In my tiny office, in a drawer just to the left of my desk, there’s a lock of my daughter Amy’s hair.

I can’t remember how many years it’s been there. But I remember how it got there.

“Daddy, can you cut my hair?”

She was about ten. She’d brushed her long blond hair straight and gathered the bottom four inches with a rubber band. My job was simple: find the sharpest scissors I owned and cut straight, just above the band.

When finished, the little bundle resembled a broom. While Amy concerned herself with whether I’d cut it straight, I opened the drawer and tossed it in.

“You’re keeping it?”

I shrugged.

“Why not?”

She laughed and shook her head. “Oh, Daddy, you’re so funny!”

She’s a married mother of three now. But whenever I come across that lock while rummaging through the drawer, there she is again. Ten years old. Trusting her father with a pair of scissors.

And my heart feels warm.

Recently I received an email from a dear priest friend, Fr. Donald Kinney OCD, that brought another memory back. A similar one. He’d arranged for me to travel to California to photograph the relics of St. Thérèse of Lisieux last year. And with her October 1 feast day approaching, he recalled that a year had passed since her relics arrived in the United States.

The trip had been as much a pilgrimage as an assignment for me.

It was also the beginning of a change I hadn’t expected.

Over the years I’ve encountered all sorts of attitudes toward relics, from bewilderment to profound devotion. My own was somewhere in the middle. I understood that the Church honored them. I just hadn’t given much thought to why.

I knew Thérèse’s sister Céline better than I knew Thérèse herself. Céline, who became Sister Geneviève of the Holy Face, was the photographer responsible for most of the surviving photographs of her sister.

And as someone who looks at a lot of pictures, I’d found my way into the family through her images. Now was the chance to know the woman in them.

I landed at LAX and headed to Redondo Beach with Thérèse’s autobiography, Story of a Soul. In the days that followed, I immersed myself in her words.

Days later, when I entered the church where her relics would soon be offered for public veneration, I felt a kinship I hadn’t anticipated.

A peace. A familiarity. A closeness.

Someone I’d been getting to know through the pages of a book suddenly felt very near.

I knew the bones in the reliquary possessed no magical power. They belonged to a woman who’d lived, suffered, loved and given herself to Christ. A woman now alive in Him.

But I was beginning to understand how something so tangible could draw my heart toward someone I couldn’t see.

More recently, I photographed the relics of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque for the Knights of Columbus, accompanying them through Newark NJ, Philadelphia, and Havertown, Pennsylvania.

That same sense of closeness returned.

As I watched person after person kneel in prayer, I was moved by the depth of their devotion. There was something in the way they approached her that I was still learning to understand.

Then came my last day with the relics.

A few weeks earlier, I’d hurt my left shoulder while changing the linens on my elderly father’s mattress.

It burned. It ached. It interrupted my sleep.

And two major assignments were approaching: Fulton Sheen’s beatification in St. Louis and the Dominican Rosary Pilgrimage in Washington two days later. Two long stretches of carrying cameras, lifting lenses and working on my feet. The equivalent, in my world, of two marathons in the same week.

I wondered how I’d manage.

I worked through the pain. By the final day in Havertown, it was so severe that I had to lift my left arm with my right hand.

Before leaving the Sacred Heart adoration chapel at St. Denis Parish, I knelt beside Margaret Mary’s relics. I thanked her for the days I’d spent accompanying her, for her devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, for helping so many people turn toward His love.

And I said goodbye.

It felt like saying goodbye to a friend.

After the three-hour drive home, I arrived exhausted, hurting, and grateful. I collapsed into bed. For once, exhaustion overpowered the pain.

The next morning brought a deep blue sky and a gorgeous sunrise. Lying there, I thought about the weeks behind me. The miles. The people. The privilege of witnessing faith lived so passionately in churches and chapels across the country.

Then I rolled over.

And stopped.

My shoulder didn’t hurt.

I moved it cautiously. Up. Down. Sideways.

Not a hint of pain.

I lay back down.

And I laughed.

God will never be outdone in His generosity.

A miracle?

I can’t tell you medically what happened.

I can tell you that the night before, I’d needed one hand to lift the other arm. By morning, I could move it freely.

For my money, it was a miracle.

And I’m grateful.

A little over a week later, I knelt pain- free in the center aisle of the Dome in St. Louis, surrounded by tens of thousands of people gathered for the beatification of Fulton Sheen.

His relic was carried toward the altar by James Fulton Engstrom, the boy whose healing through Sheen’s intercession had been recognized by the Church as a miracle.

Watching them pass, I couldn’t help but smile.

Hello, Archbishop.

I’d begun these journeys with a camera and a fair measure of skepticism. Somewhere along the way, the saints had become friends.

Relics helped make that friendship tangible. They reminded me that the saints were real people who’d walked through this world with bodies as vulnerable as ours, who’d known weariness and suffering, and who’d kept turning toward Christ.

Now they pray for us as we make our way toward Him.

That lock of Amy’s hair helps me understand.

I don’t open the drawer because I love hair. I open it and remember someone I love. The little bundle brings back her voice, her laughter, the child she was and the father I was learning to be.

Love gives it meaning.

The communion of saints reaches further still. Those who’ve gone before us are alive in Christ. They can pray for us, cheer us on, help us keep going until, by His Grace, we reach our Father’s arms.

There are days when that finish line feels very far away.

And then there are mornings when you wake, move an arm that hurt the night before, and lie back down laughing.

Back in my office, the little lock of blond hair is still in the drawer.

“You’re keeping it?”

Of course I am.

Share

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

The Cathedral erupted in laughter.

The oil of annointing dripping down from his hairless head onto now Bishop Espillat’s smiling face and Cardinal Dolan joyfully handing a towel to him to clear his eyes.

At that time, he would become the youngest Bishop in the United States. And he brought with him a passion for evangelization and the Blessed Sacrament the likes of which would join an ever-growing movement, the Eucharistic Revival, that was in its infancy.

About a year later, after photographing a priestly Ordination at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. A photographer friend of mine nudged me and asked if I was going to the Eucharistic Procession in Times Square. To which I glanced him and asked…

“What procession?”

I was sitting on 51st Street with a sandwich and a cold cup of coffee, sorting photos and writing down a few thoughts. The procession wasn’t until late afternoon, and I was already pretty tired. I wasn’t planning to go. So I left it in God’s hands, which, once again, proved to be the best idea.

Hours later, I found myself in Father Duffy Square, surrounded by thousands of people praying before the Blessed Sacrament. And there at the center of it all was Bishop Espaillat, his energy and joy unmistakable. The atmosphere was electric. In a place the world knows for its lights and spectacle, people had gathered to adore Christ. I’d nearly missed it because I was “tired.” Now I was standing in the middle of Times Square, trying to take in something utterly breathtaking.

And now, another invitation to follow Him into the streets.

On October 13, 2026, the Napa Institute returned to St. Patrick’s Cathedral for its annual Eucharistic procession.And that same Bishop Espaillat, whose anointing filled this cathedral with laughter, and whose joy I encountered in Father Duffy Square, celebrated the 4 p.m. Mass and preached the homily. He was joined by by Father Gregory Pine, O.P., and Father John Burns who led Eucharistic meditations before Mass. After Mass, the Eucharistic procession spilled from the cathedral onto the crowded city streets to bring the Presence of Christ and the witness of Faith of countless thousands made through Midtown.

Napa’s New York procession began in 2021. Its invitation simple: accompany Christ in the Blessed Sacrament through the city. It takes a Faith nourished at the altar into the streets, where anyone passing by might encounter it.

Since then it’s been the inspiration of countless Eucharistic Processions around the world. Even the National Eucharistic Revival that launched in June 2022 carried that same desire to renew Catholics’ relationship with Christ in the Eucharist.

In his homily Bishop Espaillat preached about the people we too easily pass by. His homily was grounded in the day’s readings: Jesus at the Pharisee’s table and the cup polished outside while something remained wrong within. The remedy was almsgiving, a heart learning to give. He spoke of mercy made concrete, turning us toward the needs of another.

Near the end, he recalled Archbishop Thompson of Indianapolis telling young people that they were a mystery to be encountered. Then he extended that invitation to babies, immigrants, people experiencing homelessness and inmates on death row.

“Young people are not a problem to be figured out. They are a mystery to be encountered!”

And then came the challenge.

The bishop was asking us to look honestly at our own hearts, and he gave us somewhere to begin. Support a food pantry. Walk with someone who is lonely or anxious. Sit down with someone whose views differ from our own and have a Christ-like conversation. Give quietly, without announcing it on social media.

“Be kind. Give out of love, not out of obligation.”

The Cathedral was standing room only. The Sisters of Life, the Franciscan Sisters of the Renewal and Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, the Dominicans and dozens of other religious filled the cathedral.

And above it all was an absolutely breathtaking sky, with New York’s rush hour down below.

The afternoon concluded with Benediction, led by Bishop Espaillat.

Once dismissed as “Hughes’ Folly” for standing too far outside the city, St. Patrick’s now stands at its heart.

And the invitation reaches beyond its doors, into the places where we work, the people we pass and the lives we too easily overlook.

In a city that stands as the world's cultural capital, a new culture is emerging: The Culture of Christ.

New generations of Catholics are forming new communities. Churches once quiet are now filled to capacity. And it’s no surprise when you realize that by bringing His Presence to the streets, Grace overflows.

Christ is here. His love is for every person on these streets.

The culture of Christ begins there.

And, by His Grace, it can begin again in us again.

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

The half-mile walk back to the hotel felt like ten.

Fulton Sheen’s beatification had just wrapped, and I was dragging my weary body through St. Louis with a very simple plan: get back, pack, and head to the airport. The Dominican Rosary Pilgrimage in DC was up next.

Weeks of work were catching up with me, and so was the thought of everything still ahead.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, across the broad avenue, I spotted a group of kids with a cardboard cutout of Blessed Fulton Sheen.

“Nope. You need to get back to the hotel,” said my inner voice.

“You really need to pack…” it said a little louder.

And “It’s really not…”

And with that, the Catholic content creator in me vetoed the next thought, and I hopped across the street.

Under normal circumstances, I’d have introduced myself and made a little small talk. But with one foot already in the grave, I got straight to the point.

“Hey, can I take your picture with that?”

“YES!”

You’ve gotta love youthful enthusiasm.

No credential check. No suspicious glance. Just an immediate, wholehearted yes.

After a few photos, I tiredly asked where they were from. College students from Kansas. And after a little witty banter, I saw it.

Their joy.

His Joy.

The kind that filled the Dome to capacity. The kind that flows from Faith and virtue.

It’s strange that it’s so difficult to describe something you can see so plainly. Here were a bunch of young Catholics living fully in His joy and happy to let the world see it and posing with a cardboard bishop who’d died long before they were born.

It brought this tired, old photojournalist to a soul-deep smile.

God will never be outdone in His consolations.

We just need to pay attention.

And paying attention is very much part of the work of those of us who set out to evangelize in the digital world. Encountering stories. Witnessing grace. Recognizing the life and beauty of the Church in the person standing before us, even when we’re exhausted and convinced we have somewhere else to be.

Then finding a way to share it.

A photograph. A story. A video. A few words that might help someone we’ll never meet encounter Jesus Christ.

Those college students had just reminded me why this work matters. And the bishop standing among them in cardboard had been showing us how to do it long before any of us picked up a camera.

He was already a veteran by the time Life Is Worth Living hit the air in 1952. He’d spent something like twenty years talking to Americans on NBC radio’s The Catholic Hour, so when television started reshaping daily life, he just walked into that world too.

What happened next still seems a little unreal. A Catholic bishop, dressed unmistakably like a Catholic bishop, stood in front of a camera with a blackboard and a piece of chalk and started talking about the biggest questions people ask. No band. No dancers. No fancy set.

And millions of people watched.

He went head-to-head in prime time with Milton Berle and somehow became a cultural phenomenon of his own. And in 1953, he won an Emmy for being exactly who he was.

Seventy years later, those of us in Catholic media are standing on a different kind of frontier. Our blackboards are Instagram, YouTube, podcasts, newsletters, websites, and whatever platform someone in Silicon Valley rolls out next Tuesday.

The tools have changed, but the deep longing in the human heart hasn’t.

For those of us trying to use those tools to tell the story of Christ and His Church, he left us something better than a stack of great old shows.

He left us a blueprint.

1. Begin with Christ before you begin with content

The secret of Fulton Sheen’s success wasn’t television. It wasn’t charisma. It wasn’t even his intellect, considerable though it was. It began on his knees.

At his ordination, Sheen resolved to spend a Holy Hour before the Blessed Sacrament every day. He kept that practice throughout roughly 60 years of priesthood, and the Holy Hour became so central to his life that he described it as the source of his spiritual strength.

That may be the first and most important lesson for anyone attempting to evangelize through media. Before the camera comes the chapel. Before the post comes prayer. Before asking what we want to say about Christ, we have to spend time with Christ.

Otherwise, sooner or later, the work becomes about us.

2. Be Jesus to the person in front of you first

It’s so easy in digital media to become obsessed with people we can’t see: followers, subscribers, views, reach and engagement. Numbers on a screen representing the countless human beings somewhere out there.

But Christianity has always worked in the opposite direction. One person at a time.

The coworker beside us. The person carrying the tripod. The editor answering our email. The stranger who approaches after an event. Our spouse. Our children. The person who needs five minutes when we have absolutely no five minutes to give.

Before we proclaim Christ to an audience, the people around us should encounter something of Christ in us. Otherwise, our evangelization becomes performance.

3. Don’t be afraid of new technology

Sheen understood something the Church occasionally struggles to remember: a new technology is not necessarily an enemy of the Gospel. It may simply be another road on which the Gospel is waiting to travel.

Radio was new. Television was newer. Sheen entered both.

Today it’s social media, streaming video, artificial intelligence, virtual production and technologies we haven’t imagined yet. They all carry dangers. Every medium does.

The question isn’t simply, “Is this technology good or bad?”

The better question may be: How can this be placed at the service of the Gospel?

4. Learn the craft

Sheen was holy. He was also very, very good at television.

Watch him and you see a communicator who understood timing, silence, humor, eye contact, gesture, storytelling, the blackboard reveal and the dramatic pause. He knew how to hold attention.

There can sometimes be a temptation in Catholic media to believe that because our message is true, presentation doesn’t matter. Sheen proves otherwise.

Truth deserves excellence.

If we’re photographers, we should make beautiful photographs. If we write, we should labor over sentences. If we make films, podcasts or social media, we should understand the language of those mediums and use them well.

Not because polish saves souls, but because sloppy work can stand between a soul and something worth hearing.

5. Speak the truth without sanding off its edges

Sheen didn’t become successful by disguising himself as something other than a Catholic bishop. Quite the opposite.

There he was. Cassock. Pectoral cross. Cape. Chalkboard. Catholicism completely visible.

And then he spoke about the things that mattered: sin, virtue, sacrifice, marriage, Communism, death, eternity and Christ.

He used humor and tremendous warmth, but he wasn’t embarrassed by the Faith or frightened that clearly proclaiming it might reduce his audience.

For those of us creating Catholic media today, that requires courage. There will always be pressure to soften something, avoid something, or phrase something just ambiguously enough that nobody objects.

Sheen’s example suggests another path: love people enough to tell them the Truth, and tell the Truth lovingly enough that they might stay to hear it.

6. Remember that the platform is not the mission

Platforms come and go.

DuMont Television barely exists today outside broadcasting history books. Instagram will someday disappear too. So will YouTube. So will whatever replaces them.

The mistake is believing we’re called to build something on a platform.

We’re not.

We’re called to build the Kingdom.

We’re called to spread the Gospel.

The platform is simply rented space.

Sheen used the most powerful communications technology available to him, but his work outlived the technology because his message was never dependent upon it.

That’s worth remembering every time an algorithm changes and our carefully cultivated “reach” suddenly falls through the floor.

Peter, Paul, and the apostles had the Grace of Christ, their voices, and nothing much else, and they got it done.

7. Run the race all the way home

Fulton Sheen lived long enough to see enormous cultural changes. He experienced success, criticism, conflict, disappointment and suffering.

But he kept going.

He preached, taught, wrote and prayed.

And remarkably, after decades of public life, he died in 1979 in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, the same Christ before Whom he had spent hour after hour throughout his priesthood.

That may be his final lesson for us.

The goal isn’t to go viral. It isn’t a million followers. It isn’t a successful Substack, a television show, a YouTube channel, an award, a book contract or a photograph on the front page.

Those things may come. They may even be useful.

But they aren’t the finish line.

Sainthood is.

On September 24, 2026, the Church gathered in St. Louis to beatify Fulton J. Sheen: the television bishop, the radio preacher, the missionary, the theologian, the master communicator and, above everything else, the disciple of Jesus Christ.

I pray that one day he will be canonized and named a patron saint of media evangelists.

Because nearly three-quarters of a century before Instagram, YouTube, podcasts or smartphones, Fulton Sheen understood what every Catholic creator eventually has to learn: the medium may help us reach the human heart.

But only Christ can fill it.

And with Grace, we can help bridge that gap.

So pray. Learn your craft. Use the tools God places in your hands. Proclaim the Truth. Love the person in front of you. Don’t be afraid. And run the race all the way home.

And perhaps, by the Grace of God, one day people will gather in prayer and gratitude to celebrate your beatification too.

Blessed Fulton Sheen, please pray for us.

Share

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

There are only a handful of things in life that terrify me.

Among them are being late for an assignment…and mail from the IRS.

One arrives in an envelope. The other usually involves the Belt Parkway.

Years ago, I was hired to photograph an ordination in Ozone Park, Queens. The GPS said two hours. So I allowed four.

Three and a half hours later, I was still ten miles away. Parked, as it were, on the dreaded Belt Parkway. I think they may have called it a “parkway” knowing how much time travelers would spend in “park” while traversing that nightmare of a road.

An ordination, understandably, doesn’t wait for the photographer.

I made it, white-knuckled, with about ten minutes to spare. And the experience left me with a healthy distrust of estimated arrival times and the added bonus of subtracting about two years from my life.

Which explains my reaction on Thursday morning, sitting at a gas station, watching the numbers on my GPS change.

1:10.

1:14.

1:17.

The car wasn’t moving. My arrival time was.

I was heading to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, where a first-class relic of Blessed Fulton Sheen would be received at two o’clock. I’d planned to leave at 10:30, but circumstances intervened, and I left closer to 11:30.

And now the GPS was casually informing me that traffic was building at an unnatural rate.

Of course it was.

But, thank God, it was just a scare and I arrived at 1:07.

Outside the cathedral, the sun poured onto the streets. It was eighty degrees, and New York was doing what New York does: people everywhere, everyone going somewhere. Dazzling rays bounced between mirrored windows, making it feel as though the sunlight was coming from every direction.

I’d just returned from photographing Sheen’s beatification in St. Louis. What stuck with me wasn’t only the size of the gathering. It was the people, their ages, their enthusiasm, the affection they carried for a man who’d died decades before many of them were even born.

Now a relic of his hand was coming to the city from which he’d spent years speaking to millions about the love of God, and to the very cathedral where he had once been entombed.

Inside St. Patrick’s, I bumped into a few friends from the Franciscan Sisters of the Renewal.

Among them was Sister Thérèse.

And the day, October 1, was the feast of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. It was her name day, and our conversation soon wandered from Sheen to the Little Flower.

Had he spoken about her? Had her spirituality influenced him?

We were piecing together what we remembered.

I later learned that Sheen had preached eleven talks about Thérèse in Dublin in 1973, the centenary of her birth.

Eleven talks.

Her Little Way brought love of God into the smallest acts of love for others. That love was evident in the lives of both St. Thérèse and Blessed Fulton Sheen.

The relic was destined for the cathedral’s Altar of the Holy Face. Thérèse’s own religious name was Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face.

It made one think…a lot of coincidences.

Bishop Louis Tylka of Peoria presented the reliquary to Archbishop Ronald Hicks of New York. There were words of welcome, a procession up the center aisle, and prayer.

It was quieter than I’d imagined.

Reverent. Unhurried.

Then the people came forward.

Some carried rosaries. Others paused before the reliquary in prayer. Sister Therese extended a handful of dark wooden beads to an attendant. And multicolored World Mission Rosaries, the rosary Sheen designed to encourage prayer for the world, were being distributed freely.

Sheen’s television voice had fallen silent. But his influence lives on.

Sheen prepared his sermons in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. He kept a daily Holy Hour throughout his priesthood. The words he offered to others grew out of time spent with Christ.

His broadcasts carried that invitation into people’s homes. They were a way of loving neighbors he would never meet.

Thérèse had lived only twenty-four years. And here we were, still talking about her.

Sheen had put it simply: “It does not require much time to make us saints; it requires only much love.”

And perhaps that’s the thing.

Love of God and love of neighbor.

Perhaps that’s the hallmark of holiness. The essence of sainthood. And the path to Christ.

Great love.

I’d come to photograph Sheen’s return to New York.

And there he was, in an ever-changing city, among new people who still wanted to hear what his life had to say.

And what his life said was what Jesus Christ had said in the Great Commandment:

To love God with all your heart, and all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

Sheen lived it.

Therese lived it.

And every saint from now until the end of time will live it.

Perhaps that’s the one “coincidence” all the saints share.

Because in that lies everything that makes a life worth living.

And life complete.

Share

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

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.

Share

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

“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!

Share

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

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…

Share

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

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.

Share

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

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.

Share

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

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.

Share

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

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.

Share

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

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.

Share

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.

Share

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

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

Subscribe now

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…

Share

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

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.

Share

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

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

Subscribe now

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

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

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

Confirmation.

The third sacrament of initiation into the Catholic faith.

How fitting.

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

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

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

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

The umbrellas came first.

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

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

And Christ was among them.

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

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

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

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

There was the Cross.

There was the Mass.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That sentence is the key to the whole thing.

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

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

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

And that’s the thing.

Because America was missionary territory once.

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

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

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

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

And it remains missionary territory now, today.

Perhaps that’s the part we forget.

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

The kind of adventure that sends people out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And now He goes again.

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

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

A priest raises the Blessed Sacrament in the Monstrance.

The people kneel.

The bells ring.

The sun beats down.

The pilgrims rise and follow.

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

And that’s all that matters.

It’s all that ever mattered.

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

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

Subscribe now

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

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

“Pool Zero?” I asked, sheepishly.

“YES, YES. Now hurry!”

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

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

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

So I told the tiny voice to pipe down.

I’ve got this.

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

The sun was just beginning to rise.

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

It was vast.

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

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

Then another checkpoint.

Then another.

Then another.

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

No one stopped me.

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

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

So I kept going.

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

Where can I shoot from?

Where will the Pope be?

Where will the procession enter?

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

Then my phone rang.

“WHERE ARE YOU?”

I smiled.

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

There was silence on the other end.

Not ordinary silence.

Cathedral silence.

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

Then came the words.

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

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

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

“WHO told you?”

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

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

This time, it was no longer whispering.

It was lighting flares.

Another silence.

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

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

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

Maybe I was just plain ‘ol lost.

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

He looked at my credentials.

Then he looked at me.

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

“Come with me, please.”

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

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

Mass was about to begin.

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

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

I had been in the wrong place for hours.

Not just a little wrong.

Not “wrong gate” wrong.

Not “wrong press riser” wrong.

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

I begged.

Then I pleaded.

Then, for good measure, I begged again.

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

That sounded hopeful.

It was not.

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

Then I saw the tent.

It was surrounded by armed Polish soldiers.

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

“So,” he said. “What is this?”

At this point, I abandoned all dignity.

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

He stared at me.

I continued.

He stared some more.

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

“The altar,” I said.

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

He turned to another soldier and barked something in Polish.

A yellow wristband appeared.

The commander fastened it around my wrist.

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

As I climbed in, the commander leaned toward me.

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

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

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

I was back.

I was legal.

I was saved.

Or so I thought.

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

Then I heard a voice to my right.

“Can I see your credentials?”

I turned with confidence.

This time I had my badge and my yellow wristband.

I presented both like a man producing diplomatic immunity.

He looked at them.

“These are the wrong credentials for here.”

My heart stopped.

Not again.

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

But just then the Vatican pool photographers arrived.

The VAMP, as they’re referred to.

The people who were actually supposed to be there.

And in that instant, the entire scene broke open.

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

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

I bolted into the chaos and started taking pictures.

For a few blessed seconds, I was free.

Pope Francis approached the altar.

The crowd sang.

The music swelled.

The Holy Father kissed the altar.

Then security caught on.

Of course they caught on.

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

They began moving toward me again.

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

A few more moments.

A few more frames.

A little more mercy.

But all good things must come to an end.

As Mass began in earnest, I made myself scarce.

There is no elegant way to say this.

I hid.

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

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

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

When I saw security, I moved.

When they moved, I moved somewhere else.

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

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

But I kept shooting.

And slowly, impossibly, I made it through.

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

Then I was spotted.

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

Run.

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

I did not stop.

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

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

And then I froze.

Standing before me were hundreds of Polish soldiers in formation.

All of them looking directly at me.

My eyes went wide.

Their eyes went wide.

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

Then their eyes shifted.

Not to me.

To a door just to my left.

It opened slowly.

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

And out stepped Pope Francis.

He turned.

He saw me.

And he raised his hand in blessing.

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

But I was closest.

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

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

And there I was.

After all of it.

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

I had ended up beside the Popemobile.

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

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

No credential would have gotten me there.

No plan would have gotten me there.

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

But the wrong directions did.

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

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

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

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

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

A Pope’s blessing.

Literally.

And maybe figuratively too.

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

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

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

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

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

And why I may never ask for directions again.

But then again…

Share

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

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

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

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

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

But this gala felt different.

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

What made it different was the reason beneath it all.

Life.

But in a rather specific area.

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

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

It’s centered on love.

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

Sometimes it’s obvious.

Sometimes it’s not.

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

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

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

That movement became Hearts of Joy International.

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

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

Lauren’s work says otherwise.

It says these children are beloved.

It says their lives are worth fighting for.

It says their hearts are worth saving.

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

Real charity isn’t performance.

It’s relationship.

It means learning names. Knowing families. Building trust.

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

She was born in New York City.

Her name is Violet.

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

She’s a beautiful little girl.

Healthy.

Loved.

The belle of the ball.

Then her mother took the microphone.

Her first words opened the deeper story.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love does not remain theoretical.

It goes to the doctor’s appointment.

It makes the phone call.

It finds the surgeon.

It sits with the mother.

It raises the money.

It prays through the fear.

And it remains.

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

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

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

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

And Violet stood beneath the lights.

A little girl with a once-broken heart.

Alive.

Loved.

Smiling.

Because every life is sacred.

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

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

Share

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