When she first joined the Serra Club, then director of vocations for the archdiocese of Toronto Fr. Larry Marcille hosted an “Evening Watch” with the Eucharist on the first Friday of the month. He would bring seminarians and invite the general public to join them as they prayed for vocations. By 2005, Evening Watch was discontinued. That is when Milburn felt called to bring it back.

“I prayed and I approached (the pastor) at St. Martin de Porres Church in January 2006 to see if he would allow us to host eucharistic adoration for vocations,” she said.

He agreed and in the next year eucharistic adoration travelled from parish to parish across the archdiocese.

“We would go all over the place — rain or shine we are there to do this program,” she said.

At first, there would only be a half-dozen worshippers praying alongside her and fellow volunteer Patrick Hogan.

“I would say ‘Lord it doesn’t matter if there’s five or six, here we are.’ ”

After attending the Eucharistic Congress in Quebec City in 2008, Milburn returned to Toronto filled with hope, and within the next few months began receiving phone calls from priests asking her when she would co-ordinate eucharistic adoration for vocations in their parish. It helped that they also gained a monstrance blessed by Pope Benedict XVI specifically given out to help promote devotion to the Eucharist.

“When I got all the response, I felt all serene inside that God answered my prayer,” she said.

Now, she proudly makes her way to St. Patrick’s parish in Toronto twice a month, where 60 to 100 worshippers join her in the rosary, intercessions for vocations, the litany of the Sacred Heart, Benediction and of course reflection time with silence.

On the second Sunday of every month, she joins anywhere from 20 to 60 students from York University at St. Bernard’s parish.

At her parish of St. Boniface, she sees a regular group of about 25 people on the first Sunday of every month.

At St. Basil’s parish, on the first Friday of each month, she is joined in adoration by nuns, students, parishioners, Jesuit scholars and other types that inhabit the University of Toronto campus.

Besides these regular occurrences, eucharistic adorations she has hosted at other parishes recently have drawn up to 350 parishioners at once.
“I’m just excited about it all,” she said.

With the increase in prayer, she is convinced that vocations are increasing, especially with the doubling in numbers of discerning men at Serra House this year. Serra House is a place of reflection and discernment for men considering a vocation to the priesthood in the archdiocese.