese of Peoria set the tone for everything that followed.
“I was struck silent watching him pass by, and it felt like he was saying, ‘Just follow me,'” he said. “Not, ‘Be impressive,’ not ‘Fix everything.’ Just follow. That kept me grounded.”
Webber recalled a moment from their very first day, walking with a young boy named Liam during a procession in Kankakee, Illinois.
“He didn’t say a word, but he mimicked everything I did,” she said. “If I knelt, he knelt. If I bowed, he bowed. He even followed my finger along the words of evening prayer, even though he couldn’t read. He was encountering Jesus just by being open.”
But not every moment was joyful. In some cities, they met harsh protests, including direct insults and blasphemy shouted at the procession.
“The protesters were brutal at times,” Webber said. “It hurt to hear people mock Christ. But I kept remembering what our chaplain said: ‘To be transformed, you have to encounter the cross first.’ That sorrow became one of the most profound graces of my life.”
Acuña echoed the same sentiment. “It’s like the Mary and Martha moment,” he said. “You can be worried like Martha about logistics or be like Mary, sitting at his feet. Even in the chaos, he’s asking us to keep our eyes on him.”
‘We’re all pilgrims’
For both Webber and Acuña, the end of the pilgrimage and the return to normal life brought a kind of spiritual whiplash. But it was followed by a quiet realization.
“He promised to be with us until the end of time,” Acuña said. “That promise is fulfilled in every tabernacle in the world. You don’t have to go on pilgrimage to find him. He’s waiting in your parish.”
That shift in perspective has already changed their daily lives.
For Acuña, who’s been working in campus ministry since he graduated from college two years ago, it’s meant becoming more present at home, which requires intentionality after six years away.
“You want to change the world? Go home and love your family,” he said, quoting Mother Teresa. “That’s where revival begins. I’m trying to show up fully with the people closest to me, just like we did for strangers on the road.”
He plans to bring that perspective to the University of Chicago when he begins graduate school this fall.
Webber, who continues to serve in campus ministry, said the challenge now is to integrate her pilgrimage experience into a life that looks the same from the outside.
“My work, my friendships and my community haven’t changed — but I have,” she said. “A friend told me I’m just a freer version of who I was before. Now I’m asking what it means to live that freedom out loud.”
One simple ritual she’s carried forward: asking the pilgrimage team’s old question, “Where are we going?” and remembering the answer: “Heaven.”
“We’re all pilgrims,” she said. “The destination is the same.”
The journey may no longer involve long processions or daily adoration in a van, but the same Lord is still walking with them — and with each of us.
“You don’t have to travel across the country to meet Jesus,” Webber said. “He’s in your local tabernacle. He’s in the quiet. He’s in the ordinary. He’s still here and he’s still calling us to follow him.”
