The National Eucharistic Congress began in Indianapolis on Wednesday, with the first “Revival Session” featuring inspiring speakers. Sister of Life Bethany Madonna wrapped up the evening with the final keynote address, witnessing to the importance of faith and the beauty of repentance. She emphasized that God speaks to each of us through our struggles in order to draw us closer to him.

Sister Bethany first shared that she heard the Lord speak to her during an Ignatian-style meditation. While reflecting on the apostles’ “joy and amazement” (Luke 24:41) at the Resurrected Christ, she felt frustrated at their previous betrayal, challenging the apostles, “Wipe the smile off your face. … Where were you Friday?”

Instead of indulging judgment, she testified that Jesus approached her and recalled that “he said to me, kindly but firmly, ‘I am not like that.’” Sister Bethany explained, “Jesus accepts us where we are, but then he leads us to conversion. He brings us there.”

Her address focused on God’s ability to bring us to conversion through love. She highlighted additional stories of “where she saw God speak to someone,” as documented in a viral X thread by Patrick Neve (@catholicpat). 

She shared the story of a Broadway actor who was “on the brink of a massive reversion back to the Catholic faith of his childhood.” Yet he struggled with the acceptance of suffering, particularly the cross. When he asked God the Father why his Son had to suffer death on the cross, God responded in prayer, “When you love someone, you prove it.” 

The Sister of Life also reflected on God’s love, saying, “God proves his love for us in a thousand ways. Simply to be, to exist is to be loved. … God loved you and willed you into being: totally unique, unrepeatable, irreplaceable.” 

The National Eucharistic Congress, airing on EWTN on TV and via livestream, is an opportunity for thousands of Catholics — Lucas Oil Stadium held an estimated 50,000 attendees during Sister Bethany’s talk — to recognize God’s love present in the Eucharist.

Genevieve Pride, a young Catholic who tuned into the Eucharist Congress via livestream from Virginia, shared that “Sister Bethany has always been a heart I loved listening to. This speech touched me because of the emphasis on suffering. … I thought of the great joy that comes with sacrifice and how inviting Jesus into it brings a truth and love unfathomable.”

After a meditation on the journey of the disciples on the road to Emmaus, Sister Bethany shared that one of her fellow sisters was pained by a pregnant mother’s suffering. She testified that Christ brought to her mind the image of recently hatched sea turtles and how their difficult journey provides them with the strength to swim. She explained, “The struggle is necessary, and it prepares them for the world they’re meant to live in.” Suffering is not an obstacle to our faith, she said, but instead a testament to how we can unite ourselves and our daily experiences to the perfect sacrifice of the cross.

Alexandra Buchlmayer, a recent graduate of Holy Cross College in Notre Dame, Indiana, and aspirant with the Passionist Nuns in Whitesville, Kentucky, traveled to the National Eucharistic Congress and found Sister Bethany’s address deeply moving. She shared with the Register that “I loved her sea turtle analogy and found it incredibly relatable to our spiritual lives.” Their challenges are “akin to the suffering and purification process we must face before we can be prepared for heaven.”

Sister Bethany’s other accounts included a drug-addicted woman who heard Jesus speak to her in adoration and who now feels that they “sit together in silence and love each other,” as well as a personal experience of God speaking through the words of a priest. In a time of disappointment where an expectant mother stopped returning her calls, he advised the Sister of Life that if “Jesus is asleep in your boat … get him a pillow.” Sister Bethany described this “invitation to trust Him like I never had before” as an experience of Christ’s love and faithfulness.

Finally, she demonstrated how Christ speaks to each of us through the sacraments, recounting a story of a woman who had been “terrified of confession. … She’d suffered two abortions in her early days and had never confessed.” Yet, after 29 years, she received the sacramentof reconciliation and, through the words of the priest, heard the Lord welcoming her home as he “put his hands down as if picking up a lamb and putting it on his shoulders.” The following day at Mass, she testified, as Sister Bethany related, that she recognized Christ in the Eucharist.

The importance of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist motivated Mary Elizabeth Stern, a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and an incoming law student at Notre Dame Law School, to attend the congress. “I am so energetic to see the people of my generation, Gen Z, to draw closer to Jesus and understand this true act of radical love … that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and is brought to us when we receive the Eucharist,” she told the Register.

Sister Bethany’s speech invigorated and encouraged attendees. Buchlmayer is hopeful for the congress’s long-lasting impact on the Church in the U.S., explaining, “The NEC has been infusing the faithful, lay and religious alike, with the deep nuptial love of the Eucharist … the Love who draws us in, sends us out again.”

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