If there was ever a group ready to burst out in praise, it was the 600 or so African Catholics who gathered at The Catholic University of America for the fourth African National Eucharistic Congress.

Nearly a half-hour before the start of the opening Mass July 21, the worship space for the congress was more than half full. In mere moments, participants would clap their hands in rhythm and sway, mostly in place, to worship and praise music before the Mass.

When Father Kingsley Owuchi gave a roll call of African nations, the Nigerian contingent was undisputedly the loudest group at the congress, the theme of which was “A Response to the Lord’s Prayer, ‘That They May All Be One.’”

Both before and during Mass, the air was punctuated with the familiar call-and-response, “God is good.” “All the time.”

The joyful dancing and singing did not end with the start of the Mass, although it was possible some in the assembly were tiring by the end of the two-hours-plus liturgy, what the combination of the late hour and jet lag. But for those who could keep on going, there was Eucharistic Adoration afterward, and the sacrament of reconciliation in both English and French.

An 11-minute entrance processional was highlighted by the South African hymn “We Are Dancing in the Light of God,” with verses in four languages. The Gloria featured ululation – a long, loud wavering sound during which the tongue is in motion but the lips never close.

There was even a five-minute procession with African drumming, alerting worshipers to the fact that Scripture was about to be proclaimed.

The Mass was celebrated by Bishop Jerome Feudjio of the Diocese of St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Bishop Feudjio, who is from Cameroon, is the first African-born priest to serve as the bishop of a U.S. diocese. One of the seven concelebrants, and the homilist was Bishop Wolfgang Pisa of the Diocese of Lindi, Tanzania, who was a seminary classmate of Bishop Feudjio's in 1977.

“We are all invited to draw from the Eucharist,” Bishop Pisa said in his homily, adding that, as Jesus said, “we are to be in the world, but not to be part of the world.” Instead, the Christian's call is to “be part of the missionary life of the church.”

The Eucharist, Bishop Pisa said, is “a blessing for the life of the universal Church. ... The Eucharist is experiencing the presence of the Lord.”

Moreover, he noted, “the Eucharist is the graciously given gift of the Lord to our lives” and “the salvation of humanity.”

Other concelebrants at the Mass were Cardinal-designate Christophe Pierre, the Vatican’s apostolic nuncio to the United States; Bishop Jaime Soto of Sacramento, California; retired Bishop John Ricard of Pensacola-Tallahassee, Florida; Auxiliary Bishop Eusebio Elizondo of Seattle; and Bishop Hyacinth Egbebo of Bomadi, Nigeria.