The island was never meant to be the destination.

St. Clement’s was the threshold.

Within days of celebrating that first Mass, the settlers crossed the river again and began establishing a permanent settlement along the shoreline that would become St. Mary’s City.

Now the dream would be tested.

Not in declarations or constitutions, but in mud, timber, weather, work…and the complicated reality of human beings trying to live together.

The land was already home to the Yaocomico and other Native peoples whose knowledge of its waterways, seasons, and resources would prove critical to the survival of the newcomers.

Trees were felled. Fields were planted. Rough buildings rose among the forests.

And somewhere within that fragile settlement, Catholic life began to take root.

A priest carried what he needed to celebrate Mass along woodland paths. A chapel slowly emerged. Children learned their prayers without fear.

Things that might appear ordinary to us today were anything but ordinary then.

Because before religious liberty could be protected in law, it first had to be lived—in small, vulnerable places where its survival was anything but certain.

Part II of Before the Nation Drew Its First Breath moves beyond the island and into the fragile experiment beginning along the Maryland shoreline.

ENTER PART II: THE SHORE BEYOND THE ISLAND

Part III, When the Dream Met History, arrives Thursday, August 6.

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You have my heartfelt thanks for your generosity and support, and please keep me in your prayers, and know of mine for each of you. God Bless, Jeff

Several years ago, I pushed a kayak into the Potomac River and aimed it toward St. Clement’s Island.

The island looked close.

It wasn’t.

What followed was a crossing I’ll never forget…and the beginning of a journey into a story that unfolded nearly four centuries before I ever touched the water.

On March 25, 1634, two ships arrived off the shore of that small island carrying more than settlers.

They carried faith.

They carried hope.

And they carried the fragile beginnings of an idea that would eventually help shape the nation itself.

Today, I’m releasing Part I of Before the Nation Drew Its First Breath, a new five-part words-and-pictures series exploring the overlooked Catholic origins of religious liberty in America.

This is also something of an experiment.

The story doesn’t live here on Substack. Instead, I’ve created an immersive, cinematic home for it. One designed to bring you into the wind, the water, the uncertainty, and the extraordinary events that began unfolding along the Potomac nearly four hundred years ago.

And it begins with a crossing.

ENTER PART I: THE CROSSING

Part II, The Shore Beyond the Island, arrives Monday, August 3.

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You have my heartfelt thanks for your generosity and support, and please keep me in your prayers, and know of mine for each of you. God Bless, Jeff

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Today, July 28, 2026, marks the third unofficial anniversary of the day I truly began publishing on Substack.

It’s been three years of stumbling along…learning to write, photograph, and find my way through stories that I’ve had the unbelievable privilege to cover.

There were the big ones…

The Conclave. The National Eucharistic Pilgrimages. Ordinations. Final vows.

There were the stories closer to home…

Ribbon cuttings. American Catholic history. The lives of the saints. Hometown events.

And there were the quieter ones…

And the reflections of a guy who has been on an unexpected journey through faith and life.

And it’s certainly been an adventure.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:

When you surrender your life to Christ…hang on.

It’ll be wild.

And it’ll be amazing.

I’d like to offer my profound thanks to all of you who subscribe. Thank you for your prayers, your messages, and your support.

And to the 106 paying subscribers… you know who you are… you are a tremendous part of what makes it possible for me to continue telling these stories.

Thank you.

From the bottom of my heart…thank you.

There are several big projects in the works, one of which will be released this coming Thursday.

It’s an experiment in visual storytelling unlike anything I’ve ever attempted before. It’s immersive. It’s cinematic. And it traces the origins of religious liberty in America back to one of my favorite places on earth.

St. Clement’s Island.

It’s meant to be a lasting piece, something that will hopefully serve as a touchstone for anyone wondering how the nation's early Catholics played a critical role in establishing the religious liberty we enjoy today.

So stay tuned.

But in gratitude of this third anniversary, I’d like to return to the piece that marked my first real attempt to begin this whole thing.

I’d actually written it the summer before, while sitting on the beach. And it was written while reading the manuscript of Sister Mary Magadalene OP which now famously is a book. But I had almost no confidence in it so I put it away.

And nearly a year passed.

Then in the weeks leading up to July 2023, as I began again seriously considering whether I could do this, I found it again.

I read it.

And I thought:

“What the heck? Time to roll the dice…”

So I published it.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

So once again, thank you for all of your messages, prayers, and support; it means the world to me. And know of my prayers for each and every one of you.

God Bless,

Jeff

Oh, and here’s that first piece :-)

Thanks for reading! This is a truly independent, reader-supported periodical. Your support is crucial. If you are able, please consider a paid subscription or making a ‘Patron of the Arts’ donation of any amount. By doing so, you are not just supporting this effort; you’re a vital part of this mission.

You have my heartfelt thanks for your generosity and support, and please keep me in your prayers, and know of mine for each of you. God Bless, Jeff

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Sunday Morning.

I sat alone in my tiny office with the windows thrown open, watching the new day begin. The early sun climbed into a clear Marian-blue sky. A pair of seagulls, arguing or trading jokes, I couldn’t tell, filled the silence with their calls, while a warm breeze bent the branches where the squirrels who devoured my wife’s basil plants had made their home.

After weeks of intensity, the travel, the articles, the events, the constant movement, I found myself simply grateful for the stillness.

As I prayed the Morning Prayer, my thoughts kept returning to the GIVEN Institute Women’s Leadership Forum. There was a spiritual depth unlike anything I had encountered before. At its heart was something both profoundly simple and endlessly rich: our identity begins not with what we do, but with who we are before God.

For the women gathered there, it was an invitation to receive the Father’s love as beloved daughters, then to let every vocation, every relationship, and every act of service flow from that gift.

More than once, conversations turned to a question I asked almost instinctively: “Does something like this exist for men?”

The answers usually came with a smile and a shrug. “If there’s not… there ought to be!”

The question lingered long after I left Washington. But another soon rose behind it: What would it actually look like to live every part of life from the gift of God’s love? To let every relationship, every decision, every joy and every sorrow flow from Him instead of from ourselves?

I sort of understood the idea. But I wasn’t sure I understood how to live it.

Then, during prayer, six familiar words came quietly to mind: Through Him, and with Him, and in Him.

We’ve heard them countless times at the conclusion of the Eucharistic Prayer. But this time, I heard them differently. Not only as the words the priest prayed as he held high the Blessed Sacrament and Precious Blood, but as an invitation.

To live…

Through Him, with Him, in Him.

To enter our work…

Through Him, with Him, in Him.

To love our families…

Through Him, with Him, in Him.

To endure every cross…

Through Him, with Him, in Him.

Every decision.

Every joy.

Every heartache.

Through Him, with Him, in Him.

Everything.

Through Him, with Him, in Him.

The question I had carried for weeks suddenly became wonderfully simple. Perhaps the Christian life isn’t first about trying harder. Perhaps it’s about learning, little by little, to live every moment through Christ, with Christ, and in Christ.

Those words, born of the heart of St. Paul’s theology, became something more than the conclusion of the Liturgy of the Eucharist. They became a prayer. A way of seeing. A way of living.

Because when we live through Him, with Him, and in Him, we don’t lose ourselves. We become fully alive. Truly free. And we finally discover who we were created to be.

Each of the events of the past several weeks had its lessons.

But this one…

This one could change everything.

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You have my heartfelt thanks for your generosity and support, and please keep me in your prayers, and know of mine for each of you. God Bless, Jeff

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Editors Note: This is a satire piece. Repeat, it’s satire. It may not be any good, but it’s still satire. That being said, it’s all 100% true ;-)

Every now and then, it’s a good, maybe even necessary, idea to get off the highway of life.

Pull onto the service road.

Maybe even a rest stop.

And just… park.

I’ve been blessed to travel the world, encountering the life of the Church in ways I never could have imagined. And I’ll say this: for every journey, every assignment, every event… there are a thousand stories.

The problem is, it would take a thousand lifetimes to tell them all.

Partly because there are so many… and partly because I have a tendency to turn even the simplest moment into something resembling a short novel.

But every so often, there’s a story that feels just a little too outlandish to tell. The kind you keep to yourself… because you’re fairly certain no one would believe it anyway.

This is one of those stories.

It began in the vast, open expanse of Wadi Rum in Jordan.

We were moving across the desert in a convoy of aging 4x4s. Engines straining, tires carving their way through the red sand. The landscape rolled endlessly in every direction, carved by wind and time into something that felt less like geography and more like a prehistoric era.

And then, without warning, a storm came.

A fast-moving wall of wind and sand, bearing down on us with surprising speed. Within moments, we were swallowed by it—visibility gone, air thick, the world reduced to sound and force.

And in the middle of it…

My hat.

My beloved Yankees cap, worn, broken in, carried with me through more assignments than I can count, was ripped clean from my head and carried off by the wind.

I remember yelling after it.

Actually yelling.

Into a desert that, quite frankly, didn’t care.

The storm passed as quickly as it came. The wind moved on. The sky returned.

But the hat was gone.

Lost… quite literally… to the sands of time.

The rest of the day had a certain heaviness to it. My hair, now fully exposed to the elements, did me no favors. And there’s something about losing an object like that; not valuable, not irreplaceable… but yours…and that stings more than you’d realize.

As the days passed, I made my peace with it.

Or at least… I thought I had.

We eventually made our way to Aqaba, on the edge of the Red Sea.

From the shoreline, you can see across the water, faint outlines of a distant land, ships moving quietly along the horizon. It’s a place that carries history in a way few other places do.

The following day, we set out by boat.

The plan was simple: a dive along the reef.

The water was clear, breathtakingly so. Sunlight filtered down in long, shifting columns, illuminating coral and movement and color in a way that feels otherworldly.

And somewhere in the back of my mind, I couldn’t help but think about it.

These waters…
The parting of them...
The stories attached to it…

So, naturally… I began looking.

Not seriously, of course.

But you don’t drop into the Red Sea without at least entertaining the thought:

What if?

A chariot wheel. A piece of armor. Anything that might suggest that the stories we’ve heard… touched this place in some tangible way.

Of course, countless experts have searched these waters with far more training, far better equipment, and significantly more credibility than I possess.

They’ve found nothing.

But I didn’t see that as a reason not to look.

I was moving slowly along the seabed when I saw it.

Partially buried.

Just enough exposed to catch the eye.

At first, it didn’t make sense.

The shape was… familiar. But out of context. Out of place.

I moved closer.

The water shifted slightly with each movement, the sand lifting and settling again.

And then it became clear.

It was a hat.

A baseball cap.

Blue.

Worn… but intact.

I paused there for a moment, hovering just above it.

Because something about it didn’t add up.

The condition.
The location.
The… presence of it.

I reached down and lifted it gently from the sand.

Turned it slightly in my hand.

There was no logo.

No identifying mark.

Just a simple blue cap… preserved in a way that, at the very least, raised questions.

And it was somewhere in that moment, suspended between curiosity and confusion, that a thought began to form.

One I initially dismissed.

Then reconsidered.

And finally… accepted as the only reasonable conclusion.

We know, from countless depictions, that Moses was not lacking in hair.

We also know, through simple lived experience, the value of a hat in desert conditions.

The sun.
The glare.
The distance.

It stands to reason.

And while the absence of a logo may initially seem problematic… a brief consideration of the timeline resolves this rather quickly.

The Yankees, after all, did not yet exist.

Which, if anything, strengthens the argument.

Because what we are left with… is a blue cap.

And given the available data… it is difficult to arrive at any other conclusion.

I brought it back with me.

Naturally.

I considered, briefly, making a formal announcement. Sharing the discovery. Allowing it to be examined, studied… properly understood.

But given the potential implications, I thought it best to proceed carefully.

So I began quietly reaching out to a number of museums.

Curators. Institutions tasked with preserving history.

The response was… unexpected.

Some declined outright.

Others suggested somewhat strongly that I stop contacting them.

One or two implied that I might benefit from professional help.

Which, to be fair, is a recommendation I think we could all take seriously from time to time.

You should see the condition of my lawn.

And the roof, at the moment, is not what I would call encouraging.

Still… I couldn’t help but feel a certain disappointment.

To be in possession of something of this magnitude… and to be met with such resistance.

Particularly when you consider the secondary implication…

That we now have what could reasonably be described as early evidence of plastic use dating back to roughly 1400 BC.

Which, in its own way, raises just as many questions.

I’ve spent some time considering alternative explanations.

That it may belong to another diver.
A tourist.
Someone who simply lost a hat in an inconvenient place.

These are, of course, possibilities.

But I find them… lacking.

So for now, the hat remains with me.

A quiet reminder that history is not always as settled as we’d like to believe.

And that sometimes, the things we lose… have a way of returning.

Just… not always in the way we expect.

And if any part of this account has caused you concern, I would humbly ask you to consider becoming a paid subscriber.

Your support will go directly toward ensuring that I receive the professional help many would argue is long overdue.

Thanks for reading! This is a truly independent, reader-supported periodical. Your support is crucial. If you are able, please consider a paid subscription or making a ‘Patron of the Arts’ donation of any amount. By doing so, you are not just supporting this effort; you’re a vital part of this mission.

You have my heartfelt thanks for your generosity and support, and please keep me in your prayers, and know of mine for each of you. God Bless, Jeff

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“And now, back to our originally scheduled programming…”

108.

At least that’s what my car told me the temperature was.

Well, at least it’s consistent.

After all, it was 101 in St. Augustine when the 2026 National Eucharistic Pilgrimage kicked off. And at every stop I’d covered along the way, it was either north of 90, or raining, or both.

There was Savannah. Rain-soaked, swampy Savannah. There, as the pilgrimage moved through sheets of rain and Southern humidity, the road stripped away any illusion that this was simply a beautiful Catholic event. Wet socks, soaked shirts, fogged lenses, and water running down ones back have a way of clarifying things.

Anyone can walk when the weather’s pleasant.

But it takes a pilgrim to keep walking when comfort’s left the room.

Baltimore brought the rain again. In the nation’s first Catholic diocese, with the old stones of Catholic America underfoot, the pilgrimage moved through water, prayer, history, and the particular peace that rain brings to city streets.

And in Annapolis, the procession began in rain and ended in sunset adoration beneath a rainbow which seemed like a gift, or perhaps a brief reprieve.

Rain has a way of stripping an event down to its essentials. The decorum relaxes. The polished edges disappear. People stop worrying about looking dignified and start helping one another keep going.

Then came Washington, D.C., and the return of the heat. In the capital, where marble and monuments seem designed to project permanence, the day became another lesson in human frailty as pilgrims once again endured the sweltering heat.

So by the time the Pilgrimage reached Philadelphia on Independence Day weekend, all I could do was smile. 108.

The city had canceled its big parade for America’s 250th. Streets that would normally be overflowing with tourists sat empty and still beneath the burning summer sun. But the pilgrims came.

And it became crystal clear that the weather wasn’t an interruption to the story.

It was part of the story.

And a very distinct reminder that a pilgrimage isn’t a vacation.

It’s an act of love made visible through effort.

For three years, the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage has made that effort visible across the American landscape. Across cities and deserts, bridges and fields, mission churches and cathedrals, highways and coastlines, the Eucharist has moved through the country not as a symbol, but as the living Presence of Jesus Christ.

That’s why its arrival in Philadelphia on Independence Day weekend felt so fitting.

At the Independence Day Mass at the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, Bishop Keith Chylinski, an auxiliary bishop of Philadelphia, spoke of a nation founded by courageous men and women who dreamed of liberty. But he also pointed beyond any merely civic understanding of freedom.

Freedom, he said, is not simply the ability to do as one pleases. The Church sees something deeper: an interior freedom rooted in Christ. A freedom that makes us capable of love, forgiveness, peace, and seeing the dignity of every person.

That’s the freedom that Jesus Christ offers.

And it’s the freedom every nation needs.

America knows how to celebrate its founders. Their names are carved into stone, repeated in speeches, preserved in paintings, and taught to children.

And on the streets of Philadelphia, at the end of three years of Eucharistic pilgrimages across the nation, the question isn’t only what America has been.

It’s what America is willing to become.

A country can receive many gifts on its birthday. It can receive fireworks, concerts, speeches, medals, parades, and pageantry.

But a nation that receives Christ receives the one gift that doesn’t fade when the music ends, when the flags are folded, when the crowds go home, and when the heat finally breaks.

It receives the One who is still pursuing it.

The One from Whom all freedom flows.

And the only One who can heal what we have broken, gather what we have divided, and take our highest ideals and make them flourish.

The only One who can turn “One Nation Under God” from a phrase we recite into a reality we live.

The Lord who has crossed bridges, deserts, fields, cities, rivers, rainstorms, coastlines, and overheated streets in the Blessed Sacrament isn’t finished pursuing the nation He loves.

He is still walking with us and is offering us the Greatest Gift of all.

Himself.

So, Happy 250th, America.

May your best days lie ahead, as truly one nation under God, because with Him, your greatness knows no bounds.

A few photos from the weekend…

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You have my heartfelt thanks for your generosity and support, and please keep me in your prayers, and know of mine for each of you. God Bless, Jeff

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Her bark was louder than I expected.

It was also one of the least expected sounds I thought I’d hear at the GIVEN Institute Forum.

It came from the stage.

And it was directed at me.

Apparently, my “stealthy” approach toward the foot of the stage caught her eye. Lucy, the gentle canine companion of Jackie Mulligan, responded in proper dogspeak with a hearty bark.

Jackie paused her presentation long enough to reassure her.

“Lucy, Jeff’s my friend,” she said.

The room erupted in laughter.

Lucy reconsidered, wagged her tail, and licked my hand.

Of all the stories one might expect to encounter at a Catholic women’s leadership forum, this would probably rank near the bottom of the list. But if nothing else, it was a reminder that the faith life is full of surprises, and never dull.

Yet in contrast to Lucy’s bark and the laughter that followed, another sound seemed to tell a deeper story of the Forum: the cries of infants, carried by mothers who had come to take part in the gathering.

They weren’t loud enough to interrupt the proceedings, but they were clear enough to be noticed. And once noticed, hard to forget.

As a man covering a Catholic women’s leadership conference, I knew I was standing at a slight angle to the event. I was there to photograph, listen, observe, and tell the story, but I wasn’t experiencing the Forum in the same way as the women gathered there. But that distance became a kind of gift allowing me to notice more closely the things that were happening in the room. The infants as they rested in their mothers' loving embrace, the gaze of those who followed along intently with the speakers, and the tears of those with their hearts outstretched to Christ in prayer.

So many of the talks kept returning to the same place: before mission, identity; before leadership, love; before giving, receiving. That word receiving seemed to echo throughout the Forum. It is, after all, embedded in the very name of the gathering…GIVEN.

The name is more than a title. It points to a way of seeing the Christian life. A gift is not seized or manufactured. It’s received. And once received, it can be offered.

Again and again, women were invited to recognize their lives as gifts already entrusted to them. Their womanhood, their talents, their vocations, and even the wounds Christ longs to heal. The invitation was not to become someone else, but to receive who God had created them to be.

In a culture that encourages people to constantly reinvent themselves, GIVEN proposed something far more radical: receive your life from God, and then make of it a gift.

Mary stood at the heart of that vision.

Her leadership began not with ambition but with her yes to God. She received Christ before carrying Him into the world. It’s a model of leadership that often goes unnoticed because it reveals itself through humility, trust, perseverance, and love.

Perhaps that’s why the babies in the room felt so profound. Their cries weren’t interruptions; they were reminders that leadership is ultimately about persons.

It’s about love made visible.

The many women religious present revealed another expression of that same truth. Motherhood is not only biological. There’s a profound spiritual motherhood, the work of nurturing souls through prayer, sacrifice, encouragement, and faithful presence.

The Forum wasn’t presenting a baptized version of worldly ambition. It offered another path: a woman leads by first receiving the love of Christ, allowing that love to transform her, and then giving it away in service to others.

Seen this way, the Forum’s vision of leadership wasn’t a departure from womanhood, but a deeper entry into it.

As a man, that was humbling to witness. It made me wonder how often I’ve misunderstood strength because I was looking for force, or leadership because I was looking for command, or motherhood because I reduced it to only one expression rather than seeing it as a profound spiritual reality woven through the lives of women in countless ways.

Even Lucy, in her own doglike way, seemed to belong to that lesson. She hadn’t arrived as part of a carefully designed apostolic strategy. She was an unexpected gift. And like many unexpected gifts, she revealed something that couldn’t have been planned: presence, play, unconditional love.

At a women’s leadership forum, that might sound like a charming aside.

It was more than that.

Those aren’t distractions from mission. They may be among the things that make mission human.

By the time Lucy made the ‘Bark heard ‘round the world’, the Forum had already offered talks, prayer, worship, formation, and conversation. But in that small comic interruption, something of the event became visible. A room full of young women laughed. A presenter paused. A dog was reassured. A stranger was welcomed. A hand was licked.

It wasn’t efficient or planned. It wasn’t on the schedule. But it was strangely fitting.

At GIVEN, the deepest lesson may be that leadership in the Church does not begin with command. It begins with receptivity. It begins with being loved. It begins with receiving the gift of one’s own life and then learning how to give that life away.

Sometimes that truth arrives in a keynote.

Sometimes it comes through the cry of an infant.

And sometimes, apparently, it comes from a furry friend that barks from the stage.

And a few more photos of the Forum…

The End. (For now :-)

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You have my heartfelt thanks for your generosity and support, and please keep me in your prayers, and know of mine for each of you. God Bless, Jeff

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I don’t often interview people.

And in thinking about it, I’m not exactly sure why.

Perhaps it’s because in most cases I think I have a grasp of what’s before me. But as a man at a Catholic Womens Leadership Forum, I confess, I was out of my depth. And so, I did what every man does when he’s a bit lost.

He asks for directions.

Well, not exactly directions, because that’s not what guys do…ever.

But for guidance and insight.

And it led to some conversations with some women who were steeped in both.

This was a journey of discovery. And many of the truths revealed, the insights, are actually bigger than the forum, the participants, or even the Institute itself. Many were universal, just as the Church.

And it was breathtaking to behold.

The Given Institute Forum, now in its tenth year, brings together Catholic women from across the country for several days of prayer, formation, and fellowship, encouraging them to discern and live out their unique gifts in service to the Church and the world.

This year’s Forum, held on the campus of the Catholic University of America, moves through three stages: receive the gift you are, realize the gifts you’ve been given, and respond with the gift only you can give. Over several days, though, that framework started opening up into something deeper.

Leadership at GIVEN was never talked about on its own. It was always tied to identity, receptivity, spiritual motherhood, and the quiet work of receiving love before trying to give it away.

The interviews that follow reveal what that looks like in practice. Different backgrounds. Different vocations. Different journeys. Yet woven through each conversation was the same trusting confidence that God was inviting them to something more.

MacKenzie Warrens: Receptivity and the Vocation of Being

MacKenzie Warrens, one of the first perpetual pilgrims on the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage and now a consecrated virgin living in the world, came to GIVEN seeking formation in leadership. She recognized a leadership charism in her life and wanted to steward it well, especially as a woman.

“Everything I do is done as a woman,” she said. “So how do I live out of and lead out of my feminine genius?”

What surprised her was how often the Forum returned to identity rather than technique. “I didn’t expect it to be about identity,” she said. “That’s been really beautiful and fruitful.”

For Warrens, vocation is first about being. As a consecrated virgin, she is not required to have an apostolate. “It’s a vocation of being,” she said. Any apostolic work must flow from that primary identity.

“I am a bride of Christ,” she said. “That is my vocation. If the Lord calls me to some kind of apostolic work, great, but that has to flow from my identity as a bride of Christ, which is built on my identity as a beloved daughter of the Father.”

That order, daughter, bride, mission, shaped how she understood leadership. Doing something for Jesus, she said, leads to burnout because “you’re not yoked to him.” When work comes from striving rather than received love, the fruits of the Holy Spirit are often missing. But when something is done “from Jesus and through Jesus and in Jesus,” a person senses a Grace beyond human effort.

She’d seen this during the pilgrimage. Prompted to make 650 rosaries for the pilgrims, she told the Lord that if the idea was truly from him, he would have to provide. In four weeks, a community she called her “rosary warriors” made 781 rosaries, and the funds appeared. She called it “supernatural superabundance.”

That experience reinforced what GIVEN later made explicit: mission begins in receptivity, trust, and obedience, not frantic self-reliance.

“It’s that receptivity,” she said, “that radical receptivity, receiving the gift that you are. And making a sincere gift of yourself.”

Sister Gabrielle: “You Don’t Have to Do to Be”

Sister Gabrielle, a religious sister from Baltic, Connecticut, came to the Forum through an invitation from the Sisters of Life. What struck her most was the spiritual hunger in the women gathered there.

“There’s this hunger for Jesus, wanting to love him through their gifts,” she said. She saw them asking, “What is it that you have given me, Lord? And how can I give back?”

The women weren’t seeking leadership in a worldly sense, she observed. They wanted to bring their gifts into the world “for Him, through Him, for the world.” When asked what she saw in them that they might not yet see in themselves, she answered simply: “The light of Christ.”

“There is so much hope for the Church,” she said, “as you see all these women who reflect the beauty of God’s love in a way that they themselves might not know.”

That inability to see one’s own dignity, she continued, often stems from wounds and cultural lies absorbed over time. The Forum helps women remember “who they are, whose they are,” so they no longer see themselves as objects or performers who must prove their worth.

“They can see themselves not as objects or as they have to perform to be someone,” she said, “but that they can just be beautiful daughters of the Father and just bring the gifts that God gave them.”

For Sister Gabrielle, this is the beginning of spiritual motherhood. “All women, no matter what their vocation in life is, we are called to be mothers,” she said. “We mother whoever is around us in our own backyard.” That motherhood, physical, spiritual, or both, means bringing care and compassion to those who are hurting and reminding them they are children of God.

She pointed to the Blessed Mother as the model. Mary was a leader, Sister Gabrielle said, “because she followed the Lord and also because she was humble.” Her power came through surrender and an unwavering gaze fixed on the Lord. “She always gazed on the Lord,” Sister Gabrielle said. That gaze teaches women “to lead as we follow.”

When asked what young women most need before responding to God’s call, she returned to identity.

“I feel like a lot of us have this spiritual amnesia where we forget who we are,” she said. “The first thing you have to do is to understand that you’re a beloved daughter of the Father. No matter what you do, you’re still loved. What you don’t do, you’re still loved. You don’t have to do to be. You already are beautiful.”

Jackie Mulligan: Drawing From an Empty Well

Jackie Mulligan, founder of Reform Wellness, brought a different but related emphasis: the need to care for body and soul as part of mission. Her own work began when she realized that true wellness couldn’t be separated from Christ.

“When I started Reform, it was because I understood that in order for me to be well physically and spiritually, Christ had to be at the center of my life,” she said. Without Christ at the center, even healthy habits can become disordered and short-lived.

At a leadership forum, she argued, care for the body and soul is not a side issue. “I think it’s one of the most important parts of mission.” Leaders shape the health of those around them. If the Church is to be healthy, its leaders must be helped to remain healthy.

When a woman tries to give her gifts while ignoring the needs of her body and soul, Mulligan said, “She ends up giving of herself at the cost of becoming exhausted, rather than giving of the Lord within her.”

“If our bodies are suffering and our souls aren’t being tended to,” she continued, “we’re drawing from an empty well.”

She was quick to distinguish this from a consumer version of self-care. Caring for oneself, she said, is ordered toward becoming “a healthier, available vessel for the Lord.” Each morning, she encouraged women to notice the state of both body and soul rather than running on autopilot, treating health like a bank account that requires regular deposits of sleep, nutrition, prayer, silence, movement, and the sacraments.

“Sometimes we get really comfortable being at a four (out of ten), and that becomes the norm because it’s common,” she said. Leaders teach by the way they live. “People who you are leading watch you.”

For someone who doesn’t know where to begin, her advice was simple: “The first place is just to begin poorly. Even if it’s not perfect, just take a step forward.” Often that first step is one of the basics: eating well, sleeping enough, or really praying.

“I think that we miss the greatest gift of leadership,” she said, “which is letting the Lord lead us. And then other people benefit from that leadership.”

Empty Hands Before God

At the Forum’s closing Mass, Most Reverend Keith J. Chylinski, Auxiliary to the Archbishop of Philadelphia, spoke of the paradox at the heart of Christian discipleship: the one who loses his life finds it. This runs directly against the logic of the age, which promises fulfillment through control and self-reliance.

One of the great temptations, he said, is the temptation to handle things ourselves even while knowing God loves us and offers grace. The answer is not greater self-mastery but childlike trust. A child knows his need for a parent; Christians must learn again their need for the Father.

Drawing from St. John Paul II, the Bishop reflected that the dignity and vocation of women find their ultimate source in union with God, and that no one attains fulfillment apart from communion with Him. “To serve means to reign,” he said; a phrase that captured much of what GIVEN had been teaching.

Leadership in the Christian sense, he suggested, does not begin with domination or performance. It begins in communion with God and becomes service.

Near the end of the homily, he offered an image that could stand as a final word for the Forum: empty hands before God.

God cannot give Himself unless our hands are empty.

For the women leaving with Action Plans, vocational questions, new friendships, and a year of mentoring ahead, the challenge was not simply to go home and do more. It was to go home having received more deeply the love from which mission must flow.

Before Mission, Identity

Sister Gabrielle, MacKenzie, and Jackie approached the Forum from different vocations, yet their reflections converged on the same foundation. A woman must receive before she can respond.

She must know she is loved before she can give herself away freely.

She must care for the body and soul entrusted to her, not for comfort’s sake, but so she can become a vessel of grace. She must reject the lie that her worth depends on performance.

And she must learn to lead not by imitation of worldly power, but from identity, humility, receptivity, and love.

That’s the deeper principle of GIVEN. It’s name isn’t accidental. The Forum is built around the conviction that a woman’s life is first a gift… her talents, her vocation, even her mission.

These are not things she invents from nothing but something she receives, discerns, and offers back to God.

For Sister Gabrielle, that begins with beloved daughterhood. For MacKenzie, it’s the foundation of consecrated identity and feminine genius. For Jackie, it’s the only way mission avoids becoming exhaustion. At the closing Mass, the Bishop named the source of it all: empty hands before God, childlike trust, and the Grace to let oneself be loved.

Catholic women’s leadership does not begin with doing more.

It begins with receiving Love Himself, and allowing that Love to become a gift for the world.

Learn more about the GIVEN Institute and thier incredible program by visiting their website.

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You have my heartfelt thanks for your generosity and support, and please keep me in your prayers, and know of mine for each of you. God Bless, Jeff

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I love the sea.

Its mystery and drama, its promise of adventure…the way the horizon seems to stretch forever, blurring the line between what is and what might be.

Which is why, sitting alone on a rock jetty on Kent Island, and gazing out over the Chesapeake Bay, I began to wonder if I had made the wrong decision.

An hour earlier, I’d stood in Annapolis with the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage, watching as pilgrims processed with Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament down a wooden pier and onto a waiting trawler. It was one of the more unusual scenes I have witnessed during this year’s pilgrimage.

A Eucharistic procession is not something most people expect to see.

A Eucharistic procession boarding a boat is rarer still.

The boat would cross the Chesapeake to Kent Island. My heart wanted to be aboard, to feel the lift of the water, to smell the salt air, and watch the shoreline recede, as Christ crossed one of America’s great waterways.

But instead, I rolled the dice and drove ahead to the other shore, hoping that the image of their arrival would be worth seeing.

So there I sat, alone among the rocks, listening to waves slap against stone and staring into an endless horizon. The boat was nowhere in sight. Only sky. Water. Wind. And waiting.

There is a kind of waiting that belongs to faith. Not the brittle impatience of a delayed flight or a traffic jam, but the deeper waiting of a heart that knows Someone is coming, even when there is still nothing to see. It’s the waiting of Israel, of the disciples in the Upper Room, of Mary in Nazareth carrying Christ within her while the world went on unaware that its Savior was already near.

That thought lingered as I watched the bay. This crossing was only one leg of a much larger journey. For weeks the pilgrims have carried Jesus across America by road, by foot, by bridge, by boat. Through cities and countryside, bright sun and soaking rain, past homes, restaurants, government buildings, monuments, churches, and ordinary corners of the nation that became extraordinary the moment He passed by.

“One if by land. Two if by sea.” The phrase belongs to the American Revolution, yet on the Chesapeake, it took on another meaning. No signal lanterns in a steeple, no warning of war. Only the visible witness of a Eucharistic Lord being carried into a country approaching its 250th birthday.

This pilgrimage, under the theme “One Nation Under God,” is more than a journey to Philadelphia. It is a prayer stretched across the Eastern Seaboard, a plea for healing, a procession for unity, a reminder that the American story, with all its greatness and all its wounds, still needs Grace.

And along the way, people have responded. Families kneeling on sidewalks. Strangers stepping out of restaurants and offices. Tired pilgrims singing in the rain. Children waving from the edges of processions. Silence falling as Christ moved through the public square. Again and again, the reaction has been the same: hope, wonder, joy.

In the days ahead, the pilgrimage will continue toward Philadelphia for Independence Day weekend, bringing the Blessed Sacrament to the city where the nation’s founding was declared. The symbolism is impossible to miss. Two hundred and fifty years later, another procession approaches. Not with muskets or proclamations, but with prayer.

Not to conquer.

To bless.

And then, just when I began to wonder whether my gamble had failed, something appeared on the horizon. Tiny at first. Almost imperceptible. But growing steadily larger against the vastness of the bay.

The pilgrims were coming.

And with them, Christ.

As the trawler entered the channel, the afternoon sun caught the monstrance and flashed across the water, golden and alive, like a beacon carried on the waves. The crowd moved toward the dock.

The waiting ended.

In that moment, I knew I hadn’t chosen the wrong shore. Sometimes the story isn’t found on the crossing. Sometimes it’s found in the waiting and in the quiet, overwhelming joy of receiving Him for Whom we wait.

Some photos…

Thanks for reading! This is a truly independent, reader-supported periodical. Your support is crucial. If you are able, please consider a paid subscription or making a ‘Patron of the Arts’ donation of any amount. By doing so, you are not just supporting this effort; you’re a vital part of this mission.

You have my heartfelt thanks for your generosity and support, and please keep me in your prayers, and know of mine for each of you. God Bless, Jeff

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The sun was setting too fast.

As my fellow journalists and I stood beneath the Washington Monument, we watched the last golden light slip toward the horizon beyond the Capitol.

The prospect of a perfect photograph disappearing with it.

But the thought was fleeting.

Because light or no light, photograph or no photograph, something historic was about to occur.

Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament was arriving at the sprawling expanse of the National Mall.

And at the center of it all, beneath a canopy and carried with reverence through the heart of the nation’s capital, came Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament.

At the foot of the Washington Monument.

There, surrounded by a small group of pilgrims, a priest raised the tiny Host containing all the Power in the Universe.

Jesus Christ Himself.

Before one of the most recognizable monuments in America, He blessed a nation that, despite its challenges, still possesses a greatness beyond imagination if only it turns its heart toward Him, from whom all greatness flows.

The Source of every grace.

The Author of every hope.

As the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage winds its way through the cities, towns, and neighborhoods of the East Coast...

As Christ continues to bless these lands...

Her people.

Her future.

Her soul.

Perhaps His Grace would fill her heart.

That this land of promise...

Of freedom...

Of possibility...

Would become ever more fully what God created her to be.

That she would cast aside the things that hold her back.

That she would shine brightly as a beacon of hope in a world so often searching for light.

And that, guided by His Mercy and sustained by His Grace, she would rise to heights unseen.

As truly One Nation Under God.

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Thanks for reading! This is a truly independent, reader-supported periodical. Your support is crucial. If you are able, please consider a paid subscription or making a ‘Patron of the Arts’ donation of any amount. By doing so, you are not just supporting this effort; you’re a vital part of this mission.

You have my heartfelt thanks for your generosity and support, and please keep me in your prayers, and know of mine for each of you. God Bless, Jeff

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It was cold, dark, and rainy as the jet, almost an hour delayed, began its taxi toward the runway at JFK.

I looked through the tiny raindrop-covered window and thought about where I’d been and where I was going.

That morning, in one small corner of New York, I had stood among a group of young people robed in red as a bishop traced the sign of the cross with sacred chrism on their foreheads and spoke the timeless words: “Be sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

Confirmation.

The third sacrament of initiation into the Catholic faith.

How fitting.

On the eve of Pentecost, in one small corner of the world, Christ was still breathing life into His Church. And while the skies over New York seemed dark and foreboding, full of clouds, rain, and fog, the sky above them was anything but.

As the jet climbed over the city, it pierced the veil of weather and rose into a deep Marian blue just as the sun began its descent. Watching the sun set from 30,000 feet above the clouds is one of the most breathtaking sights in the world: a molten sphere resting against a cottony horizon, its upward rays carving the heavens into a luminous landscape of vapor and light.

By the next morning, Pentecost Sunday, I was in St. Augustine, Florida, standing beneath a very different sky.

There was no rain. No fog. No cold. Only the sweltering Florida sun, a field altar, and more than a thousand Catholics gathered at the National Shrine of Our Lady of La Leche at Mission Nombre de Dios for the launch of the 2026 National Eucharistic Pilgrimage.

The umbrellas came first.

They stretched across the shrine grounds like a sea of small canopies, held by families, religious sisters, elderly pilgrims, children, clergy, and young adults who had come to celebrate the start of a six-week journey with Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament.

The Mass was the center, as it must be. Then came the procession. The Blessed Sacrament was carried across the shrine grounds to the Rustic Altar, then to the Historic Chapel, where adoration continued throughout the day. In the blazing heat, people followed. They sang, prayed, knelt, walked, endured, and adored.

And Christ was among them.

It would have been enough to say that the pilgrimage began in St. Augustine. But that wouldn’t be enough.

Because this was not merely a location. It was a beginning returning to a beginning.

St. Augustine is the oldest continuously occupied European-established city in what is now the continental United States, founded in 1565 when Pedro Menéndez de Avilés landed on Florida’s coast and as soon as the Spanish landing party came ashore, they celebrated a Mass of Thanksgiving, after which Menéndez shared a meal with the native Seloy people who occupied the site.

Before there was a United States, before there was a Declaration, before there were colonies stitched into a republic, there was an altar.

There was the Cross.

There was the Mass.

Mission Nombre de Dios and the National Shrine of Our Lady of La Leche now stand near that sacred memory. The shrine describes its grounds as the place where the 1565 Mass of thanksgiving occurred, and the site is home to what is widely recognized as America’s oldest Marian shrine.

The pilgrimage did not begin in a random city under a sunny sky. It began where Catholic life in this land first took root in a lasting way. It began where missionaries came ashore carrying not merely culture or ambition or empire, but the Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. It began where the first Catholic prayers of a new settlement rose over an unknown shore.

That’s the story the landscape tells if one slows down long enough to listen.

There’s the field altar. The little chapel. The Great Cross. The bay. The salt air. The old streets. The coquina stone of the Castillo de San Marcos, built by the Spanish to defend Florida and the Atlantic trade route, now preserved as the oldest masonry fortification in the continental United States.

All of it speaks of arrival, danger, endurance, longing, and mission.

In his Pentecost homily at the opening Mass, Bishop Erik Pohlmeier of St. Augustine drew the line between that first missionary impulse and the present moment.

“We should be compelled to speak the message of the Gospel,” he said, “to take up our part in the grand work of the Church.”

Reflecting on the Catholic missionaries who arrived on Florida’s shores in the 16th century, he said that “from that beginning, they centered their life around the Eucharist.”

That sentence is the key to the whole thing.

From that beginning, they centered their life around the Eucharist.

And now, 461 years later, Catholics have returned to that same heart.

The 2026 National Eucharistic Pilgrimage, whose theme is “One Nation Under God,” will travel the St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Route from St. Augustine to Philadelphia, carrying the Blessed Sacrament along the East Coast during the nation’s 250th anniversary year.

And that’s the thing.

Because America was missionary territory once.

It was missionary territory when Spanish priests landed in Florida. It was missionary territory when Father Andrew White, the Jesuit called the “Apostle of Maryland,” arrived with the Ark and the Dove and celebrated a Mass of thanksgiving at St. Clement’s Island in 1634.

It was missionary territory when George Calvert imagined Maryland as a haven for persecuted Catholics and, however imperfectly, a place where religious toleration might take root.

It was missionary territory when St. Isaac Jogues and the North American Martyrs entered the forests and waterways of New France, serving in remote missions in eastern Canada and New York amid disease, hunger, danger, and isolation.

It was missionary territory when St. Junípero Serra walked the long roads of the West and founded the first nine of California’s 21 missions, carrying the Gospel along what would become El Camino Real.

And it remains missionary territory now, today.

Perhaps that’s the part we forget.

We speak of revival as though it were a program or an event. But at the heart of the Eucharistic Revival, and at the heart of the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage, is something older and more dangerous and more beautiful: holy adventure.

The kind of adventure that sends people out.

The kind that makes them leave the upper room after Pentecost.

The kind that carries missionaries across oceans, rivers, forests, mountains, and cities.

The kind that moves ordinary families to stand under a brutal sun with umbrellas in their hands and prayers on their lips because Jesus is passing by.

The question is not, “Is there a revival in the Church today?”

The question is, “How could there not be?”

Because just as in the days of old, when Jesus walked the streets of Galilee and Jerusalem with His followers in tow, His Divine Presence touched the hearts of those who encountered Him.

The Creator of the very roads upon which He walked. The Creator of the sea, the clouds, the sun, the city, the child, the pilgrim, the sinner, the saint.

And now He goes again.

Through St. Augustine. Through mission grounds and cathedral streets. Through old cities and new suburbs. Through places that remember Him and places that have forgotten Him. Through the highways and byways of a nation approaching its 250th year, still restless, still wounded, still promising more than it has yet become.

Perhaps this is how the soul of a nation is healed: not first by policy or politics, but by encounter.

A priest raises the Blessed Sacrament in the Monstrance.

The people kneel.

The bells ring.

The sun beats down.

The pilgrims rise and follow.

Christ is carried into the world again, not as an idea, not as a memory, not as a symbol, but as Himself.

And that’s all that matters.

It’s all that ever mattered.

Thanks for reading! This is a truly independent, reader-supported periodical. Your support is crucial. If you are able, please consider a paid subscription or making a ‘Patron of the Arts’ donation of any amount. By doing so, you are not just supporting this effort; you’re a vital part of this mission.

You have my heartfelt thanks for your generosity and support, and please keep me in your prayers, and know of mine for each of you. God Bless, Jeff

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“Hurry up! They’ll leave without you!”

The woman barked the words through a thick Polish accent and glared at me with the annoyance of a mother who’d had just about enough of a petulant child.

“Pool Zero?” I asked, sheepishly.

“YES, YES. Now hurry!”

And with that, I was off on one of the many misadventures of my life as a photojournalist.

There was a tiny voice in my head that whispered, Maybe you should check again.

But it was 4:00 in the morning. It was dark. The group of journalists I was apparently supposed to be with was already far ahead of me, their flashlights bobbing and fading into the distance like fireflies disappearing into the Polish countryside.

So I told the tiny voice to pipe down.

I’ve got this.

We walked for roughly thirty minutes, stumbling through the dark, through trees and uneven ground, following the glow of lights and the low murmur of people who seemed to know exactly where they were going. Eventually the wooded path opened into a massive field.

The sun was just beginning to rise.

Ahead of us, in the half-light, stood the enormous stage and altar where Pope Francis would celebrate the closing Mass for World Youth Day in Kraków, the city forever tied to Saint John Paul II, the pope who gave the world World Youth Day.

It was vast.

Even in the dim light, before the crowds fully emerged, the scale of it was staggering. The altar seemed to rise out of the field like some kind of temporary cathedral built for a nation of pilgrims. Everywhere there were barriers, scaffolds, security lanes, press areas, military personnel, volunteers, radios, cables, and the quiet electricity that comes before a major papal event.

At the first security checkpoint, I was searched and waved through.

Then another checkpoint.

Then another.

Then another.

Each time, I presented my credentials with the confidence of a man who had no idea he was walking deeper and deeper into a problem. There were conversations between our security escorts, nods from officials, quick glances at badges, and then gates opening.

No one stopped me.

No one said, “Sir, you are absolutely not supposed to be here.”

No one grabbed me by the collar and said, “American photographer, turn around before this becomes a story you will one day have to write.”

So I kept going.

By then, the sun had risen, and I had settled into the rhythm of the work. That strange photographer rhythm where you stop thinking like a normal person and start thinking in angles, sightlines, access, and light.

Where can I shoot from?

Where will the Pope be?

Where will the procession enter?

I wandered around the enormous altar area for hours, looking for perches, studying the structure, making mental notes, and slowly convincing myself that somehow, against all odds, I had landed in exactly the right place.

Then my phone rang.

“WHERE ARE YOU?”

I smiled.

“You’re not going to believe this,” I said, trying not to sound too pleased with myself. “I’m standing right beside Pope Francis’ chair on the altar.”

There was silence on the other end.

Not ordinary silence.

Cathedral silence.

The kind of silence where you begin to realize that whatever you just said has not had the effect you intended.

Then came the words.

“You’re supposed to be with the Popemobile!”

I laughed, because clearly there had been some kind of misunderstanding.

“No, no, no,” I said. “It’s fine. They told me this is where I’m supposed to be.”

“WHO told you?”

“The person at the security tent I asked for directions.”

Even as the words came out of my mouth, I could feel the tiny voice returning.

This time, it was no longer whispering.

It was lighting flares.

Another silence.

“Well,” he finally said, “if you’re already there, there’s nothing we can do now. Just do what you can and we’ll talk later.”

And for the first time that morning, the bright little fantasy I had built around my amazing access began to dissolve.

Maybe I wasn’t a highly resourceful photographer who had somehow navigated the system with brilliance and instinct.

Maybe I was just plain ‘ol lost.

This possibility was confirmed almost immediately when a security guard approached me.

He looked at my credentials.

Then he looked at me.

Then he looked back at my credentials in a way that suggested my day was about to change.

“Come with me, please.”

He brought me to a more senior official, who examined my badge with the weary disappointment of a man who had seen this kind of thing before, probably from Americans.

“This is not the credential for this area,” he said. “You’ll have to leave.”

Mass was about to begin.

My life didn’t flash before my eyes, exactly, but my assignment did. My coverage. My access. My editor. Every photo I had imagined making that morning. Every frame I was now not going to make.

And after hours of wandering around like I owned the place, the full horror of the situation finally began to dawn on me.

I had been in the wrong place for hours.

Not just a little wrong.

Not “wrong gate” wrong.

Not “wrong press riser” wrong.

The kind of wrong where men with radios start talking about you in another language.

I begged.

Then I pleaded.

Then, for good measure, I begged again.

The senior official listened for a moment, which was more mercy than I probably deserved. Then he said I would need to speak to his boss.

That sounded hopeful.

It was not.

They began escorting me toward the exit, and with each step, another wave of panic rose in me. The altar receded behind me. The place where I thought I was supposed to be, the place I had spent all morning preparing to shoot from, was slipping away.

Then I saw the tent.

It was surrounded by armed Polish soldiers.

Out of the tent came a man with the kind of authority that does not need to raise its voice. He walked toward me with military precision and the expression of someone who had absolutely no interest in hearing a long explanation from a sleep-deprived American photographer.

“So,” he said. “What is this?”

At this point, I abandoned all dignity.

I explained. I apologized. I gestured. I probably pointed at things that didn’t need pointing at. I may have looked like a man trying to negotiate international law using only panic and hand movements.

He stared at me.

I continued.

He stared some more.

Finally, perhaps because he understood my situation, or perhaps because he simply wanted me to stop talking, he asked, “Where do you want to go?”

“The altar,” I said.

Then, because desperation makes theologians of us all, I added, “Please?”

He turned to another soldier and barked something in Polish.

A yellow wristband appeared.

The commander fastened it around my wrist.

Then he barked at another soldier near a truck and ordered him to drive me back.

As I climbed in, the commander leaned toward me.

“You better hurry,” he said. “Mass will be starting soon.”

I don’t know exactly what prayer I offered in that truck, but I know it was sincere. I had received mercy from a Polish military commander, and I wasn’t about to waste it.

When I arrived back near the altar, I stepped out with the confidence of a man wearing a cheap plastic yellow wristband that he now believed to be the key to the Kingdom.

I was back.

I was legal.

I was saved.

Or so I thought.

I made my way toward the altar area and joined another photographer who seemed to know what he was doing, which is usually a good survival strategy. The choir began. The entrance procession was forming. The great movement of the liturgy, the security operation, the global broadcast, and the press pool all began moving at once.

Then I heard a voice to my right.

“Can I see your credentials?”

I turned with confidence.

This time I had my badge and my yellow wristband.

I presented both like a man producing diplomatic immunity.

He looked at them.

“These are the wrong credentials for here.”

My heart stopped.

Not again.

I began explaining about the tent, the commander, the truck, the wristband, the mercy of God, the whole epic tale of my morning.

But just then the Vatican pool photographers arrived.

The VAMP, as they’re referred to.

The people who were actually supposed to be there.

And in that instant, the entire scene broke open.

The procession was moving. The Pope was arriving. Cameras lifted. Bodies shifted. Security attention scattered.

So I did what any calm, reasonable, well-credentialed professional would do.

I bolted into the chaos and started taking pictures.

For a few blessed seconds, I was free.

Pope Francis approached the altar.

The crowd sang.

The music swelled.

The Holy Father kissed the altar.

Then security caught on.

Of course they caught on.

One does not simply vanish into a papal Mass wearing the wrong badge and a suspiciously miraculous yellow wristband.

They began moving toward me again.

That might have been the end of it, but my friend and fellow photographer Paul Haring saw what was happening. Paul, who knew exactly what he was doing and was exactly where he was supposed to be, gestured to one of the officials, and somehow, by the slenderest thread of goodwill, I was allowed to remain a little longer.

A few more moments.

A few more frames.

A little more mercy.

But all good things must come to an end.

As Mass began in earnest, I made myself scarce.

There is no elegant way to say this.

I hid.

Not in a criminal way. Not in a dramatic spy-movie way. More in the way a photographer hides when he knows that visibility is currently not his friend.

The altar structure was massive, with scaffolding, stairs, platforms, supports, and dark little pockets where a person could disappear if he had enough motivation and a long enough lens.

I tucked myself into the structure and tried to become part of the architecture.

When I saw security, I moved.

When they moved, I moved somewhere else.

I darted, ducked, paused, photographed, waited, and prayed that nobody had the energy to make a serious project out of removing me before the Mass ended.

For the next stretch of time, I was less a member of the press corps than a raccoon in a tuxedo at a state dinner.

But I kept shooting.

And slowly, impossibly, I made it through.

When the choir began the recessional and Pope Francis rose to depart, I knew the day was nearly over.

Then I was spotted.

This time, there was no explaining. No tent. No commander. No yellow wristband miracle. Mass was over, and I had only one remaining strategy.

Run.

I scrambled down a long scaffold stairway with a voice somewhere behind me telling me to stop.

I did not stop.

At the bottom of the stairs, I saw a door.

I grabbed the handle, twisted it, threw it open, and ran through.

And then I froze.

Standing before me were hundreds of Polish soldiers in formation.

All of them looking directly at me.

My eyes went wide.

Their eyes went wide.

For one impossible second, I thought, This is it. This is how it ends. Not with a photograph. Not with glory. But with an international incident and a very uncomfortable phone call home.

Then their eyes shifted.

Not to me.

To a door just to my left.

It opened slowly.

The soldiers snapped to attention and raised their hands in salute.

And out stepped Pope Francis.

He turned.

He saw me.

And he raised his hand in blessing.

Now, it’s entirely possible that he was blessing the soldiers, the people behind me, the general area, the nation of Poland, the entire Church, or some combination of all of the above.

But I was closest.

So I’m going to believe it was for me.

He smiled, stepped into the Popemobile, and blessed us again.

And there I was.

After all of it.

After the wrong directions, the checkpoints, the panic, the pleading, the military tent, the yellow wristband, the truck ride, the second expulsion, the hiding, the scaffolding, the stairs, and the door I was never supposed to open.

I had ended up beside the Popemobile.

The very place I had been told I was supposed to be in the first place.

If I had tried to get to that exact spot at that exact moment, it would have been impossible.

No credential would have gotten me there.

No plan would have gotten me there.

No carefully mapped route, no perfect command of Polish, no cleverness, no professional instinct would have placed me on the other side of that door at the precise moment Pope Francis walked out.

But the wrong directions did.

And perhaps that’s what has stayed with me all these years.

I was in Poland to work. That was the truth of it. Long days. Little sleep. Thousands of photographs. The constant mental arithmetic of a photojournalist trying to be in the right place before the moment disappears.

I had very little time to experience the thing I was covering. I rarely do.

That’s one of the strange burdens of this work. You can stand in the middle of history and still be thinking about shutter speed.

But at the end of that long, ridiculous, grace-filled morning, I was given something I couldn’t plan for and didn’t deserve.

A Pope’s blessing.

Literally.

And maybe figuratively too.

I had spent the whole day trying to get where I thought I was supposed to be.

And somehow, in the end, I arrived exactly where I was meant to be.

In the loving embrace of God’s Mercy, with a wink and a smile.

Which is why, whenever I think back on that morning in Kraków, I don’t remember it first as a security failure, a credentialing disaster, or the closest I have ever come to being tackled by the Polish military.

I remember it as the day God used bad directions to lead me to a moment of Grace.

And why I may never ask for directions again.

But then again…

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You have my heartfelt thanks for your generosity and support, and please keep me in your prayers, and know of mine for each of you. God Bless, Jeff

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“My photographer canceled!!! Are you available?”

Not exactly the way one hopes to be asked to cover an event.

But given the person who sent it, and the work she does, the answer was easy.

Galas are interesting things. They’re sort at the crossroads of where a wedding meets an awards ceremony. There’s dinner, laughter, music, speeches, applause, and that unmistakable buzz of people dressed up for an evening they hope will matter. Everyone knows the cause. And everyone has come, in one way or another, to support it.

But this gala felt different.

Not because it lacked any of those familiar elements. It had all of them.

What made it different was the reason beneath it all.

Life.

But in a rather specific area.

Life is a word that can evoke a lot of reactions. In public arguments, it’s often reduced into a political category or a slogan. The pro-life movement is often thought of as a single issue, but the reality on the ground — and in the hearts of the people who drive it — is something far more wide ranging and far more misunderstood.

Because at its heart, the pro-life movement isn’t centered on laws or rights.

It’s centered on love.

And then that love is lived out in a thousand concrete ways: care for mothers, medical help for children, shelter for families, food for the hungry, support for the poor, companionship for the frightened, and a refusal to abandon those the world would rather leave behind.

Sometimes it’s obvious.

Sometimes it’s not.

And sometimes it appears in the middle of a ballroom, beneath bright lights, in the face of a little girl with a once-broken heart.

At the center of the evening was Hearts of Joy International, founded by Lauren Costabile, a young woman I have known for years and whose work I deeply believe in.

Lauren has one of those rare hearts that doesn’t remain at a safe distance from suffering. When she sees a child in need, especially a child the world might be tempted to overlook, she moves.

That movement became Hearts of Joy International.

The organization helps provide life-saving heart surgery for children with Down syndrome, many of whom are born with congenital heart defects and live in places where specialized care isn’t available. Its work has reached places such as Uganda, the Philippines, and India, where poverty, limited medical access, and cultural stigma can make life even more fragile for children with disabilities.

In some places, children with Down syndrome are rejected. Misunderstood. Dismissed. Treated as though their lives are somehow less worthy of protection, investment, or joy.

Lauren’s work says otherwise.

It says these children are beloved.

It says their lives are worth fighting for.

It says their hearts are worth saving.

During the gala, a presentation about the organization’s work in Uganda revealed the depth of that mission. This is not abstract charity. It depends on people on the ground: medical professionals, advocates, families, local partners, donors, and friends who understand both the clinical need and the dignity of the children being served.

Real charity isn’t performance.

It’s relationship.

It means learning names. Knowing families. Building trust.

And at this year’s gala, one of the children helped through that mission had not been born a continent away.

She was born in New York City.

Her name is Violet.

Violet appeared on the stage with her mother and Christiana, a cardiac nurse connected with Hearts of Joy. Beneath the lights, in front of a room full of supporters, she wasn’t a concept, a statistic, or a name in a fundraising appeal.

She’s a beautiful little girl.

Healthy.

Loved.

The belle of the ball.

Then her mother took the microphone.

Her first words opened the deeper story.

“I’d like to thank the Sisters of Life…”

And with that, the whole room seemed to lean in.

Violet’s mother spoke about learning of her daughter’s diagnosis while she was still pregnant. She spoke about fear, uncertainty, doctor’s appointments, surgery, and the terrifying weight of not knowing what the road ahead would hold.

That’s where the Sisters of Life entered the story.

According to Violet’s mother, the Sisters walked with her through the process. They accompanied her to doctors’ visits, stood beside her in the uncertainty, contacted Lauren and Hearts of Joy, and helped create the circle of support that would carry mother and child through Violet’s surgery and beyond.

A mother stood on a stage with the daughter she had once feared for, thanking the women who had not left her alone. Beside her was Violet, alive and loved, surrounded by the people who had helped make that moment possible: the Sisters of Life, Hearts of Joy, doctors, nurses, donors, friends, and a hidden army of Grace.

It wasn’t only that Violet had received the care she needed. It was that her life revealed what the Christian claim about human dignity actually requires.

Love does not remain theoretical.

It goes to the doctor’s appointment.

It makes the phone call.

It finds the surgeon.

It sits with the mother.

It raises the money.

It prays through the fear.

And it remains.

The Sisters of Life profess a particular vow to protect and enhance the sacredness of human life. That vow isn’t lived only in public statements or pro-life language. It is lived in rooms where women are afraid, in conversations filled with tears, and in the quiet accompaniment of a mother who needs to know she’s not alone.

Hearts of Joy carries that same conviction into the medical crisis faced by children with Down syndrome around the world.

And that night, in Violet, the two missions met.

The Sisters of Life had walked with a mother through fear. Hearts of Joy had helped surround a child with the care she needed. A nurse stood beside them. Donors filled the room. Friends applauded through tears.

And Violet stood beneath the lights.

A little girl with a once-broken heart.

Alive.

Loved.

Smiling.

Because every life is sacred.

And sometimes that truth doesn’t arrive as an argument.

Sometimes it arrives as a little girl beneath the lights, with a mended heart, and a whole room rising to its feet.

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You have my heartfelt thanks for your generosity and support, and please keep me in your prayers, and know of mine for each of you. God Bless, Jeff

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Every now and then you come across something that not only restores your faith in humanity, but reminds you of its inherent dignity and goodness.

And I, through no fault of my own, have fallen victim to this on more than one occasion.

A few of those moments remain etched in my mind.

The first happened a little ways back, when I was covering the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Brooklyn is a place like no other. Rich, storied, loud, colorful, stubborn, generous, and hungry. You can get the best Thai, Italian, Jamaican, and, well, I’ve yet to find a food group that they’re not the kings of.

And it stands to reason, after all.

It’s Kings County.

The Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel is one of those days when all the worlds collide. The old and the new. The traditional and the modern. The Catholic and, well, everything else.

The feast itself dates back to 1887, while the Brooklyn Giglio tradition, brought by immigrants from Nola, Italy, began in 1903. It’s a world unto itself, with the towering Giglio, sausage and peppers, a long Marian procession, and the great dancing tower carried through the streets by men whose shoulders seem to have been forged for this very purpose.

The celebration winds through parts of Williamsburg now filled with young professionals, artists, tech people, dreamers, and what have you, many of whom have probably had little contact with anything Catholic, let alone a roughly seven-story tower being shouldered by dozens of men and moved down an entire city block.

And then, as if that weren’t enough, the Giglio meets La Barca, the boat connected to St. Paulinus of Nola, and the whole thing becomes part procession, part family reunion, part street festival, part feat of engineering, and part visible proof that Catholic culture, when it’s fully alive, refuses to remain politely indoors.

Well, on that particular day it felt like it was a thousand degrees out.

If you stood still long enough, you could be drawn into a serious meteorological debate over whether the heat rising from the melting asphalt or the rays of the burning sun were worse.

I’ll say this. Covering processions in conditions like that is certifiably a form of penance.

And if you had to wear a suit in such conditions?

Perhaps a nonstop ticket to heaven.

And there was one such man who may have earned that stripe.

As I continued my backwards sprints, attempting in vain to stay ahead of the floats, the man in the suit, John Quaglione, whom I’d only met earlier that day, turned to me and said what all people walking in a procession, in lava-like conditions, wearing a suit, say:

“Is it hot enough for ya?”

I replied with the heartfelt, concurring nod in the affirmative, followed by the slow shake of the head indicating that this was, well, less than ideal.

And with that, I returned to my trying-to-take-photos dance as I moved through the procession.

After about half an hour, I’d reached the point where my cameras, which normally feel like tools of the trade, had begun to feel like medieval punishment devices with straps.

Then, out of the crowd, John walked straight up to me and thrust two bottles of ice-cold water into my hands with a big Brooklyn:

“Here ya go!”

To say his graciousness was unexpected would make it into the top three understatements of the century.

I was flabbergasted.

Grateful.

But flabbergasted.

Who does that? I asked myself as I guzzled the water, not caring that it was spilling all over my shirt.

And why?

The answer would come later, as life brought other encounters that also left me just as happily confused.

More recently, on an evening that was strikingly the opposite, cold, dark, and rainy, in a different borough altogether, in a different church, for a different liturgical celebration, something similar occurred.

It was the Easter Vigil at St. Joseph’s Church in Greenwich Village.

I arrived early, which has yet to prove a bad idea, and made my way up and off to the side of the expansive marble sanctuary. The church was darkened, and the whole place carried that particular blend of somber anticipation and whispered greetings that belongs to Holy Saturday night.

Hundreds of young Catholics, and soon-to-be Catholics, had also arrived early, wisely, if you ask me, to claim one of the coveted seats in this particularly line-out-the-door church.

A church, I should add, that could certainly benefit from an addition.

Darn NYC landmark rules.

I sat comfortably in the darkness, taking in the scene, when a lone voice cut through it and asked, “Would you like to sit over here on a chair?”

A little startled, I smiled and replied, “No, but thank you for asking. I’m fine here.”

And I was fine there.

The floor is actually a very underrated place for a photojournalist. Your gear can’t fall, you’re out of the way, and people who like seats are rarely fighting over a place to sit on the cold marble floor.

There’s always room on the floor.

But it was what she said next that really got my attention.

“Okay, well then I’ll come join you!”

Come again?

And she did.

She, a university student named Lauren, sat beside me, albeit in a chair, and what followed was a very pleasant, and perhaps unknowingly needed, conversation about life, faith, and the wonder of it all.

No, it wasn’t a bottle of water. It didn’t save me from the heat or cool down my body temperature or keep me from collapsing on a Brooklyn street in front of Our Lady and half of Williamsburg.

But it came from the same generous place.

Which brings us to today.

This afternoon I heard a thump outside my front door, a package left on the step by our friendly neighborhood UPS man. He’s one person I’m always happy to see. Aside from his friendly disposition, he’s usually bearing some sort of gift.

And this time was no exception.

I picked up the weighty, bubble-wrapped package from the stairs, hence the thump, and gently squeezed it the way a child does at Christmas, taking that thirty-second examination of the outside to see what might be on the inside before shredding the paper and tearing it open.

Some things never change.

But what I was holding in my hands was more valuable than its contents.

What rested in my hands was an unselfish, thoughtful act of charity.

Not long ago, I’d written about regrets I carried. One of them was that I’d not gone to college in any meaningful way, let alone a Catholic one. In writing the piece, I’d taken some time to reflect on what I actually regretted. Not the vague, dramatic kind of regrets we sometimes imagine we should have, but the ones that still live in some dark corner of the mind.

The ones that every once and a while cause you to wince.

And while the regrets that stood out may possibly seem superficial to many, they are not superficial to me.

Inside that white bubble-wrapped envelope from Indiana were two items that had significantly formed me in my youth.

And regrettably, two items I’d lost somewhere along the way.

One was The Art of Bricklaying by J. Edgar Ray. The other was Small Boat Engine Repair by C. Morgan Jones.

The first had been given to me years ago by a lovely old Italian lady whose husband had passed on, but who, in life, had been a master bricklayer.

I know it may seem strange, but I’d been enamored with bricklaying as a kid. My father, and his father before him, were builders, highly skilled builders. I grew up in that shadow, and at least for a time, with that expected path stretched out before me.

The only problem was that it wasn’t my desired path.

Still, I studied. I schlepped bricks. I mixed cement. I built things in my youth under the watchful eye of my father, and I can still see the dozens of patterns and purposes hidden within the art.

That book serves as a kind of time machine, transporting me back to the beginning of the journey, when life was all unbridled possibility, fueled by youthful dreams.

The other book is how I learned practically everything I know about internal combustion engines, on boats, cars, lawn mowers, chainsaws, and whatever else I thought I could fix without making it worse.

It was written in the forties, like many of the books I own.

It’s brilliant because it establishes the one thing crucial for having mastery in any subject.

The basics.

If you interiorize the words in a book like that, you can fix almost anything. Sure, there are computers and sensors now. But the fundamentals remain the same.

It’s with the knowledge I acquired from that handy little book that I’ve kept every car I own running well past its expected lifespan.

And it was from that little manual that I earned my PhD in shady-tree mechanics.

But I digress.

(Often, as you’ve probably noticed.)

The reason those two books, masterpieces, really, were back in my hands was because a thoughtful woman named Deanne had read that article, remembered what I had lost, searched them out, bought them, wrapped them, and sent them across the country.

No promise of anything in return. Just an act of charity conceived quietly in one heart and delivered to another by a thump on the front step.

And maybe that’s why these moments stay with me.

John handing me two bottles of ice-cold water on a Brooklyn street that felt like the inside of a pizza oven.

A young woman at the Easter Vigil seeing me sitting alone on the marble floor and deciding, not to leave me there, but to join me.

Deanne finding two old books from the half-forgotten library of my childhood and returning them to me as if they were relics.

Small things, maybe.

But only to someone who has never needed water.

Or company.

Or the sudden mercy of being remembered.

These gestures do something to a person. They slip past the defenses. They walk right around the cynicism, the exhaustion, the self-reliance, the private little wounds we keep filed away under ‘that’s life.’

They arrive without warning and announce that goodness is still out there, still moving, still looking for a place to land.

And when it lands, it can change the temperature of a day.

It can warm the cold marble beneath you.

It can turn a package into a kind of sacrament of memory.

Maybe that’s what startles me most. Not that kindness exists. I know it does. We all do, at least in theory.

What startles me is that it sometimes comes looking for us before we know enough to ask for it.

Unprovoked.

Which may be another way of experiencing Grace.

And Grace, thankfully, has never been known to wait for permission.

Because beneath every real act of kindness, every act of mercy, every act of charity, there is love.

And love?

That’s always been God’s department.

And as all good things come from God.

Kindness is certainly no exception.

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Thanks for reading! This is a truly independent, reader-supported periodical. Your support is crucial. If you are able, please consider a paid subscription or making a ‘Patron of the Arts’ donation of any amount. By doing so, you are not just supporting this effort; you’re a vital part of this mission.

You have my heartfelt thanks for your generosity and support, and please keep me in your prayers, and know of mine for each of you. God Bless, Jeff

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[Read Part I and Part II of this 3 Part Series]

Two long days later, after the last prayers, my bags packed, and I took a long look at the tiny cabin high up on the hill that I would depart from in the morning, I stepped outside for some air.

The valley that had been wrapped in fog on that first morning now lay under a clear sky adorned with stars. The dome of the church caught the moonlight, softer now, but still impossible to miss if you knew where to look.

Down by the river, the ruins of the mill were just barely shadows and edges against the faint glow of the town.

It struck me how easy it would be to drive past all of this and never know what you were missing.

From the highway, Baltic is just another name on a green sign. From a distance, the Motherhouse could be mistaken for any large brick building on a hill.

But if you step inside, if you rise at 4:45 a.m. and fumble for coffee and watch the fog lift off the valley, if you listen to the bell, sit in the chapel, follow a Sister through her day, you start to see something else…

“What do you want people to know about your life here?”

“That it’s real.”

Those words will forever live with me.

Because what I had seen over the course of those days wasn’t an artifact of the past or a remnant of something fading.

It was life at its fullest.

The life of Grace.

A breathtaking gift from a Merciful and Loving God.

The Sisters of Charity of Our Lady, Mother of the Church are one small current in a much larger, often unseen ocean of Grace, lived out in places like this, far from headlines, and in every hidden corner of this vast world.

They didn’t save the mill. They couldn’t stop every factory closure or every family from moving away.

That was never their work.

Their work was, and is, to love…

To love God who called them.
To love the Church that formed them.
And to love the people placed in front of them in this little valley, in this particular sliver of time.

As I stood there looking at the dome and the smokestack, one gleaming, one crumbling, it was hard not to see them as a kind of parable.

Human projects rise, dominate, and fall. Technologies replace what came before. Brick and iron eventually crumble and rust away.

But the work of Grace, the daily “yes” whispered in convent chapels, over kitchen sinks, and in the middle of ordinary days, that’s what endures.

You could say Baltic is just a small town with a long-closed mill and a house full of nuns.

Or you could say it’s something else entirely.

That the life of the Church isn’t sustained by mills, wealth or any other worldly thing, but by those whose faithfulness, animated by Grace, persevere through it all.

So if you ever find yourself on a back road in East Connecticut and you hear a bell cutting through the fog at dawn’s early light, don’t be too quick to keep driving.

Slow down. Look toward the hill.

Because somewhere up there, the Church is awake and praying for you.

And the Hidden Heart of the world, is still beating.

The Sisters

The Sisters of Charity of Our Lady, Mother of the Church

Learn more about them on their website and follow them on Instagram and Facebook!

There’s one in every bunch

[Read Part I and Part II of this 3 Part Series]

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You have my heartfelt thanks for your generosity and support, and please keep me in your prayers, and know of mine for each of you. God Bless, Jeff

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[Read Part I Here!]

If the town below tells you what was once visible, a day inside the Motherhouse reveals what’s hidden.

From the outside, the Holy Family Motherhouse rises above Baltic with a quiet authority. It’s not dramatic in the way a cathedral is dramatic. It doesn’tt overwhelm the senses. It simply stands there, solid and watchful, looking out over a valley that has seen smokestacks, immigrant families, schoolgirls, weddings, funerals, First Communions, and generations of Sisters moving through the same halls in white habits and black veils.

The Motherhouse is connected to the Academy of the Holy Family, the school founded by the Sisters in Baltic in 1874. The present school building, built in 1914, feels like part of the same long sentence, joined physically and spiritually to the Motherhouse beside it.

But inside, it’s less a building than a small world.

A corridor opens into another corridor. A stairwell turns unexpectedly. A hallway that seems to be leading one way suddenly reveals a chapel door, a sitting room, a relic case, a classroom wing, a kitchen, a dining room, or a quiet corner.

The Motherhouse is a labyrinth of passageways and sections, the kind of place where you begin to suspect that a map might just prove handy, if you were in any kind of hurry.

By the time I slipped into the chapel early on the second morning, the Sisters were already in place.

Rows of veils.

Heads bowed.

The soft rustle of pages turning.

“Lord, open my lips…”

“…and my mouth will proclaim your praise.”

The words rose and fell like breathing.

Above the altar, a great mural of the Holy Spirit seemed to gather the whole chapel beneath its wings. It felt like a presence. The dove hovered over the sanctuary, over the tabernacle, over the Sisters in choir, over the worn wood and folded hands and bowed heads.

And with every sunrise for over 150 years, the Sisters were doing what they do every day: standing before God on behalf of a world that mostly doesn’t know they exist.

Light from the stained-glass windows moved slowly across the floor.

A young Sister sang with her eyes closed. Across from her, an older Sister leaned heavily on the wood of the pew, her hands marked with age.

Two ends of the same rope.

Between them was the whole mystery of religious life: not escape from the world, but a long fidelity within it. A richer one.

After Morning Prayer and Mass, the silence of the chapel gave way to the gentle commotion of community life: cups being filled, chairs scraping against the floor, quick footsteps in the hallway, the low murmur of conversation, and laughter rising from somewhere just out of sight.

“Did you get your coffee yet?” one Sister asked, spotting me hovering with my camera, feeling a little out of place.

A few minutes later I was in the kitchen, fielding questions about where I’d come from, who I work for, how many kids I have. One Sister wanted to know why anyone would voluntarily live in New Jersey. Another assured me they would pray for me.

I’m still not entirely sure if the two comments were related.

That was one of the surprises of the Motherhouse.

You arrive expecting silence, and there is silence. Deep silence. Holy silence.

But there’s also laughter.

There’s teasing.

There’s the unmistakable sound of women who have lived together long enough to know one another’s habits, timing, weaknesses, favorite chairs, preferred coffee, and best jokes.

The day didn’t unfold like a program. It unfolded like a household.

One minute I was standing in a dishwashing room where steam rose from the machines. The next, I was in a hallway watching one Sister pause beside an elderly member of the community, adjust a blanket, offer a few quiet words, and draw out a tired but very real smile.

Elsewhere, school life continued on the other side of the connected buildings. Students passed through the same larger world of prayer, discipline, and formation that has shaped young women here for generations. The Academy is not a memory preserved under glass. It’s still a school. Still regular and boarding. Still alive with the ordinary hopes and worries of students who probably don’t realize, at least not yet, how much history surrounds them.

And then there were the relics.

Tucked within the Motherhouse is a remarkable collection as if the saints themselves had taken up residence in the walls. Tiny fragments of holy lives rested behind glass. Names from across the long story of the Church stood silently in their cases, not as curiosities, but as company.

That’s what the Motherhouse began to feel like to me.

A sacred community.

The Sisters in the chapel.

The students in the school.

The saints in their reliquaries.

The town below.

The river still moving silently through the valley.

And Holy Spirit overshadowing, protecting, and shining His Grace upon it all.

It would be easy to call this place a remnant of another age, but that would be the wrong word. A remnant is what’s left over.

This is not left over.

This continues to move, and remains.

“What do you want people to know about your life here?” I asked one of the Sisters.

She paused.

“That it’s real,” she said. “People imagine a museum. But this is very alive.”

That sentence stayed with me because it named exactly what I’d been seeing.

Inside the Motherhouse, hidden above a former mill town in eastern Connecticut, Grace was not only surviving.

It’s moving through the halls.
It’s laughing over coffee.
It’s singing beneath the Holy Spirit.
And it’s caring for the old, teaching the young, feeding the hungry and passing quietly from one generation to the next.

Faithfully.

And that’s been the story of Grace from age to age since the beginning. And in this sleepy town of Baltic, there’s no exception.

Before the Motherhouse begins to move, it gathers in silence.
Rows of black veils face the altar, each Sister hidden from view and yet fully present, joined in the prayer that has carried this community through generations. In the Motherhouse, the day does not begin with activity. It begins with Christ.

A Sister bows over her prayer book as the community prays the Divine Office, the kind of hidden work that leaves no noise behind, but somehow holds everything else together.

At the center of the house is not a memory, or a mission statement, or even the long history of the community. It is Christ himself, lifted above the chalice in the silence of the Mass, the source from which everything else flows.

An elderly Sister prays the Stations of the Cross daily from her wheelchair before the altar, framed by stained glass and morning light. In the Motherhouse, fidelity is not measured only by movement, but by remaining.

In the kitchen, the sacred and practical sit side by side: steel pans, an old scale, flowers, an American flag, and a small statue of Our Lady watching over it all. Here, Grace does not float above ordinary work. It settles in among the pots and shelves.

The life of the house moves through the kitchen as naturally as it moves through the chapel. Meals are planned, dishes are washed, questions are asked, and the ordinary work of feeding one another becomes part of the larger prayer.

On the school side of the Motherhouse, a Sister writes an equation on the board while students follow from their desks. The Academy of the Holy Family is not a preserved memory. It is still a school, still forming young women under the same roof where generations have prayed.

In the refectory, the pace loosens. Between prayer and work, there is the quiet companionship of women who have shared years of service, carrying in their faces the peace of a life given steadily, day after day.

The halls of the Motherhouse are not solemn all the time. Around corners and on stair landings, laughter breaks open the silence, revealing a community as human as it is holy.

In the food pantry, cans of food become a different kind of liturgy. Hands sort, stack, count, and prepare, making sure someone hungry will be fed. The prayer of the chapel does not stay in the chapel. It moves toward the next person in need.

A Sister prepares candles and devotional vessels by a window, the small mechanics of prayer laid out on a worktable. Even here, in the unnoticed tasks, the life of the chapel is being tended.

A Sister pushes an elderly member of the community down a long corridor beneath crucifixes and holy images. The hallway becomes a procession in miniature: one Sister serving, one Sister being carried, both moving through a house built on Love.

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Read more of the three-part series:

Part I: The Mill and the Hill

Part III: What Endures — coming next.

Thanks for reading! This is a truly independent, reader-supported periodical. Your support is crucial. If you are able, please consider a paid subscription or making a ‘Patron of the Arts’ donation of any amount. By doing so, you are not just supporting this effort; you’re a vital part of this mission.

You have my heartfelt thanks for your generosity and support, and please keep me in your prayers, and know of mine for each of you. God Bless, Jeff

4:45 a.m.

The glow of my phone cut through the dark as I groped across an unfamiliar nightstand and, in my half-awake state, hit dismiss instead of snooze. So much for fifteen more minutes of bliss.

I rolled out of the unfamiliar bed and shuffled toward an unfamiliar kitchen, praying there was coffee and that I’d find it before I walked into a wall. Outside, somewhere beyond the thin pane of glass, a new day was already pushing at the edges of the night.

Baltic, Connecticut.

A tiny former mill village tucked into the rolling hills along a narrow river. A place you could easily miss if you were driving too fast on a gray Tuesday… and yet a place that has lived more than one life.

I peered out the east-facing window and watched first light arrive, that moment when the sky shifts from black to not-quite-black and the world remembers that morning is, in fact, going to happen again.

Down in the basin, a thick, white fog lay over the village like a blanket. The tall pines climbed out of it, their shadows stretched long by the low sun. Dew clung to every needle and blade of grass, catching the first stray rays and turning the hillside into a field of tiny stars.

And then, there it was.

The golden dome of the church rising above the trees, catching the sun head-on. For a few seconds it didn’t just reflect the light. It seemed to throw it back, a small sun of its own. The cross on top burned like a spark against the pale sky.

Somewhere below, the river moved quietly past the bones of what used to be one of the largest textile mills in eastern Connecticut, a sprawling complex that once drew workers from across the region, its brick walls humming day and night with the rhythm of looms. Entire families built their lives around it. Generations passed through its doors. The whistle marked the hours. The river powered the work.

This whole village rose and fell with that engine of industry. When the mill surged, Baltic filled with life, boarding houses, shops, children in the streets. When fire or decline came, and it did, more than once, the silence that followed settled just as deeply.

A distant train whistle cut through the stillness, thin and lonely.

A lone dove settled on the lip of the last standing smokestack…a soft gray comma against the red brick.

Up on the hill, the fog kept lifting.

And then another sound shouldered its way into the morning.

The bell.

6:30 a.m., and the bell of the Holy Family Motherhouse rang out across the valley…clear, insistent, unembarrassed. In a town where most of the old factory whistles have gone silent, the church bells still ring.

Inside, the Sisters of Charity of Our Lady, Mother of the Church were already moving down the halls, black habits brushing against polished floors, rosary beads clicking softly like distant rain.

I hadn’t come to Baltic as a tourist.

I came for the Sisters.

The Mill Town and the Motherhouse

I met the Sisters first in the chapel and the dining room—through their voices, their laughter, their joyful way of moving through a day. The town came later.

One afternoon, when there was a rare lull in the schedule, I took a walk into town.

From the hill where the Motherhouse sits, you can see almost everything. Rooftops, trees, the thin silver scratch of the river cutting through the valley. But it’s only when you start walking down the winding road that the past comes into focus: cracked pavement, sagging fences, old stone walls with nothing left to hold up.

At the bottom of the hill, the river slid by like it had all the time in the world. The ruins along the water suggested a different story. Brick foundations swallowed by weeds, rusted pipes jutting out of nowhere, two lone smokestacks punching into the sky like exclamation points from another era.

You could almost hear it if you stood still long enough.

The thunder of looms. The shriek of belts and pulleys. The constant hiss and clatter of thousands of spindles spinning cotton into thread.

Baltic grew up around that sound.

By the time I retraced my steps up the hill, I had more questions than answers.

The answers didn’t come all at once. They surfaced slowly, in conversation, in memory, in the way the Sisters spoke about the town as if it were still alive.

Later that day, I had followed two of them down to the food pantry at the edge of the property. It wasn’t large, but there was a steady movement of people coming and going. Out back, they showed me the truck they use to gather and deliver food, an old, retired rental, now pressed quietly into a different kind of service.

Nothing about it felt extraordinary.

And yet… everything about it did.

There was a constancy to it all.

A sense that while the town below had emptied of the noise that once defined it, something else had taken root in its place.

Not loudly.

But faithfully.

By the time I reached the top of the hill again, one thing was clear.

The mill had powered the town.

But on the hill, the bell kept ringing…

And alongside the old brick lines of the mill, the Motherhouse remains full of life. The daily life of the Sisters continuing just as steadily as the looms once did. And just beyond it, the worn gold dome of St. Mary’s still catches the light.

Before the valley fell silent, it looked like this.

Brick stretched across the horizon, row after row of windows catching the day’s first light. The smokestacks stood like sentinels, pushing out the work of a thousand hands.

And this wasn’t just a building…it was the reason the town existed at all.

And this is what remains. The looms are gone. The buildings are gone. The noise has long since faded. But two smokestacks still stand, rising above the trees like quiet witnesses to everything that once filled this valley with life.

The tracks remain. Steel lines cutting through the valley, pointing forward as they always have… but no longer carrying the weight they once did. No schedules. No urgency.

Just distance.

It’s hard to imagine what once filled this valley.

Where machines once roared and smokestacks marked the sky, the river now moves quietly between walls of green. The trees have returned, patient and unhurried, covering what industry once claimed.

The mill’s story was one of rise and ruin. But the Sisters’ story is something else entirely.

In the place of noise came prayer. In the place of smoke came song. And in the shadow of what was lost, the Sisters of Charity of Our Lady, Mother of the Church remain a living witness that God is still making something beautiful here.

READ: Part II: A Day Inside the Motherhouse

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Thanks for reading! This is a truly independent, reader-supported periodical. Your support is crucial. If you are able, please consider a paid subscription or making a ‘Patron of the Arts’ donation of any amount. By doing so, you are not just supporting this effort; you’re a vital part of this mission.

You have my heartfelt thanks for your generosity and support, and please keep me in your prayers, and know of mine for each of you. God Bless, Jeff

The year before Mother Angelica passed away, I received a call that caught me off guard.

The request itself was simple, but it carried a lot of responsibility.

When the time came—whenever that would be—I was to drop everything, get on a plane, and photograph her funeral for EWTN. There would be no advance notice. No scheduling. No time to prepare. Just a phone call… and go.

I agreed.

In the months that followed, most of my communication was with the network’s art director, Liz Malcolm. Our emails were straightforward, logistics, expectations, a few details here and there.

But there was one small thing I began to notice.

Every message she sent ended the same way:

God Bless.

It stood out.

Not in a dramatic way. Not in a way that felt wrong. Just enough to make me pause.

I’d received emails from priests or religious before, of course. That felt expected. But this was different. It wasn’t occasional. It wasn’t formal.

It was… normal.

And I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it at first.

So as time went on and as I became more connected to the broader EWTN world I started to notice something else.

It wasn’t just Liz.

Others signed off the same way. Emails. Conversations. Phone calls. In passing.

God bless you.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world seemed to operate in a different language.

“Best.”
“Thanks.”
“Take care.”
“Cheers.”

All of them good. All of them carrying some version of goodwill. A polite closing thought. A gesture in the direction of kindness.

But also… a little vague.

“Best”… what, exactly?
“Take care”… how?
“Cheers”… to what?

Again, there’s nothing wrong with any of them. They’re human. Familiar. Easy.

But “God Bless” felt different.

And at the beginning, if I’m being totally honest, it made me just slightly uncomfortable.

There’s something about invoking God, especially in everyday exchanges, that can feel like a lot. Maybe too much. Maybe too personal. Maybe something reserved for certain moments, not something tucked casually at the bottom of an email.

At least that’s how it felt to me…then.

But over time, that small phrase kept returning. And eventually, I found myself thinking about it more seriously.

What are we actually saying when we end a conversation?

Most of our sign-offs are, in one way or another, a kind of well wish. A nod toward something good for the other person.

And that’s no small thing.

But “God Bless”… goes further.

It’s not vague or implied. It’s direct.

It names something. Or rather… Someone.

And slowly, almost without realizing it, my understanding of those two words began to change.

To say “God Bless” isn’t just to be polite. It isn’t just a pleasant way to close a message.

It’s a desire.

A real one.

It says: I want the highest good for you.

Not just success. Not just comfort. Not just a good day.

Something more.

Something deeper.

And in its simplest form, it’s also a prayer.

Even if it’s brief. Even if it’s almost unconscious.

God… please bless this person.

There’s something powerful about that.

Something generous.

Something that transforms even the smallest exchange into an act of charity.

And the more I’ve thought about it, the more those two words have stayed with me.

Not because they’re dramatic or they stand out, because they don’t.

They slip into conversation so easily. Two words at the end of a sentence. Easy to overlook. Easy to pass by without a second thought.

And yet…maybe not as small as they seem.

Because if those words are what they claim to be; a blessing… a prayer…a heartfelt desire for someone else’s good, then even something as ordinary as an email becomes something more.

Not just an exchange of information.

But, in its own quiet way… an opportunity to love.

God Bless,

Jeff

PS: And I mean that.

Thanks for reading! This is a truly independent, reader-supported periodical. Your support is crucial. If you are able, please consider a paid subscription or making a ‘Patron of the Arts’ donation of any amount. By doing so, you are not just supporting this effort; you’re a vital part of this mission.

You have my heartfelt thanks for your generosity and support, and please keep me in your prayers, and know of mine for each of you. God Bless, Jeff

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I like pictures.

On the wall of my office, I have a few that I return to often.

One is of the Blessed Sacrament, held in a monstrance at the Shrine in Hanceville, Alabama. I took it during adoration while I was there for Mother Angelica’s funeral. It’s the kind of image you don’t just look at, you enter it.

I also have a sketch of an old seventeenth-century galleon, braced against stormy seas. It sails hard into dark, tumultuous skies. I’ve always loved the sea… the mystery of it, the adventure of it, the sense that something is always just beyond sight.

And then there’s another image tucked a bit off to the side.

A photograph I’ve always loved.

For years, I thought it was a candid moment from another era. A little wild. A little mysterious. Céline Martin and her friends, standing on a bridge, brandishing rifles like explorers or revolutionaries. I even used it once in an article about the pursuit of excellence.

It felt real.

But it turns out…

As usual…

I was completely wrong.

Last year, while diving deeper into the life of Céline Martin—the sister of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, better known as Sister Geneviève of the Holy Face—I stumbled onto something astonishing.

That photograph wasn’t documentary at all.

It was part of a play.

In July of 1894, Céline and some of her friends and family staged and photographed a twelve-scene production titled Voyage excentrique aux Cordillères des Andes—The Eccentric Voyage to the Andes. It was a kind of comedic “photo-theatre,” inspired by the Chilean travels of their friend, Abbé (Father) Joseph de Cornière, and performed on the Guérin family estate known as La Musse.

The troupe included the Abbé himself, Dr. Francis La Néele (Céline’s future brother-in-law), Marie and Jeanne Guérin, and Céline, armed with props, costumes, and a sense of gleeful adventure.

They weren’t crossing the Andes.

They were making up a story.

Creating a living photo-story decades before motion pictures existed.

Each scene was paired with a rhyming caption penned by the Abbé. The tone was whimsical, satirical, almost cinematic.

It begins like an expedition… and slowly unravels into delightful chaos.

The explorers lose their way. They tumble down ravines. They encounter a “panther.” They rescue one another with ropes. And finally, they return home—triumphant.

Reading the surviving verses feels like watching a silent film unspool…

“Down from the mountain’s craggy side
Our gallant band descends once more,
Through shadowed woods their steps they guide,
Still pressing on as once before…”

Then comes panic, a “terrifying roar” in the woods, followed by the doctor’s calm and the ladies’ shrieks:

“‘Pshaw!’ said the doctor, ‘calm your dread,
’Tis but a cat with lusty lungs!’”

And finally, the climactic moment:

“Behind the brush the hunters crouched,
‘Fire!’ cried the Abbé, quick and bold —
The beast leapt high — then headlong rolled,
Its mighty roar forever hushed.”

It’s brilliant.

A nineteenth-century blend of slapstick and adventure, staged entirely for the camera.

You can almost hear the laughter between shots, the rustle of brush, the playful direction of the Abbé turned director.

But what moved me most is what this reveals about Céline Martin.

Here was a young woman in her mid-twenties, intelligent, devout, and deeply artistic, using a camera not just to capture reality, but to create story.

In an era when photography was still stiff and formal, Céline was experimenting with movement, emotion, and sequence.

She was, in a very real sense, inventing narrative photography.

And she was doing it in a Catholic household.

The Martins and Guérins weren’t rebelling against piety.

They were playing within it.

Their humor, their creativity, their collaboration, these weren’t distractions from faith. They were expressions of it.

The holy leisure of a family fully alive.

When historians point to Voyage excentrique as an early step toward cinema, they’re not exaggerating. It carries the same instinct that would later give rise to film: the desire to tell a story through light, gesture, and timing.

Céline may not have known it… but she was rehearsing the grammar of the moving image.

Of course, her story didn’t end in the fields of Normandy.

Two years later, she entered the Carmel of Lisieux, joining her sisters Pauline, Marie, and Thérèse.

There, she became the community’s photographer, painter, sculptor, and designer and the visual custodian of her sister’s legacy.

Every image of Thérèse that the world now knows…the serene gaze, the crucifix, the roses, passed through Céline’s hands.

Through her eye.

Through her heart.

The same creative discipline that shaped her playful “Andes expedition” became a sacred vocation.

She transformed art into contemplation.

When I think about that, the photograph in my office changes again.

Those folks with rifles are no longer adventurers, or even actors.

They’re artists at play.

Pioneers of Catholic storytelling.

Their laughter, their make-believe peril, their joy, it all becomes something more.

A secret parable of holy creativity.

It would be easy to dismiss Voyage excentrique as a curiosity, a bit of Victorian whimsy. But I think it’s something closer to a manifesto…a reminder that faith and imagination are not opposites. They’re collaborators.

Céline’s little “film” was born from delight, discipline, and love, the same elements that make great art… and great sanctity. Her sister Thérèse once wrote that holiness consists in doing ordinary things with extraordinary love. Céline shows us that art can become that too. That even a make-believe adventure can echo eternity when the heart behind it is pure.

So yes, I was wrong about the photograph. It wasn’t a rugged expedition into the mountains. It was a staged comedy in a field just outside Lisieux.

But perhaps that makes it even better.

Because it reveals something essential about sanctity: Grace doesn’t erase our humanity… it illuminates it. That laughter, play, and artistic daring can be holy ground.

And maybe that’s the real journey. Not through the Cordilleras of the Andes, but through the imagination of a woman who learned to see God in light, shadow, and story.

I encourage you to view Voyage excentrique aux Cordillères des Andes—The Eccentric Voyage to the Andes in it’s entirety at the Les archives du Carmel de Liseiux

All photos are courtesy of https://archives.carmeldelisieux.fr/

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Thanks for reading! This is a truly independent, reader-supported periodical. Your support is crucial. If you are able, please consider a paid subscription or making a ‘Patron of the Arts’ donation of any amount. By doing so, you are not just supporting this effort; you’re a vital part of this mission.

You have my heartfelt thanks for your generosity and support, and please keep me in your prayers, and know of mine for each of you. God Bless, Jeff

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How could this not change the world.

I found myself asking it quietly as I stood there photographing the Communion line at St. Joseph’s on Holy Thursday this year. Person after person stepped forward. The line didn’t seem to end. It just kept coming. My arms were beginning to grow weary from holding the camera, but something else was happening at the same time.

A joy began to rise.

A smile followed.

Because one by one, they were receiving Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, and then carrying Him back out into the world. Into the streets of New York. Into their workplaces and homes. Into their families and struggles.

And the thought came, almost without effort: how could this not change the world.

As the days passed and the memory of that Mass began to settle, my thoughts drifted toward something larger—something that had been building for years now.

A revival.

I remember when I was thought a little crazy for saying that out loud. And I remember exactly where that conviction first took hold of me: the center of Times Square.

I had gone reluctantly. A friend had mentioned that “some people” were gathering near Father Duffy Square for a Eucharistic procession. I had just finished covering an ordination at St. Patrick’s Cathedral and was exhausted. My batteries low in every sense, no pun intended. I didn’t make a bold decision to go.

I was dragged there.

Praise God, Grace has a way of doing that.

At first, I wasn’t exactly sure what I was looking at. There was a sea of people, but Times Square isn’t exactly a stranger to that. But as I began to study the faces, the shirts, the banners, it became clear.

These were the “some people.”

And “some people” turned out to be several thousand.

I remember pausing, taking it in, glancing upward, smiling, and quietly whispering, thank you… again…

That Eucharistic procession—the largest in New York City’s history—felt like an announcement. A signal that something had begun.

Looking back now, the pattern is unmistakable.

From that day forward, more and more Eucharistic processions began appearing throughout the city and beyond it. Uptown. Downtown. Across boroughs. Across states.

And then came 2024.

Four National Eucharistic Pilgrimages, each beginning at the edges of the country and moving inward—thousands of miles, hundreds of thousands of people all converging in Indianapolis for the first National Eucharistic Congress in eighty-three years.

I had the privilege of covering much of that journey. Walking with pilgrims across cities and plains. Through San Francisco, the farmlands of Nebraska, the streets of New York.

All drawn by the same thing.

Not an idea.

A Presence.

And even after the Congress, it didn’t stop.

Another pilgrimage followed—through rural America, across farm towns, deserts, and reservations. Everywhere I turn now, I see it.

A growing, vibrant, emerging Church.

The headlines speak of record numbers of catechumens entering the Church this Easter. Parishes once quiet are now full. Lines once short now stretch.

We’ve gone, in what feels like a matter of years, from hand-wringing… to Hallelujah.

So what happened?

How did this come about?

Programs matter. Outreach matters. Evangelization matters.

But that’s not what’s at the heart of this.

At the heart of the revival is something much simpler…

Grace.

The Grace that has been carried across this nation—Jesus Christ Himself, present in the Blessed Sacrament—moving through highways and city streets, through quiet towns and crowded avenues alike.

Just as He once walked the dusty roads of Galilee…

He is walking again.

And that night, I saw it once more.

On Holy Thursday—the night the Eucharist was given—He passed once again through the streets of New York. Through Washington Square Park. Moving quietly through the ordinary life of the city.

Some noticed, some didn’t.

But that didn’t matter, because His Grace— a Grace that has an immediate effect—flowed out into the world.

And the question returned, no longer as a thought, but as something closer to an answer.

What is causing this revival?

In one word?

Jesus.

And how could that not change the world.

After all…

He made it.

This is a truly independent, reader-supported publication. If this piece resonated with you, I’d be grateful for your support—whether through a paid subscription or as a Patron of the Arts.

It allows me to continue telling these stories.

Thank you for being here. Please keep me in your prayers, as I keep you in mine.

God bless,

Jeff

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