“Here kitty, kitty…”

A tiny black kitten watched me from between the shrubs, keeping a safe distance in the long morning shadows of Newark’s Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart.

I was waiting for the Knights of Columbus to arrive and prepare to carry a 150-pound reliquary into the towering stone church. Inside were the relics of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, the cloistered French nun whose encounters with Christ helped spread devotion to the Sacred Heart throughout the world.

But at that particular moment, I was occupied with the cat.

I broke off a piece of my muffin and tossed it toward the little fellow, expecting him to sniff it and lose interest.

This wasn’t a seagull, after all.

He pounced on it, and every crumb disappeared.

So I tossed another piece.

And another.

And another.

Until I was standing outside a cathedral holding an empty muffin wrapper, wondering how an animal weighing about two pounds had managed to eat my entire breakfast.

Apparently, a hungry kitten on the streets of Newark doesn’t hold out for Fancy Feast.

For a moment, I considered bringing him home to surprise my wife. Our anniversary was the following week, and nothing says “I love you” like a stray kitten that eats muffins.

You could picture it. The scrappy little cat. The warm house. Regular meals. A family to fuss over him.

But with the food gone, he bolted.

And as I watched him disappear, I thought about everything we could have offered him, if only he’d had a bit more faith.

Of course, he couldn’t have known that. I was a stranger. And whatever had taught him to keep his distance might well have kept him alive.

Still, there I stood, wanting to offer him a home, while he hurried back toward city streets.

And then a thought came to me.

How often do we do that with God?

Saint Margaret Mary, whose relics were arriving, spent much of her short life trying to help people understand the love being offered to them.

She was born in Burgundy in 1647, and she experienced loss and hardship early on. Her father died when she was a child. A serious illness left her bedridden for years. But despite it all, in 1671, she entered the Visitation monastery at Paray-le-Monial, where she offered her life to God.

Between late 1673 and June 1675, she experienced the series of apparitions for which she’s remembered. Jesus revealed His Heart burning with love for humanity, and also His deep sorrow at the indifference with which His love was often received.

Among the words she recorded were these: “and for you in particular.” Dilexit nos, 119–124

That’s it right there.

It’s possible to believe that God loves the world and yet somehow loves you a bit less. You know your history. You know what you’ve done, what you’ve failed to do, and the things you keep promising to change.

But “you in particular” leaves very little room to hide.

Saint Margaret Mary’s experiences brought her opposition, including within her own community. But with the support of her spiritual advisor, St. Claude de la Colombière, she persevered. Her mission helped spread First Friday Communion, the Holy Hour, and the call for a feast honoring the Sacred Heart.

Each offered a way to respond: to spend time with Christ, receive Him, seek forgiveness, and return His love.

She died in 1690, at just 43.

More than three centuries later, the Knights of Columbus brought her relics from France to the United States for the bishops’ June consecration of the nation to the Sacred Heart. Their travels had now brought them to Newark, where they were available for veneration September 4–6, in a cathedral bearing the name of the devotion she’d helped carry into the world.

[Details of upcoming stops are listed below.]

A woman who’d lived behind monastery walls was still helping people draw closer to Christ.

And outside, I was beginning to see the kitten’s resistance as a metaphor.

I understand wanting to keep a little distance. We pray for help, but surrender is another thing. We have plans. Responsibilities. People depending on us. Sometimes we’d like to know exactly what God intends before we agree to follow Him.

Preferably in writing.

So sometimes we accept some Grace, offer a quick thank-you, and hurry back to managing everything ourselves.

But The Sacred Heart asks something of us that can feel terribly vulnerable: to believe, to accept, that we’re loved enough to entrust ourselves to Him.

Completely.

That trust won’t spare us every sorrow. Saint Margaret Mary’s life makes that clear. But it allows us to bring our sorrows into a relationship with Someone who loves us through them. We can stop treating every burden as something we must carry alone.

And we can begin with the very thing we’re reluctant to hand over. The worry that follows us into prayer. The sin we’re ashamed to confess. The resentment we’ve been feeding for years.

We can let Him close enough to touch it.

I keep thinking about the distance between that kitten and me. Just a few feet, really. Yet there was no way to explain the life that I’d imagined for him from the other side of his fear.

I hope he finds a home. I hope someone gets to discover what he looks like when he’s well fed, safe, and asleep in a patch of sunlight.

His part of the story is beyond me now.

But ours isn’t.

God is love. Cats are cats.

So don’t be like the kitten.

Accept the Love offered.

The Love that burns within His Sacred Heart.

And never doubt that it’s“for you in particular.”

Upcoming stops…

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Learn more about the heroic, faith-filled work of the Knights of Columbus HERE.

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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Near midnight, in a pouring rain, my taxi driver stopped somewhere in Calcutta and told me to get out.

I had two suitcases, no idea where I was, and could barely breathe in the thick mixture of smoke, heat, and humidity that passed for air. My hotel, the driver indicated, was somewhere down the darkened road.

Then he left.

Standing alone in the rain, I made God a promise: If I survived this, I would never leave the house again.

This was, apparently, God’s answer to my prayer.

I have a genuine gift for getting myself into situations where I have absolutely no business being. Five minutes into the average adventure, I am usually looking for a scuba tank because I’ve discovered that I am not only over my head, but fully submerged.

The adventures are frequently uncomfortable. Occasionally terrifying. Sometimes hilarious.

But the participation prize has always been the story.

Calcutta became one of those stories. Ten years later, though, I’m no longer certain that the story was the prize.

In the months leading up to Mother Teresa’s canonization in 2016, it seemed as though every Catholic news organization in the world was heading to Rome. The agency I worked with already had a photographer there, which made perfect sense.

But I was disappointed.

I loved Mother Teresa. I wanted to be close to this moment, and I began praying for some way to participate.

Then a thought came to me: If everyone else was going to Rome, why not go to Calcutta?

This was the city in which Mother Teresa had lived and worked. It was where she was buried and where the Missionaries of Charity continued the work she began. Most importantly, it was filled with people who had known her not simply as a saint or international icon, but as Mother.

And because everyone would be in Rome, I imagined Calcutta might be quiet.

Peaceful, even.

I may have been spiritually inspired, but I was logistically delusional.

My colleagues laughed when I told them the idea. The Missionaries of Charity did not exactly court publicity. They generally did not allow photographers into their homes, and the likelihood that they would welcome an American photojournalist during one of the most important moments in their history seemed rather slim.

Still, I wrote to them.

The response addressed me as “Dearest Jeffrey” and said that, after prayerful consideration, the Sisters would be delighted to welcome me.

Be careful what you pray for.

As my plane climbed away from New York, I watched the familiar lights disappear beneath me and wondered what, exactly, I’d gotten myself into.

The airport in Delhi looked like the sort of place James Bond might stroll through on his way to save the world. That glamour evaporated aboard the packed, overheated flight to Calcutta. By the time I walked outside, the air felt like it was made of smoke and water. Then came the midnight taxi ride, my roadside abandonment, and the desperate search for the hotel.

Eventually, I found it and pounded on the locked door until a kind, smiling man let me inside.

The air conditioner in my room was more of a theory than an appliance.

And I had booked it for two weeks.

Sr. Ita had been instrumental in getting me to Calcutta in the first place. At Mother House, I explained why I had come and what I hoped to document. I had expected strict limitations. Instead, the Sisters opened far more of their world to me than I ever imagined they would.

I attended early Mass near Mother Teresa’s tomb. I accompanied the Sisters into their homes. I watched them care for children, adults, the sick, and people approaching the end of their lives.

At first, Calcutta had overwhelmed every one of my senses. There was the heat, the smell, the traffic, the crowds, and poverty on a scale I had never witnessed.

But slowly, something changed.

I began raising my camera less often.

The Sisters didn’t deliver speeches about love. They simply loved the person standing before them. Again and again, I watched them give themselves completely to whoever needed them at that moment.

The longer I watched, the less satisfied I became with remaining merely an observer.

On September 4, Pope Francis canonized Mother Teresa in St. Peter’s Square. In Calcutta, the entire city seemed charged with electricity. Sisters arrived from across India, and the chapel at Mother House filled for Mass beside Mother Teresa’s tomb.

Rome had St. Peter’s Square and the formal proclamation. Calcutta had the rooms she had walked, the streets she had traveled, and people who still spoke about her as someone they had known and loved.

That morning, at least to me, Rome had nothing on that room.

Once the celebrations ended, I had four days remaining in Calcutta.

So, I locked my camera gear in the safe at the hotel and showed up to volunteer.

दिनभर थका मन - Dinbhar Thaka Mann

We were shipped off to a place called Nirmal Hriday, which translates to Pure Heart, the first home Mother Teresa had founded. It’s a hospice for the dying destitute, a place where the poorest of the poor go to die. Mother Teresa had envisioned a place where those who had suffered their entire lives would find love and comfort during their final days.

The bodies of the dying men lying on their cots reminded me of photos I’d seen of Auschwitz. The jobs… bathing broken bodies, cleaning bedsores, removing maggots from wounds, among others…

A Sister handed me a small cup of water and two pills, instructing me to give them to a man lying on a cot nearby. And I’m like, “Okay, and then what should I do…” She smiled at me and said, “Just do that first.”

As I approached him, his eyes followed me. His face was covered by leathery skin etched with deep lines from a life lived in the alleys of India. He stared at me through squinted eyes. I knelt beside his cot and looked at him. He was dying.

I handed the pills to him, and he just stared at me. I touched his hand with the paper cup of water, and he made fists with his hands. I gently pressed one pill against his lip, which made him purse his lips. I was beginning to understand why the Sister hadn’t given me anything else to do.

Eventually, I gave up. Instead, I sat with him, speaking about anything and everything to pass the time. He sat in silence, studying me. His eyes would react when I would say certain words. I had no idea whether or not he understood anything I was saying.

After being there for nearly three hours, the Sister called the volunteers to assemble to depart. And the man’s eyes grew wide. And he smiled at me. And gestured for the pills.

It was never about the pills.

I smiled back. And his eyes began to tear. I finally understood.

He just didn’t want to be alone.

छोटा लड़का - Chhota Ladka

Our next “assignment” was at a home on the southern end of Calcutta at Daya Dan, a home for younger disabled children. I went with a group of other volunteers who were heading there. The Sisters greeted us and handed out our jobs. Mine was laundry.

I washed diapers and bedsheets in these enormous concrete vats with some kind of industrial-grade soap that felt like it could strip paint. Other volunteers were tending to the children. Feeding them, entertaining them, playing with them. I was a little bummed.

When the laundry was done, everyone was already gathered in a large cinderblock room for “movie time.” They had about 40 kids surrounding an old, perhaps 20-inch TV. The kids were all gathered up with the other volunteers. And I was alone.

I walked out of the room to get a drink of water. The room I entered was dark, but I could see a large round table in the corner. And on it lay a kid, face down, spread-eagle, probably about six years old. I thought, “This is interesting.”

So, I poked his arm. Nothing. I poked it again. Nothing. One more time…

The kid leaped off the table and wrapped his arms around my neck so tight I thought I’d choke, his legs wrapped around my waist. He aggressively grabbed and felt my face. I realized that he was blind. I had a kid literally stuck to me.

There were some chairs in the movie room, so I figured maybe we could sit. He began to relax, and then he curled up on my lap and nuzzled his face into my chest. His arms were still wrapped around me. Every few minutes, he’d reach up to feel my face. The weight of his tiny body left a feeling I’ll never forget.

Eventually, he completely melted into my arms… as if he was my child… as if I was his father…

I can’t tell you very much about him, not even his name. I can only tell you what it felt like to hold him… and to be held by him.

Ten years later, I can still feel the exact weight of that little boy resting in my arms.

At this point, you might expect me to encourage you to buy a plane ticket and head to Calcutta. But no, that’s not what this is about. Forget that the crime rates are off the charts. Or that you can barely breathe the air. There’s a more important reason. And it’s from Mother Teresa herself.

She said, “Stay where you are. Find your own Calcutta, find the sick, the suffering, and the lonely, right where you are — in your own homes and in your own families, and in your workplaces and in your schools.”

Where is your Calcutta?

We don’t have handicapped infants left to die on the street. But we have the horror of abortion. We don’t have lepers with half-eaten-away bodies rejected by society. But we do have those who are homebound or in hospitals or nursing homes, alone and forgotten.

We don’t have material poverty, with entire communities living in boxes or eating from landfills. But we have spiritual poverty. To quote Mother Teresa:

“The spiritual poverty of the Western World is much greater than the physical poverty of our people. You, in the West, have millions of people who suffer such terrible loneliness and emptiness. They feel unloved and unwanted. They know they need something more than money, yet they don’t know what it is. What they are missing, really, is a living relationship with God.”

It’s this underlying spiritual poverty that’s responsible for the divisions, mass shootings, suicides, and despair that are tearing the fabric of this nation apart. It’s this spiritual poverty that’s led to the loss of our Catholic identity and culture.

But we can change that.

Each of us is called, despite our doubts, fears, or sinfulness. Each of us can make a profound difference in the lives of others.

If there’s only one thing you take away from this, I’d pray it was this.

You matter.

Each and every one of you matters more than you know. You matter to your family, your community, and to this Spiritual Calcutta called America.

Never doubt that your words, your prayers, or your actions can change lives. Because they can. And they will. If only you pray them. Speak them. And act.

And acting, as I learned in Calcutta, is very often simply being present to another.

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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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“Of course you should!”

Those words are my earliest memory of meeting Sister Maria Rose of the Crown of Thorns.

The occasion was the opening and dedication of the newly constructed wing of Our Lady of the Rosary Monastery in Summit, New Jersey. I had cautiously asked whether I should fly a drone over the new wing to capture it from a unique angle.

Her response was immediate.

And exuberant.

From that day forward, every time I saw her, I thought of her fondly as the Drone Nun.

It suited her, somehow.

After all, this was a woman who was born in South Africa, studied law and became a lawyer in Australia, worked as a screen actress, and then entered a Dominican monastery to live within the hallowed walls of the cloister.

And Six years after our first meeting, she professed her Solemn Vows there.

Makes all the sense in the world

Of course.

And I actually mean that.

Because the more religious men and women I meet, the less surprised I am by the winding roads that brought them to convents, monasteries and seminaries.

Again and again, I encounter people who are highly educated, tremendously gifted and, in the worldly understanding of the word, successful.

They aren’t people who failed to find a place in the world.

They’re people who looked deeply at what the world offered and were honest enough to keep asking questions.

Is this all?

What is life for?

Who am I meant to become?

You know what I’ve come to think?

They’re smart.

And they’re honest.

Honest enough to follow those questions beyond the easy answers. Honest enough to continue seeking when the search begins to demand something from them.

And sometimes, a true seeker must be willing to be found.

Perhaps that is where vocation begins…in the mysterious meeting between our searching and God’s summons. We seek meaning, freedom and real life, only to discover that God has been calling us by name all along.

During a Solemn Profession, that mystery takes visible form.

A woman steps forward.

She answers the questions placed before her.

And then she lies prostrate before the altar as the names of the saints are sung around her in the Litany of Supplication.

Heaven is invoked.

The Church prays.

And one human life is placed entirely into the hands of God.

Sister Maria Rose hadn’t arrived at that altar by a straight road.

Few of us do.

There’s an old saying that God writes straight with crooked lines. But perhaps we misunderstand the crookedness. A road can bend without being wrong.

Perhaps some roads must wind.

Perhaps our gifts need time to be discovered, tested and developed so they can bear fruit later in life. Perhaps we need to encounter the world in all its beauty, confusion, possibility and disappointment before we can understand what, or rather, Who, our hearts have been seeking.

Sometimes the road into a monastery passes through places we would never associate with a monastery.

Maybe it needs to.

A woman doesn’t leave her gifts at the enclosure door. She carries them inside, where they can be refined, transformed and offered back to the One who gave them to her.

Nothing is wasted in the hands of God.

And perhaps that’s why a Solemn Profession matters even to those of us who will never make one.

Because we’re all called.

Not all to religious life.

Not all to marriage.

Not all to the priesthood.

But every one of us is called to holiness. Every one of us is invited to prayerfully discern the particular way in which our life is meant to become a gift.

We spend so much of our lives asking, “What will fulfill me?”

Vocation asks a more dangerous question:

“To whom am I called to give myself?”

The strange and beautiful truth is that fulfillment is found within the answer.

As St. Augustine wrote, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

And so we pray.

We breathe the air of the Sacraments.

We listen.

And we walk one uncertain, Grace-filled step at a time, toward the place where our restless hearts may finally come to rest.

Six years after Sister Maria Rose “encouraged” me to launch a drone above the monastery, I stood inside those walls and witnessed what a prayerfully discerned life looks like.

Not a straight line.

Certainly not an obvious one.

But a life gathered into a single, irrevocable “yes.”

When Sister Maria Rose rose from the floor, she wasn’t a woman whose former life had been erased.

She was the same woman, but gathered.

South Africa.

Australia.

The law.

Acting.

Every gift, every mile and every unexpected turn had been carried to that altar and placed before God.

And now she belonged to Him forever.

It showed.

Radiant.

Joyful.

Emotional.

The unmistakable expression of a woman who had crossed a threshold of grace.

There were newer faces inside the monastery that morning, too, women taking their first steps in learning and discerning life within the cloister.

Who knows where their own roads have taken them?

Maybe one day I’ll return to witness another of them place her life before God.

But first, I’ll need to speak with her.

Learn her story.

And, of course, determine what her nickname ought to be.

Because Drone Nun is already taken.

And now—solemnly, joyfully, forever—so is she.

Learn more about the Dominican Nuns of Summit by visiting their Website!

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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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The two boys had already figured out how to become neighbors.

They saw the basketball hoop at the edge of our driveway, walked across the street, and asked if they could use it.

“Of course!”

Their father and I were taking longer.

He and his family had moved into the house across the street about seven months earlier, but we’d never officially met. They didn’t speak much English, and whenever I went outside, they seemed to disappear inside.

Maybe they were shy.

Maybe I was.

Once, I got a wave.

That was about the extent of our diplomatic relations.

Then, one hot afternoon, I saw their father standing in the middle of his lawn.

He was soaked through with sweat, holding a weed whacker and attempting to cut what appeared to be seven months’ worth of grass one stubborn blade at a time.

I empathized.

But more than that, I saw an opportunity.

I walked into the garage and rolled out the Diplomat, a 46-year-old lawnmower with a storied past.

To explain how an old orange lawn mower, nicknamed ‘The Diplomat’, became an instrument of international relations, I have to go back to when I was fourteen and employed at St. John’s Parish in Piermont…

The official job may have been cutting grass.

But in practice, I was a lawn-mower starter.

The mower was an older pull-start, early seventies, Sears and Roebuck machine that had apparently been designed to test the limits of teenage perseverance. Every week I was expected to cut about two acres. I spent more time yanking the starter cord, adjusting the choke, begging, threatening, and bargaining with that machine than I did actually mowing.

So… lawn-mower starter.

Around that same time, for reasons I still don’t understand, my father arrived home with a brand-spanking-new commercial Bobcat lawn mower.

It was magnificent.

The deck was heavy cast aluminum. The paint was a brilliant orange. The handle, or pusher thinger, to use the proper mechanical term, stretched out behind it. And sitting proudly atop the deck was a Briggs & Stratton 3.5HP engine that, to my fourteen-year-old eyes, might as well have powered an aircraft carrier.

I nearly keeled over with delight.

My father saw the glazed-over look on my face.

He read my mind.

And then the words I never expected to hear left his lips.

“Under absolutely no circumstances are you to touch this lawn mower.”

I think I blacked out.

Only I know I didn’t, because I remember every detail. Nearly half a century later, I may remember it even better than I did when it happened.

To say I was disappointed would be like saying the Atlantic Ocean is slightly damp.

Perhaps my father was preparing me for life, teaching me that the world’s full of disappointments. It was a rather excessive way to deliver the lesson.

But boy, did it land.

The years passed.

Then one day, when I was in my mid-thirties, I pulled into my father’s driveway for a visit and saw something sitting at the curb.

The Bobcat.

No longer gleaming. No longer bright orange. But unquestionably the same machine.

I jumped out of the car, aghast, and ran toward it. And with the tenderness of an EMT loading a wounded patient into an ambulance, I lifted the old behemoth into the back of my car and brought it home.

Hours later, under the bright lights of my garage, the surgery began.

The prognosis was grim. The once-powerful Briggs & Stratton engine was dead. The carburetor practically flaked apart in my hand. The seals were gone. The cylinder walls looked like the inside of an abandoned brownstone.

But the thing that made the Bobcat a Bobcat, the deck, the frame, the wheels, the handle, and all the other accoutrements I couldn’t possibly name, were still there.

Faded? Yes.

A little rusty? Certainly.

Dead? Absolutely not.

So I drove to the place where every man carrying the remains of an antique lawn mower eventually goes: Harbor Freight.

There, sitting on a shelf, was a shiny new 5 HP Predator engine. It was considerably larger and more powerful than necessary, which meant it was exactly right.

A little drilling followed. Perhaps more than a little.

Soon the oversized Predator rested proudly atop the good ‘ol American deck like a bodybuilder wearing a vintage tuxedo.

I filled the tank with Premium and added a splash of two-stroke oil (my own special concoction…yes, it’s a four-stroke, I know, I know…), topped up the crankcase with Mobile One, pushed the primer twice, wrapped my hand around the starter cord, and pulled.

It roared to life.

First pull, mind you.

The machine has never been subtle. Over time, its grass-shredding aggression rattled loose the bolts holding on the muffler, which were lost in the yard. This gave it a near-Harley-Davidson scream capable of terrifying every squirrel, chipmunk, rabbit, and random skunk within a country mile. It takes about three minutes to get used to the machine-gun roar. Probably because by then you’ve lost your hearing.

But what a mower.

The Bobcat doesn’t distinguish between grass, weeds, branches, roots, water bottles, small rocks, or anything else unfortunate enough to wander below its 1000 RPM steel blade. It severs all with equal agility, grace, permanence, and force. And behind it, lawns emerge perfectly even and beautifully manicured.

Pushing it is part yard work and part penance…

And I love it.

But over the years, the old Bobcat developed another quality… one not immediately apparent to the eye, and certainly not to the ear.

It became useful…

Not simply to me, but to other people.

Whenever a neighbor’s mower broke, or somebody moved in without one, or a yard became too much for the sad little grass whip they were trying to use, the Bobcat went into service. It crossed driveways. It traveled down sidewalks. It started conversations. It helped turn people I barely knew into people I knew by name.

Sometimes it came back with a full tank.

Occasionally, something baked came with it.

More than once, a borrowed lawn mower led to an hour-long conversation that had very little to do with lawns.

Which brings us back across the street.

I’ll call my new neighbor Ramon.

He was still standing in the middle of the overgrown yard when I rolled the Bobcat toward him. There was no longer any graceful way for either of us to retreat.

He looked at me.

I looked at him.

Then I pointed toward the mower.

“Lawn mower,” I said, as though I had just translated the Rosetta Stone.

I opened the fuel valve, pumped the primer twice, and pulled the cord.

The Bobcat thundered to life.

First pull, mind you.

I let it roar for a moment, shut it down, and motioned toward the yard.

Ramon’s face changed.

The tired, uncertain expression gave way to a smile.

He extended his hand and introduced himself.

I did the same.

Seven months after becoming neighbors, we finally exchanged names.

The boys had managed to cross the street with a basketball.

We adults apparently required a screaming, four-decade-old piece of industrial equipment.

Ramon graciously accepted the mower.

And soon the old Bobcat was doing what it had done for years, chewing through whatever stood in front of it and leaving something better behind.

At first glance the exchange was simple.

He needed a lawn mower.

I had one.

But that isn’t the whole truth.

I thought I was giving him something.

And I was.

But almost immediately the gift came back.

It returned as a smile.

A handshake.

A name.

An opening where, for seven months, there had been only distance.

He received a mower.

I received a neighbor.

There is a deep and slightly mysterious arithmetic to generosity.

We imagine that when we give something away, we must end up with less; less time, less money, less food, less fuel in the tank. And sometimes we do.

But Grace has a strange way of multiplying what’s given in love. The gift often returns carrying things we never could have bought for ourselves: trust, friendship, gratitude, belonging. Sometimes even apple pie.

Each of us has an old Bobcat somewhere.

For one person it may be the ability to bake. For another, a set of jumper cables, a pickup truck, a spare room, a listening ear, or an hour that could be given to someone who has run out of strength.

The gift itself isn’t really the point.

The crossing is.

Love of neighbor doesn’t always begin with a grand gesture.

Sometimes it begins with whatever is already sitting in the garage.

When I first saw the word ‘Predator’ stamped across the front of that replacement engine, I laughed.

But over the years the name has proven strangely fitting.

The old Bobcat is a predator of grass, weeds, branches, roots, abandoned water bottles, and the occasional small creature foolish enough to linger nearby.

But its finest prey has always been distance.

It devours the few yards between one house and the next.

It cuts through hesitation.

It tears down the invisible fences that can stand between people long after the property lines have been drawn.

And every time I roll it across the street, I somehow come home carrying more than I took with me.

The old Bobcat isn’t for sale.

Wouldn’t fetch much if it were.

But its true value is beyond measure.

And whatever your Bobcat is, it’s certainly that valuable too.

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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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Every time I walk south on Mott Street, I feel as though I’m walking backward through time.

Long before I knew the history beneath these streets, I knew this part of Manhattan through my father. He would take me to Parisi Bakery for bread, Jefferson Market for meat and Balducci’s for fruit before we made our way to South Street and my beloved grandmother’s apartment for a feast.

Near Mott Street’s southern end, the sidewalks narrow. The smell of noodles, bao and Chinese pastries drifts from storefronts while signs bearing Chinese characters climb the brick facades.

It’s unmistakably New York, but also a world unto itself, one of those rare corners where another culture has not merely survived, but taken root.

Chinatown.

There, where Mott meets Mosco, the Church of the Transfiguration comes into view.

It’s not grand in the way St. Patrick’s Cathedral is grand. No broad avenue before it, and no soaring spires rise over the city. Built of rough fieldstone, it holds its ground amid the daily tumult of Chinatown.

At the risk of starting an argument with half of New York…I think it may be the most interesting church in the city.

Not because it is the largest or most ornate.

Because of what it has witnessed.

The building dates to 1801. The Catholic Parish of the Transfiguration moved into it in 1853 and went on to serve successive waves of Irish, Italian and Chinese immigrants. Today, Mass is celebrated there in Cantonese, Mandarin and English.

Streets have been renamed. Buildings have risen and vanished. Entire populations have arrived, struggled, prospered and moved on.

But the church has remained.

The City Beneath the City

A short walk west lies the former site of Collect Pond, a spring-fed source of fresh water for early New Yorkers.

Industry fouled it so badly that the city drained its waters toward the Hudson through the canal that gave Canal Street its name, then filled the pond by 1811. The reclaimed ground proved unstable. Buildings shifted, streets became muddy and poorer residents and immigrants moved into cheap housing around the five-way intersection that gave Five Points its name.

By the middle of the 19th century, the neighborhood was infamous for poverty, disease and violence. Irish refugees crowded its tenements. Italians came later, followed eventually by the Chinese community that transformed much of the old neighborhood into Chinatown.

Popular history remembers Five Points for its gangs, saloons and lurid alleys.

But history has a habit of remembering criminals more clearly than it remembers mothers.

The people there were families building lives under brutal circumstances. They fell in love. Children were born. The sick were cared for, and the dead were mourned.

Within the stone walls of Transfiguration, lives were joined, blessed and commended to God.

If its walls could speak, they would tell stories of heroism, horror and heartbreak. They would also testify to the words of St. Paul:

“Where sin increased, Grace abounded all the more.”

A Story Carried Across an Ocean

Transfiguration is sometimes called the “Church of Immigrants.” Its languages and faces have changed, but people have always entered looking for belonging, carrying their devotions, traditions and saints.

Perhaps no event reveals that history more clearly than the annual procession for the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The first time I photographed it, it seemed to take place on the hottest day of the year. Much to my dismay, that pattern repeated itself every time after without fail.

After Mass, the Chinese Catholic community poured into the streets. Banners rose above the crowd. The faithful carried an image of the Blessed Mother as a brass band played and prayers were offered in Cantonese beneath the blazing August sun.

By the time we returned, I was drenched in sweat and exhausted.

As I trudged back up Mott Street toward the air-conditioned sanctuary of my car, an elderly Chinese man stopped me. He took me by the arm and pointed toward another man resting on the stoop of a nearby brownstone.

“You talk to him! You talk to HIM!” he insisted.

So I sat beside the man and opened another bottle of water. His face was deeply lined, but his smile was gentle and warm.

Then he began.

He spoke of a forest thousands of miles away.

Of a procession.

Of oppression.

And of freedom.

And of how, in 1994, it all found its way here—to Mott Street.

He spoke of Catholics in Fujian Province who practiced their faith where public religious activity could draw the attention of authorities. According to his recollection, the Assumption was less familiar to local officials than Christmas or Easter and therefore offered an opportunity to gather quietly as a community.

After midnight, they would make their way into the forest and hold a candlelight procession in honor of the Blessed Mother.

His account was oral history, a memory carried across an ocean, but its broad contours fit the documented record.

Catholicism has deep roots in northeastern Fujian, where Spanish Dominicans arrived in the 17th century. Local communities survived repeated suppression, including the Maoist era, preserving the faith within families and homes.

By the late 1980s and early 1990s, migration from Fujian to New York was rising. Some came through dangerous smuggling networks, burdened by enormous debts.

Among them was a small group of Catholics who found a spiritual home at Transfiguration. In 1994, they asked the parish to help bring their Assumption devotion into the streets of their new city.

This time, they would not have to wait until midnight.

They would not have to disappear into a forest.

They would walk in daylight.

From Fujian to Chinatown

What began as an expression of faith and gratitude among Fujianese immigrants grew into one of New York’s largest and most distinctive Marian processions.

For several hours each August, Chinatown becomes an extension of the church. The image of Mary passes apartment windows, restaurant kitchens, storefront shrines and intersections ruled by delivery trucks, buses and the horns of the impatient.

Some join their hands in prayer. Others watch from doorways. Still others raise their phones, aware that something unusual is happening.

The procession is unmistakably Chinese and unmistakably Catholic.

It’s also unmistakably New York.

People arrive carrying their story from another place. Their language, grief, food, songs and saints. They build a home without entirely surrendering the one they left behind. Eventually, their story becomes the city’s story.

And the streets remember.

There’s nothing sentimental about religious persecution, human smuggling, poverty or exile. But Christianity makes a more radical claim: suffering does not have the final word. Grace can enter wounded places. Faith can survive conditions designed to extinguish it. Something once hidden in fear can one day be carried openly through the streets.

That’s what happens each August at Transfiguration.

A devotion preserved across generations is proclaimed in the heart of New York City. A hymn once whispered is played by a brass band.

The city’s harbor is guarded by the image of a woman holding a torch, welcoming those who come in search of liberty.

But on an August afternoon in Chinatown, another woman is carried through the streets by people exercising that liberty.

One stands at the gate of the city as a promise.

The other is borne through the city in thanksgiving.

And somewhere between them lies the immigrant story of New York: departure and arrival, suffering and hope, the memory of one home and the difficult building of another.

At the corner of Mott and Mosco Streets, the old stone Church of the Transfiguration remains.

It doesn’t speak.

It witnesses.

And each year, when the Blessed Mother passes outside its doors, another chapter is written.

Once upon a time on Mott Street.

To be continued…

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Adventure.

I’ve always admired those who have gone out to conquer the wilderness.

Those who crossed oceans without knowing what waited beyond the horizon. Those who descended into the depths of the sea, reached for the heights of space, or planted their boots upon the summits of the world’s great mountains.

Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay standing on the roof of the world.

Amelia Earhart alone above the Atlantic.

Ernest Shackleton watching the Endurance disappear beneath the Antarctic ice, then setting off across 800 miles of murderous ocean in a 22-foot boat because the lives of his men depended upon it.

These are the stories that captured my imagination as a kid.

The idea of moving forward into the unknown… not knowing what’s waiting… writing an unscripted story moment by moment, minute by minute.

Some explorers are driven by curiosity. Others by the pursuit of knowledge or the desire to understand more about this magnificent universe God created. Still others simply possess that mysterious restlessness that makes an unexplored horizon almost impossible to resist.

And we owe them a debt.

They risked their lives, resources, and reputations to bring the rest of us knowledge, inspiration, and a slightly larger understanding of the world we inhabit.

For most of my life, I thought that was adventure.

And if you had asked ten-year-old Jeff whether the Catholic Church might actually be the greatest repository of adventure in the history of the universe, I probably would have rolled my eyes.

My mind would have gone immediately to pious people with folded hands, praying silently in wooden pews.

Long periods of silence.

Very long periods of silence.

Usually during a Mass that seemed as though it might never end.

To that restless little boy, the Catholic Church would have appeared to be the precise opposite of adventure.

But as they say, God is merciful to fools and drunks.

I’m more of the former than the latter, although I can hold my own with the best of ‘em.

They say that with age comes wisdom. In my case, it’s been less a gentle accumulation of wisdom and more of an occasional smack in the head.

After spending my earlier years immersed in the world’s version of adventure,I’ve come to understand something I never could have imagined as a child:

The Catholic Church is the greatest repository of adventure in the universe.

Because the history of the Church isn’t the story of people who played it safe.

It’s the story of men and women who heard the words “Follow me” and stepped forward without being told where the road would end…

Consider St. Paul.

Before his journeys were over, he had been beaten, imprisoned, stoned, chased from cities, threatened by robbers, endangered at sea and shipwrecked again and again.

On one occasion, he spent a night and a day adrift in the open water.

Later, while being transported to Rome as a prisoner, he survived another shipwreck. The vessel was destroyed, and everyone aboard reached shore by swimming or clinging to broken pieces of the ship.

And what did Paul do after all of that?

He got right back to it.

He preached.

He founded communities.

He wrote letters.

He carried Christ deeper and deeper into a world that frequently responded by trying to kill him.

That isn’t the opposite of adventure.

That’s adventure in its purest form.

Or consider St. Francis Xavier.

When another Jesuit became ill and could no longer depart for the missions, Francis was asked to take his place. With barely enough time to mend an old pair of pants, he left.

Thirteen months later, he arrived in Goa.

But India wasn’t the end of the road. From there he traveled through Southeast Asia, then sailed for Japan, where he struggled to learn the language and planted the beginnings of a Christian community that would endure terrible persecution.

Then he turned his eyes toward China.

He never reached it.

He died at the age of 46 on a small island off the Chinese coast, still waiting for a way into the country.

The horizon was always calling him forward…but it wasn’t wanderlust that drove him.

It was Love.

And then there were those who came here, to the New World.

St. Isaac Jogues paddled and portaged roughly 900 miles through the waterways and wilderness of New France to reach the Huron people.

He was eventually captured by a Mohawk war party, tortured, mutilated, and held in slavery. With the help of the Dutch, he escaped and returned to France, where he was received as a living martyr.

That would have been enough adventure for several lifetimes.

But he went back.

He returned to the people and the land where he had suffered because he believed that God was calling him there.

He was eventually killed in what is now New York State.

St. Rose Philippine Duchesne survived the French Revolution and dreamed for years of becoming a missionary. When the opportunity finally came, she was 49 years old.

She crossed the Atlantic and established a school in a log cabin near St. Louis, enduring extreme cold, poverty, isolation, hard labor, and the maddening difficulty of communicating with Europe.

Then, at 72—an age when most reasonable people would have considered their adventures finished—she joined a mission among the Potawatomi.

She couldn’t master their language. Her health allowed her to remain for only about a year.

But the people watched her pray.

They gave her a name that meant “Woman Who Prays Always.”

And then there was Mother Cabrini.

She wanted to go to China. Instead, Pope Leo XIII sent her west—to New York City.

She arrived with six other sisters to find that no one was waiting for them and no proper accommodations had been prepared.

From that beginning, this small, physically frail woman crossed the Atlantic more than 20 times and established schools, hospitals, and orphanages across the United States, Europe, and Central and South America.

Apparently, God forgot to tell her that frail people weren’t supposed to do such things.

But not every wilderness is geographical.

Some of the most forbidding places on earth are found within the human experience.

St. Damien entered the isolation of Molokai, where people with Hansen’s disease had been separated from their families and sent away to die. He built homes, dressed wounds, constructed a water system, buried the dead, and eventually contracted the disease himself.

Mother Teresa left the security of her convent and walked alone into the slums of Calcutta.

She washed the sores of children.

She cared for an old man lying sick in the road.

She lifted a woman dying of hunger and tuberculosis from the street.

Her frontier wasn’t an unclimbed mountain or an unknown continent.

It was the seemingly bottomless depth of human suffering.

And she entered it carrying a rosary.

That’s the difference.

The saints weren’t thrill-seekers.

They didn’t pursue danger because it made them feel alive. They weren’t trying to prove themselves, collect experiences, or become legends.

They went because Love Called them to it.

Their adventure had a purpose: the salvation of souls.

The world’s explorer looks toward the horizon and asks, “What’s out there?”

The Christian looks toward God and asks, “Where do You want me?”

That question may lead across an ocean, into a jungle, onto a battlefield, through a city slum, or into a small room where a frightened person simply needs someone willing to remain beside them.

The distance traveled isn’t what makes it an adventure.

The surrender does.

I’ve discovered this in my own life, although on a far smaller and considerably less heroic scale.

I’ve found myself trying to build websites without knowing how to build them, walking into assignments without knowing what story was waiting, getting lost in deserts, descending beneath the waters of the Red Sea, and standing in unfamiliar places with a camera in my hand and no idea what would happen next.

There have been plenty of moments when I didn’t know what I was doing.

There still are.

Perhaps more than I’d like to admit.

But I’ve learned that when you sincerely seek God’s will, He rarely hands you a complete itinerary.

Usually, He simply gives you the next step.

Then another.

And another.

The adventure unfolds moment by moment, minute by minute.

Most of us will never cross Antarctica, climb Everest, or walk on the Moon.

We may never be asked to sail for an unknown continent or enter a hostile land.

But God’s Will remains the great unknown territory of every human life.

It may ask us to raise a family, care for an aging parent, begin a vocation late in life, build something we don’t know how to build, forgive someone who wounded us, or tell a story that the world desperately needs to hear.

And if we say yes, we begin writing an unscripted story with God.

That may be the greatest adventure of all.

So if it’s adventure you seek, seek God’s will.

And hang on.

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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 story has a place it keeps coming back to.

For this one, it’s a small island in the Potomac River.

Over the past four installments, we’ve crossed an ocean, stepped onto an unfamiliar shore, watched a fragile dream take root, and followed it through persecution, failure, and into the founding of a nation.

Now, in the final chapter of Before the Nation Drew Its First Breath, we return to St. Clement’s Island.

Not simply to remember what happened there on March 25, 1634…

But to discover why it still matters.

And why, after all these years, I keep returning too.

ENTER PART V: RETURNING TO THE ISLAND

This concludes Before the Nation Drew Its First Breath.

Thank you for making the crossing with me.

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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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A note before you begin: I’ve also created an immersive words-and-photographs feature edition of this story, featuring an expanded gallery and a presentation designed to let the images and text unfold together. If you’d like to experience it, enter The Answering Grace here.

The sound was almost nothing.

A whisper of fabric against the marble floor.

Then stillness.

At the foot of the sanctuary in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, three women lay facedown before God.

Above them, the cathedral climbed toward Heaven in arches of stone and colored glass. Around them, the Church began to call upon the saints by name.

Mary, Mother of God.

Saint Joseph.

Saint Peter.

Saint Paul.

One name after another moved through the vast cathedral as the Litany of the Saints rose above Sister Eden Marie, Sister Elena Marie, and Sister Maria Annunciata, their bodies motionless against the floor.

Outside, Fifth Avenue continued doing what Fifth Avenue does.

Traffic ebbed and flowed. Horns sounded. Pedestrians threaded through one another beneath scaffolding and glass. Somewhere above Midtown, a crane continued the slow work of changing the skyline.

It was a Thursday, after all.

But inside the cathedral, these women were promising forever.

Perpetual is a startling word.

It doesn’t promise that every day will be easy, or that every question will disappear. It doesn’t claim that the women making it can see the road ahead.

It says only that every part of that road will belong to Him.

Minutes before the prostration, each Sister had been called by name.

The answer took only a moment.

But it carried every smaller yes which had brought her there: the first quiet stirring of a vocation; the questions; the discernment; the leaving; the waiting; the years of formation; the ordinary mornings when the extraordinary call of God became the work of getting out of bed and saying yes again.

Final profession is not one heroic yes that erases all the others.

It is a thousand hidden yeses gathered into one.

After rising from the floor, the Sisters knelt before Mother Mary Concepta and professed poverty, chastity and obedience. Then came the vow particular to their community: to protect and enhance the sacredness of every human life.

They received rings as signs of their perpetual union with Christ.

And at the altar, their offering was drawn into His.

It would be easy to see only the beauty of the ceremony, the habits, the music, the sweep of the cathedral, the embraces and tears that followed.

But the vows point far beyond the sanctuary.

They were born from a wound.

The story reaches back to 1975, when a priest named John O’Connor went to pray at the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau before assuming an enormous new responsibility as Chief of Navy Chaplains.

There he encountered a place where human beings had been stripped of everything except the suffering inflicted upon them.

Inside the crematorium, he placed his hand into one of the ovens.

O’Connor later said the experience changed him radically. Confronted by the horror of what had been done there, he left with a conviction that would remain with him for the rest of his life: every human life is sacred, and he would do whatever he could to defend it.

Years later, as Archbishop of New York, Cardinal O’Connor preached, advocated and worked tirelessly for life. Over time, he became convinced that the crisis confronting human dignity was not purely political.

It was spiritual.

And a spiritual wound required a spiritual response.

In 1989, he published an article in Catholic New York beneath an improbable headline:

“Help Wanted: Sisters of Life.”

Hundreds of women wrote to him.

On June 1, 1991, eight entered the new community.

Thirty-five years is a long time by ordinary standards. But by Catholic math, the Sisters of Life are still in their infancy. Yet the founding community of eight has grown to more than one hundred Sisters, with communities from New York to Toronto and Rome; in 2004, the Church formally established them as a religious institute of diocesan right.

But those facts describe growth.

They do not yet explain the Grace.

God’s Love does not change. But that does not mean His Love is motionless.

It enters history. It meets particular people in particular wounds at particular moments, providing the Grace needed for that hour.

In that light, the Sisters of Life appear as one such answering Grace.

They were not founded merely to oppose something.

They were founded to offer themselves to Someone, and, in doing so, to make His Love visible to anyone who has forgotten that his or her life is sacred.

The phrase “culture of death” can sound enormous and impersonal.

Its wounds are not.

They are borne by the pregnant woman who is frightened and believes she has nowhere to turn; by the person carrying sorrow after an abortion beneath years of silence; by the elderly or dying person who wonders whether dependence has left him a burden.

They are the wounds of fear, pressure, isolation and the haunting suggestion that some lives matter less than others.

The Sisters answer with something radically simple.

Presence.

Their lives begin in prayer, but they do not remain behind convent walls. They accompany women through unexpected pregnancies. They help locate medical care, housing and practical support. They walk beside women and men seeking healing after abortion. They lead retreats, work with college students, evangelize, pray with families and offer end-of-life outreach.

But their mission cannot be grasped through a directory of programs. It’s lived one person at a time.

I’ve spent countless hours with the Sisters of Life over the past decade.

Long enough to know that a camera naturally favors decisive moments, while real charity usually begins after the moment everyone notices.

A woman’s decision to continue a pregnancy may happen in an instant.

Living that decision takes years.

There are appointments to keep. Apartments to find. Jobs to hold. Children to care for. Relationships to untangle. There are fears that do not vanish simply because the loving decision to choose life was made.

The Sisters do not disappear when the crisis appears to be over.

They stay.

And that staying may be one of the most important things their vows become in the world.

A promise spoken before an altar becomes a telephone answered.

A ride to an appointment.

A place to sleep. Help with paperwork. A meal shared.

A friendship that remains after everyone else has stopped watching.

I saw something of that Grace in an old parish gymnasium on East 66th Street.

It was last December, and the Sisters were holding their annual Nativity celebration for mothers and children they had accompanied.

The brightly lit gym went dark.

Then a little drummer boy appeared, moving through the crowd and striking his drum with the wholehearted enthusiasm of a child who had no interest in dramatic restraint.

A tiny angel reached into the manger and tried to take Baby Jesus.

Another child repeatedly made a break for freedom while her grandmother gave chase. Near the stage, a novice served as a gentle but remarkably effective goalkeeper, keeping children from launching themselves into the audience.

It was not polished.

It was alive.

Untidy. Comic. Vulnerable. Exhausting.

And holy.

The families gathered with the Sisters were not case studies, and the children were not statistics or evidence waiting to be deployed.

They were children.

They laughed. They cried. They escaped their costumes. They pulled every adult around them into the beautiful disorder of loving another human being.

That is what the Sisters protect.

Not an idea of life.

Life itself.

They were not there as exhibits in someone else’s vocation story.

They were there as friends.

As part of the community of love which had grown from promises like the ones being spoken before them.

A perpetual vow may appear far removed from the fears of a pregnant woman sitting alone with a decision.

It is not.

The Sister’s yes does not make the mother’s decision for her. Her availability can help create a space in which fear is no longer the only voice the mother can hear.

Her surrender becomes availability.

Her availability becomes accompaniment.

Her fidelity carries a promise: You will not have to walk alone.

That’s what a vow becomes.

Not an achievement offered to God by someone strong enough to impress Him.

An answer to Love already received.

Long before these women offered their lives, Christ had offered His.

Long before they called themselves His, He had called each of them by name.

Their profession was not the beginning of His Love.

It was their answer.

The vows spoken inside St. Patrick’s would not remain there. They would travel into homes and hospitals, convents and retreat houses, college campuses and city streets. Into the hidden places where someone wonders whether her life, or the life entrusted to her, is worthy of love.

Not because the Sisters have solved the sorrows of the age.

Not because every story ends neatly.

But because God has not abandoned this changing world to itself.

Sometimes that Love looks like a woman lying facedown upon a cathedral floor.

Then rising.

Then spending the rest of her life standing beside someone else.

Every yes is an answer to Love already offered.

Two millennia before the words spoken at St. Patrick’s, a young woman in Nazareth received an invitation. She could not see everything it would ask of her.

She knew only the One who was asking.

And she answered.

The Sisters’ yes echoes hers. In their fidelity, other women may discover that they, too, can answer God freely, without having to answer fear alone.

Their Yes.

A mother’s Yes.

And behind them both…

Mary’s Yes.

And a note before you leave :-) I’ve also created an immersive words-and-photographs feature edition of this story, featuring an expanded gallery and a presentation designed to let the images and text unfold together. If you’d like to experience it, enter The Answering Grace here.

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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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Dreams have a strange way of surviving.

Even when the structures built to protect them collapse.

Even when the people who first carried them are scattered by war, exile, and disappointment.

Even when prayers once spoken freely are driven underground again.

Maryland’s early experiment did not survive untouched. Churches closed. Catholic leaders were pushed aside. The Mass that had risen openly beneath the trees was forced back toward silence.

To those living through it, the dream must have appeared finished.

But there is a difference between something being broken…and something being erased.

What happened along the Potomac remained part of history.

A real attempt had been made there. Catholics and Protestants had occupied the same civic space without immediately destroying one another. Law had attempted, however imperfectly, to restrain persecution.

Maryland did not create modern religious liberty.

But it demonstrated a possibility.

And possibilities have power.

Long before principles are written into constitutions, they live as intuitions, experiments, habits, memories…and wounds.

They are tried.

They fail.

They are remembered.

They return.

By the time the American colonies moved toward revolution, the question of liberty had become about more than taxation or representation. Beneath it all remained a deeper question:

Can a people really be free if their conscience belongs to the state?

In 1791, the First Amendment offered an extraordinary answer.

Something that once had flickered uncertainly along the shores of the Potomac began to blaze.

Part IV of Before the Nation Drew Its First Breath follows a wounded dream across generations, and traces the idea which refused to die.

ENTER PART IV: THE IDEA THAT WOULD NOT DIE

Part V, Returning to the Island, arrives Thursday, August 13.

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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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For a time, it worked.

That may be the most surprising part of the story.

Along the quiet shores of the Potomac, Catholics and Protestants lived beside one another. The Mass was celebrated openly. Fields spread into the forest. Children were born who would know Maryland not as an experiment, but simply as home.

It wasn’t perfect.

But it was real.

And then the old fears began crossing the ocean.

Civil war erupted in England. Religious identity hardened into a political battle line. Questions of faith became questions of loyalty, power, and trust.

The thunder of that conflict eventually reached Maryland.

In 1649, the colony passed what became known as the Maryland Toleration Act, an extraordinary attempt for its time to protect Christians of different denominations from persecution.

But laws can restrain fear.

They cannot convert the human heart.

The fragile balance eventually gave way. Catholic leaders were driven from power. Chapels closed. The Mass was pushed back toward silence. Father Andrew White, who had celebrated that first Mass on St. Clement’s Island, was arrested and forced into exile.

To those who lived through it, the dream must have appeared finished.

But there is a difference between something being broken…and something being erased.

A failed experiment disappears.

A wounded one leaves a scar.

And scars tell stories not only of pain, but of survival.

Part III of Before the Nation Drew Its First Breath follows Maryland’s fragile experiment into the storm, and discovers an idea still glowing beneath the ashes.

ENTER PART III: WHEN THE DREAM MET HISTORY

Part IV, The Idea That Would Not Die, arrives Monday, August 10.

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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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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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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

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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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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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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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 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

Subscribe now