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

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

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

Confirmation.

The third sacrament of initiation into the Catholic faith.

How fitting.

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

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

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

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

The umbrellas came first.

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

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

And Christ was among them.

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

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

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

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

There was the Cross.

There was the Mass.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That sentence is the key to the whole thing.

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

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

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

And that’s the thing.

Because America was missionary territory once.

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

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

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

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

And it remains missionary territory now, today.

Perhaps that’s the part we forget.

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

The kind of adventure that sends people out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And now He goes again.

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

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

A priest raises the Blessed Sacrament in the Monstrance.

The people kneel.

The bells ring.

The sun beats down.

The pilgrims rise and follow.

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

And that’s all that matters.

It’s all that ever mattered.

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

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

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

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

“Pool Zero?” I asked, sheepishly.

“YES, YES. Now hurry!”

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

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

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

So I told the tiny voice to pipe down.

I’ve got this.

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

The sun was just beginning to rise.

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

It was vast.

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

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

Then another checkpoint.

Then another.

Then another.

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

No one stopped me.

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

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

So I kept going.

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

Where can I shoot from?

Where will the Pope be?

Where will the procession enter?

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

Then my phone rang.

“WHERE ARE YOU?”

I smiled.

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

There was silence on the other end.

Not ordinary silence.

Cathedral silence.

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

Then came the words.

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

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

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

“WHO told you?”

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

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

This time, it was no longer whispering.

It was lighting flares.

Another silence.

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

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

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

Maybe I was just plain ‘ol lost.

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

He looked at my credentials.

Then he looked at me.

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

“Come with me, please.”

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

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

Mass was about to begin.

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

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

I had been in the wrong place for hours.

Not just a little wrong.

Not “wrong gate” wrong.

Not “wrong press riser” wrong.

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

I begged.

Then I pleaded.

Then, for good measure, I begged again.

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

That sounded hopeful.

It was not.

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

Then I saw the tent.

It was surrounded by armed Polish soldiers.

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

“So,” he said. “What is this?”

At this point, I abandoned all dignity.

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

He stared at me.

I continued.

He stared some more.

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

“The altar,” I said.

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

He turned to another soldier and barked something in Polish.

A yellow wristband appeared.

The commander fastened it around my wrist.

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

As I climbed in, the commander leaned toward me.

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

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

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

I was back.

I was legal.

I was saved.

Or so I thought.

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

Then I heard a voice to my right.

“Can I see your credentials?”

I turned with confidence.

This time I had my badge and my yellow wristband.

I presented both like a man producing diplomatic immunity.

He looked at them.

“These are the wrong credentials for here.”

My heart stopped.

Not again.

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

But just then the Vatican pool photographers arrived.

The VAMP, as they’re referred to.

The people who were actually supposed to be there.

And in that instant, the entire scene broke open.

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

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

I bolted into the chaos and started taking pictures.

For a few blessed seconds, I was free.

Pope Francis approached the altar.

The crowd sang.

The music swelled.

The Holy Father kissed the altar.

Then security caught on.

Of course they caught on.

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

They began moving toward me again.

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

A few more moments.

A few more frames.

A little more mercy.

But all good things must come to an end.

As Mass began in earnest, I made myself scarce.

There is no elegant way to say this.

I hid.

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

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

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

When I saw security, I moved.

When they moved, I moved somewhere else.

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

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

But I kept shooting.

And slowly, impossibly, I made it through.

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

Then I was spotted.

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

Run.

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

I did not stop.

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

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

And then I froze.

Standing before me were hundreds of Polish soldiers in formation.

All of them looking directly at me.

My eyes went wide.

Their eyes went wide.

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

Then their eyes shifted.

Not to me.

To a door just to my left.

It opened slowly.

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

And out stepped Pope Francis.

He turned.

He saw me.

And he raised his hand in blessing.

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

But I was closest.

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

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

And there I was.

After all of it.

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

I had ended up beside the Popemobile.

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

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

No credential would have gotten me there.

No plan would have gotten me there.

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

But the wrong directions did.

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

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

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

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

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

A Pope’s blessing.

Literally.

And maybe figuratively too.

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

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

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

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

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

And why I may never ask for directions again.

But then again…

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

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

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

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

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

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

But this gala felt different.

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

What made it different was the reason beneath it all.

Life.

But in a rather specific area.

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

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

It’s centered on love.

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

Sometimes it’s obvious.

Sometimes it’s not.

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

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

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

That movement became Hearts of Joy International.

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

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

Lauren’s work says otherwise.

It says these children are beloved.

It says their lives are worth fighting for.

It says their hearts are worth saving.

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

Real charity isn’t performance.

It’s relationship.

It means learning names. Knowing families. Building trust.

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

She was born in New York City.

Her name is Violet.

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

She’s a beautiful little girl.

Healthy.

Loved.

The belle of the ball.

Then her mother took the microphone.

Her first words opened the deeper story.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love does not remain theoretical.

It goes to the doctor’s appointment.

It makes the phone call.

It finds the surgeon.

It sits with the mother.

It raises the money.

It prays through the fear.

And it remains.

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

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

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

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

And Violet stood beneath the lights.

A little girl with a once-broken heart.

Alive.

Loved.

Smiling.

Because every life is sacred.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“That it’s real.”

Those words will forever live with me.

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

It was life at its fullest.

The life of Grace.

A breathtaking gift from a Merciful and Loving God.

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

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

That was never their work.

Their work was, and is, to love…

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

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

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

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

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

Or you could say it’s something else entirely.

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

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

Slow down. Look toward the hill.

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

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

The Sisters

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

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

There’s one in every bunch

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

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

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

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[Read Part I Here!]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rows of veils.

Heads bowed.

The soft rustle of pages turning.

“Lord, open my lips…”

“…and my mouth will proclaim your praise.”

The words rose and fell like breathing.

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

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

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

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

Two ends of the same rope.

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

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

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

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

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

That was one of the surprises of the Motherhouse.

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

But there’s also laughter.

There’s teasing.

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

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

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

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

And then there were the relics.

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

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

A sacred community.

The Sisters in the chapel.

The students in the school.

The saints in their reliquaries.

The town below.

The river still moving silently through the valley.

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

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

This is not left over.

This continues to move, and remains.

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

She paused.

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

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

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

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

Faithfully.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Read more of the three-part series:

Part I: The Mill and the Hill

Part III: What Endures — coming next.

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

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

4:45 a.m.

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

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

Baltic, Connecticut.

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

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

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

And then, there it was.

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

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

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

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

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

Up on the hill, the fog kept lifting.

And then another sound shouldered its way into the morning.

The bell.

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

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

I hadn’t come to Baltic as a tourist.

I came for the Sisters.

The Mill Town and the Motherhouse

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

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

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

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

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

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

Baltic grew up around that sound.

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

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

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

Nothing about it felt extraordinary.

And yet… everything about it did.

There was a constancy to it all.

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

Not loudly.

But faithfully.

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

The mill had powered the town.

But on the hill, the bell kept ringing…

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

Before the valley fell silent, it looked like this.

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

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

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

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

Just distance.

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

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

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

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

READ: Part II: A Day Inside the Motherhouse

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

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

How could this not change the world.

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

A joy began to rise.

A smile followed.

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

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

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

A revival.

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

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

I was dragged there.

Praise God, Grace has a way of doing that.

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

These were the “some people.”

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

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

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

Looking back now, the pattern is unmistakable.

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

And then came 2024.

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

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

All drawn by the same thing.

Not an idea.

A Presence.

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

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

A growing, vibrant, emerging Church.

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

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

So what happened?

How did this come about?

Programs matter. Outreach matters. Evangelization matters.

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

At the heart of the revival is something much simpler…

Grace.

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

Just as He once walked the dusty roads of Galilee…

He is walking again.

And that night, I saw it once more.

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

Some noticed, some didn’t.

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

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

What is causing this revival?

In one word?

Jesus.

And how could that not change the world.

After all…

He made it.

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

It allows me to continue telling these stories.

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

God bless,

Jeff

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The five-hour drive south from New Jersey ends in a place where the world suddenly grows quiet. Roads narrow. Tall pines give way to salt marshes. And eventually the land itself thins until the Potomac River seems to surround you on all sides.

Late on the afternoon of March 24, I crossed onto St. George’s Island as the sun began its descent. The sky ignited in bands of gold and crimson. The wide waters of the Potomac mirrored every color, turning the river into molten copper as the sun slipped toward the Chesapeake Bay.

I’ve seen many sunsets here over the years. None are ever the same. That’s one of the reasons this place has become, for me, something close to sacred ground. And it was here, on the neighboring island barely visible across the water, that the story of religious liberty in English America began.

On March 25th in 1634, on the Feast of the Annunciation, two ships appeared in the waters of the Potomac River. The larger vessel was the Ark, a heavily armed merchant ship of roughly 400 tons. Her smaller companion, the Dove, served as her pinnace, light enough to explore the shallower waters ahead.

They had crossed the Atlantic carrying settlers, provisions, and a fragile but extraordinary idea: a colony founded on the radical principle of religious freedom.

Small boats were lowered into the river. The landing party rowed ashore onto a wooded island covered with cedar trees and early spring flowers. Before homes were built, before crops were planted, before the colony had even truly begun, they celebrated Mass.

Father Andrew White, the Jesuit priest who accompanied the expedition, later recorded the moment in his journal A Briefe Relation of the Voyage unto Maryland. When the Mass had ended, the settlers lifted a great cross they had fashioned from a tree and carried it in procession across the island. Kneeling together in the grass, they prayed as it was raised in honor of Christ.

That simple act, Mass and a cross on a quiet island in the Potomac, marked the spiritual beginning of Catholicism in what would become the United States. Today a towering memorial cross stands near the center of St. Clement’s Island to commemorate that moment. And each year on Maryland Day, pilgrims return.

A Mass Four Centuries Later

This year’s commemoration looked a little different.

Normally, Maryland Day at St. Clement’s Island includes historical reenactments and community festivities honoring the founding of the colony. But with construction underway for the new St. Clement’s Island Museum, many of the usual events were paused. One thing, however, remained: the Mass.

On the morning of March 25, again the Feast of the Annunciation, pilgrims gathered once more on the island where the first Mass in the English colonies had been celebrated nearly four centuries earlier. The celebrant was Father Mark Horak, S.J., with Jesuit novice Andrew Lucas, S.J., preaching the homily.

Among those present were Sheriff Steven A. Hall, the 135th Sheriff of St. Mary’s County, and Mike Hutson, Vice President of the St. Clement’s Island One Hundred, an organization deeply devoted to preserving the history and legacy of the island. Both men happened to be celebrating birthdays that day, March 25, the same date on which the first Mass in the colonies had been celebrated.

It felt like the kind of historical coincidence that makes this place so remarkable.

Across the centuries, new generations continue to gather here, drawn by the same story and committed to ensuring it is never forgotten.

The Other Cross

For many years another powerful symbol has been connected to the island.

An iron cross, heavy, hand-forged and nearly four feet tall, hangs today in Dahlgren Chapel at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Tradition holds that the cross came with the first settlers aboard the Ark and the Dove and may even have been fashioned from iron carried on the voyage itself.

In past commemorations the cross has occasionally been brought back to St. Clement’s Island for the Maryland Day celebrations. It was not present this year. Yet the possibility that it once traveled with those early settlers still captures the imagination.

If iron could remember, that cross might hold the memory of Atlantic storms, the prayers of frightened passengers, and perhaps even the first Mass celebrated in the English colonies.

A Freedom That Endures

The dream that began on this island was fragile. The early Maryland colony would struggle. Religious tensions would rise. Jesuit missionaries would face persecution, and Father Andrew White himself would eventually be arrested and sent back to England in chains.

History rarely unfolds in a straight line.

Yet the idea planted here that people should be free to worship according to conscience would endure. That principle would eventually echo far beyond the shores of the Potomac River. It would become part of the American experiment itself.

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And nearly four centuries later, on the Feast of the Annunciation, pilgrims once again gathered on the tiny island.

The larger celebrations may have been paused this year.

But the Mass remained.

And on that quiet island in the Potomac, just as it had in 1634, the story of religious freedom was celebrated once more with the same simple act: a priest at the altar, the faithful gathered, and Christ made present again on the very soil where it all began.

For more information St. Clements Island and St. Mary’s City, visit:

https://dnr.maryland.gov/publiclands/pages/southern/stclements.aspx

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

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

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I’ll never forget the first time I covered the St. Patrick’s Day Parade.

I had no idea what I was doing. My camera was half broken, the lens had a mind of its own, and I had absolutely no credentials to speak of.

Most of the day was spent getting yelled at by police officers while I darted between barricades trying to capture something…anything.

And somewhere in the middle of that chaos, I fell in love.

The noise.
The history.
The drama.

This was New York City at its finest.

Only later did I realize what I had actually witnessed that day. Beneath the music and celebration was something much older than the parade itself—a tradition that begins not in the streets, but at the altar.

Because on St. Patrick’s Day, the celebration of New York’s Irish heritage begins inside the cathedral.

With the life of a great saint.

Long before the first bagpipes sound, the faithful gather beneath the soaring vaulted ceiling of St. Patrick’s Cathedral for the Feast Day Mass honoring Ireland’s patron saint. Sunlight filters through the stained glass as the liturgy unfolds. Prayers, Scripture, and hymns that have echoed through the Church for centuries.

And then comes the moment at the heart of it all.

At the elevation, the bells ring softly and the Archbishop lifts the Host.

And Jesus Christ is present.

It’s the same mystery that missionaries like Saint Patrick carried to the edges of the known world — the proclamation that God entered history and remains with His people. The same Eucharistic faith that Patrick preached across Ireland fifteen centuries ago is celebrated again here in the heart of Manhattan.

Only after that moment, anchored in Christ, does the celebration spill into the streets.

The congregation pours out of the cathedral doors, and Fifth Avenue begins to fill with the music, banners, and marching societies that define New York’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade.

Schoolchildren march in pressed uniforms, clutching small Irish flags. Firefighters in dress blues stride proudly beneath banners carried by their companies. Bagpipers in dark tartan kilts send ancient melodies echoing between the glass towers.

Families who have stood along this route for decades wave and cheer as each group passes.

And above it all, the twin spires of St. Patrick’s Cathedral rise quietly over the celebration, watching as they have for nearly a century and a half.

This year carries a quiet moment of newness as well. For the first time, Archbishop Hicks will take his place along the parade route, joining the long line of shepherds who have watched this tradition unfold beneath the cathedral’s shadow.

For many people today, St. Patrick’s Day means something far simpler.

Green hats and shamrock beads fill shop windows. Pubs overflow with revelers. Corned beef and cabbage appear on tables far removed from Ireland’s shores.

The missionary saint who once walked the hills of Ireland preaching Christ can seem almost hidden behind the celebration.

And yet saints have a way of refusing to disappear.

Long before the shamrocks and bagpipes, there was a man.

Fifteen centuries ago, Patrick returned to the land where he had once been enslaved. Instead of seeking revenge, he brought the Gospel. With courage that astonished even his contemporaries, he walked among the Irish people preaching Christ and baptizing thousands.

And against all odds, a nation was transformed.

Patrick never sought fame or celebration. In his own words from the Confessio, he described himself simply as “a sinner, a most simple countryman, the least of all the faithful.” Yet God used that humble missionary to change the course of a people’s history.

His legacy lives on not only in Ireland, but wherever Irish immigrants carried their faith.

Including here in New York.

What began in 1762 as a modest gathering of homesick Irish immigrants has grown into a tradition embraced by millions. More than 200,000 marchers now make their way up Fifth Avenue each year, cheered by crowds that stretch for blocks.

Yet beneath the music and celebration lies something deeper.

The parade is not just a celebration of heritage.

It’s a witness.

It begins at the altar… and then it walks into the streets.

Perhaps that is why the day feels different from the ordinary rhythm of the city.

Because for a few hours each year, Fifth Avenue becomes something closer to a pilgrimage route.

And as the bagpipes fade into the distance and the last marchers pass beneath the cathedral spires, the barricades begin to come down. Traffic creeps forward again. Manhattan returns to its familiar pace.

But for a brief moment, the city remembered something older than itself.

Behind the shamrocks and celebration stood a saint.

A man who loved Christ so deeply that he crossed an ocean of fear and hardship to proclaim the Gospel.

And if Saint Patrick could see the crowds filling Fifth Avenue today, he might recognize something familiar.

Not the parade.

The people.

A city still longing, as Ireland once did, for the Love and Mercy of Christ.

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

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

This year marks the 250th anniversary of the United States of America.

In the noise of politics and patriotism, fireworks and slogans, I’ve found myself drawn somewhere quieter… older… and far more fragile.

Before there was a nation, before there was a Constitution, before there was even independence, there was a small group of Catholics stepping off two ships onto a muddy island in the Potomac River.

They did not arrive with an army.
They did not arrive with certainty.
They arrived with a hope.

A dangerous hope.

Over the coming months, I’ll be working on a deeply researched, heavily illustrated, multi-part series tracing the origins of religious liberty in America. From an English nobleman’s improbable vision, to a perilous Atlantic crossing, to a March morning in 1634 when a Mass of thanksgiving was offered on unfamiliar soil.

This is not simply a history project.

It is an exploration of a dream, one that shaped our nation long before it was fashionable… and long before it was safe.

The 2026 National Eucharistic Pilgrimage, fittingly titled One Nation Under God, will pass through the very lands where that dream first took root. As we enter into America’s 250th year, I want to walk backward before we move forward.

To understand what was risked.
To understand what was built.
To understand what may yet be recovered.

I’ll share more soon.

For now, just know this: the story we tell about America’s beginnings is incomplete — and the deeper story is waiting just offshore.

God Bless,

Jeff

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This is an independent, reader-supported publication. No corporate sponsors. No editorial board. Just careful reporting, original photography, and stories told from the ground.

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You have my sincere gratitude for walking with me.

I had no idea that one day he’d become the Archbishop of New York.

But then again, how could I have known? Why would I?

Years ago, I photographed a cardinal just as he stepped into the Sistine Chapel.

He became Pope.

And last year I did the same…without credentials, mind you.

Don’t get me wrong, credentials matter…until they don’t.

Only later did history catch up to those moments.

All this to say it’s happened more than once.

Which is perhaps the point.

When the Holy Spirit is involved, you never really know who you’re standing in front of, or why you were led there in the first place.

I was reminded of that truth again last year while covering the kickoff of the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage. The Drexel Route launched from Indianapolis last May, and I was determined to squeeze in as much coverage as possible before my flight home. One more stop. One more moment. One more opportunity to see what Grace might reveal.

I followed the pilgrims into Illinois that first afternoon. They were headed to the Diocese of Joliet, where the local bishop would receive the Blessed Sacrament and lead adoration. The stop was in Paxton: a small town, a modest church, a moment that would make getting back to the airport uncomfortably tight. Missing my flight was a real possibility.

I went anyway.

At the time, it felt like instinct. Habit, really. I’ve learned over the years that the margins often hold the most interesting moments. What I didn’t know then was that I was about to photograph a man whose path would soon lead to one of the most consequential episcopal sees in the world, my hometown, New York.

That afternoon, Bishop Hicks received the Blessed Sacrament and the pilgrims with a quiet reverence that didn’t announce itself, and didn’t need to. He led the faithful prayerfully, humbly, as though nothing in the world mattered more than the Blessed Sacrament before him and the people gathered around him.

There was no sense of performance. No sense of ambition.

Only joy. Peace. Presence.

I didn’t “meet” him in the conventional sense. As my wife often jokes, I photograph a great many people, so whether that counts as “meeting” them is an open question. But I did observe him closely. And what I witnessed was a shepherd entirely at ease doing the most essential work of a bishop: leading souls toward Christ.

He moved easily among the pilgrims. He listened. He smiled. He prayed. He knelt before the Blessed Sacrament with the kind of reverence that doesn’t draw attention to itself, yet leaves an impression all the same. It was the posture of a man who knows where authority truly comes from.

Only later did the significance of that moment give pause.

When it was announced that Bishop Hicks would be installed as the next Archbishop of New York, my mind immediately returned to that afternoon in Paxton. To the near-miss. To the decision to go anyway. To the Grace of a moment I nearly skipped.

New York is not an easy place to shepherd a flock.

It is, in many ways, the cultural capital of the world, a city where countless cultures, languages, and lives converge within a few square miles. St. Patrick’s Cathedral is often called “America’s Parish Church,” a place that speaks to the entire nation even as it serves its own.

It is also a place with a remarkable legacy of leadership.

For all its challenges, and there are many, New York has been blessed, time and again, with exceptional archbishops. Men who led with courage, clarity, and faith through eras of profound change. The shoes Archbishop Hicks now steps into are well worn, and heavy.

And yet, if history has taught us anything, it’s this: the Church is not sustained by personalities alone.

If Archbishop Hicks proves equal to the task ahead, and there is every reason to believe he will, it will not be because of personal charisma or administrative skill alone.

It will be because of Grace.

Because the same Holy Spirit who guided him to a small church in Paxton is now leading him into the heart of one of the world’s most complex cities.

Looking back, I now understand why that extra stop mattered, and am yet again staggered by the gift it was.

The Holy Spirit, it seems, delights in reminding us that our finite wisdom rarely sees the full picture.

We show up. We follow where we’re led. And only later do we understand.

So as New York welcomes its new shepherd, amid the weight of history, the glare of cameras, and the hopes of two million Catholics, I find myself grateful for having seen him first in a quieter moment. Blessed Sacrament in hand. Pilgrims at his side. No hint of what was to come.

Because when the Holy Spirit is involved, you just never really know.

Welcome to New York, Your Excellency.

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Read more about the installation in the National Catholic Register!

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

I lost count of the Marches for Life years ago.

The crowds change. Some years a sea of people, others a determined stream. The weather swings from balmy to brutal. The signs evolve, the slogans shift, the faces age and are replaced by younger ones. But one thing remains the same.

The sound.

Laughter. Singing. Prayer spoken half aloud. Teenagers chanting slogans they clearly practiced on the bus ride down. Parents explaining to their children why they’re here. Grandparents moving slowly but deliberately, step by step, as if they’ve been waiting years to make this walk again.

It doesn’t feel like a protest. It feels like gratitude.

This year, though, the march began for me somewhere else entirely.

On the eve of the March for Life, in an act of incalculable Providence, I held my newborn granddaughter, Talia, in my arms…from her mother’s womb into this great big world, and into my grateful hands. There are no words for that moment. Not just for the joy she brought to our family, but for the realization that as I reluctantly handed her back to her parents, I would soon depart for Washington to join tens of thousands of others to celebrate this very gift: the gift of life.

I’ve covered this march for years. But driving south that evening, I understood it differently. Every mile carried the weight of what I’d held just hours ago. What had always been conviction now had a name. A face.

The next day, gazing upon the sea of people as they marched before the Capitol Dome, I thought of Talia.

Watching her tiny lungs rise and fall with each breath. Seeing the fleeting smiles pass across her sleeping face. Feeling the warmth of her gently swaddled body pressed against mine.

A breathtaking gift.

As every child is. As every life is.

They say that for every child in your life, you grow another heart. And while that may be scientifically questionable, it’s beyond question that with every child, your capacity to love expands tenfold.

No other gift has that power.

And it’s freely given. Unearned. Undeserved.

This truth, that life is a gift, is the bedrock beneath everything at the March for Life. But what does it mean to call something a gift? A gift cannot be demanded or manufactured. It can only be received. And receiving a gift requires humility before something freely given.

That posture is written across the march if you’re paying attention.

In the way a young mother hoists her toddler onto her shoulders so he can see the sea of signs ahead. In the way the college students pray the Rosary as they walk, fingers numb from the cold, faces radiant with joy. In the way the Knights of Columbus shepherd the March through the streets of DC.

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The March for Life exists because something is broken. Because life is still threatened. Because the work is unfinished. And yet, year after year, the overriding spirit of the day is not anger or despair.

It’s gratitude.

Soul deep gratitude for this gift of life.

And once a gift is received, a new obligation emerges, not the cold obligation of law, but the warm obligation of love. A gift that calls out to be protected. To be cherished..

The pro-life movement is not fueled by outrage, but by wonder. By the astonishment that God entrusts life to us at all. That He invites us to cooperate with Him in something so fragile, demanding, and miraculous.

As I marched this year, with little Talia still fresh in my heart, the reality, the truth of the unsurpassable dignity of each and every life carried new weight.

And one thing felt certain, if there’s one thing worth standing for, loving with all our heart, protecting with all our strength, and being grateful for with all our being

It’s this greatest gift given to us by the Creator of it all…

This breathtaking gift of life.

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

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

There’s no place on earth like New York City at Christmas.

The sidewalks in Herald Square feel like a slow-moving river of scarves and shopping bags. Rockefeller Center’s tree draws crowds who gaze with awe upon its lights. St. Patrick’s Cathedral gets dressed for the season with garland and wreaths, and that familiar hush that somehow survives the roar of Fifth Avenue.

But if you wanted to find where Christmas really lives here, you’d find it nestled between the East River and Midtown's skyscrapers in what might be the most sacred gymnasium in Manhattan for a few glorious hours.

At the Sisters of Life Christmas Party and Nativity Pageant.

The room was old, a little worn, brightly lit, until the pageant began. Then the lights went down, and for a moment the whole place paused. A hush. A ripple of anticipation.

And out in the darkness came the opening cue: a little drummer boy named Jose, weaving his way through the crowd, banging his drum loudly and proudly.

It’s not a polished Broadway production, and that’s exactly why it’s so great.

The Sisters move through the room with habits flailing, wide smiles, and that rare combination of command and tenderness that tells you they’ve done this before, and that they love doing it. Dozens of children swirl around them in costumes: angels, shepherds, sheep, and the assorted animals of Bethlehem. Parents, siblings, and friends fill the edges of the room, gathered in hopeful anticipation, hearts bursting with Christmas joy.

It’s chaotic in the best ways, and profoundly humble.

At one point, the littlest angel on stage, a tiny girl, maybe two years old, with her halo slightly askew, decided it was her solemn duty to rock Baby Jesus in the manger.

For a few seconds, it was pure innocence: a child, a doll, a swaying motion that looked suspiciously like real maternal instinct.

Then you could see the switch flip in her two-year-old mind.

She reached in, scooped up the Baby Jesus doll, and pulled Him to herself in the middle of the pageant.

Then a gentle flurry of smiling adults moved in like a rescue team, not angry, not frantic, just sweetly persuasive, explaining to the angel that yes, He is wonderful, but no, He has to remain in the manger… at least until the pageant’s over.

The whole gym laughed the way families laugh when something real breaks through the script.

But in the middle of the chaos and the joy, there’s an unspoken truth…some of these children are alive today because of the Sisters of Life.

Mothers came to them afraid, uncertain, sometimes carrying stories too hard to bear. They were supported, loved, cared for—and they said yes to the miracle of new life.

Their children are here today.

These miracles have faces.

Which means the Sisters’ charism to protect and enhance the sacredness of human life isn’t an abstract idea in this gym.

It’s standing in front of you in a child trying to keep a halo straight while whispering his lines.

It’s in a little shepherd gripping a staff like he’s guarding something precious.

And it’s in the laughter that erupts when a “sheep” gets distracted by absolutely everything except the Nativity story.

And it’s in the compassionate competence of one young novice stationed near the edge of the stage like a goalie guarding the net, kind, attentive, immovable, making sure no small child made the daring leap off the platform.

The Sisters aren’t simply staging a Christmas moment.

They’re shepherding the fruits of their mission into the story that started it all: a Child, a mother, a family, and a world waiting for Light.

And Mary.

A young mother on the move. A long road. A borrowed shelter. The ache of displacement. The vulnerability of bringing a child into the world when the world has not made room.

The story of the Nativity is not a comfortable one.

It’s a story of Grace, but there’s also hardship. The Holy family living close to the edge, trusting God when the path ahead is not explained.

And that’s where the Sisters of Life do their quiet, heroic work: in the places where motherhood feels risky, where a woman wonders if she will be alone, where the world feels too loud or too cold or too unforgiving to welcome a child.

So what does it look like when a city doesn’t just speak about life, but actually makes room for it?

It looks like a room full of children who have been loved into being, surrounded by a community that knows their existence is not accidental or inconvenient, but sacred.

It looks like Sisters who can organize a small Bethlehem sharing the Love of the Father and the gentle caress of Mary.

It looks like parents who may have once faced fear now watching their children retell salvation history with the unselfconscious confidence of the young.

And it looks like Christmas the way it was meant to be: not an escape from reality, but God entering it.

In the end, the Sisters of Life Nativity Pageant isn’t just a heartwarming event tucked into the city’s holiday calendar.

It’s a witness.

That Christmas isn’t about the decorations, but about Presence. Not about what we buy, but about Who came and how He came. Through a mother’s yes. Through the humility of a family that trusted God even when the road ahead was unknown.

In a city defined by scale and spectacle, this pageant is small enough to feel like it belongs to everyone in the room…

…and yet powerful enough to remind New York—and the world—what Christmas is truly all about.

Not on Broadway, or Rockefeller Center, but in a crowded parish gym that smells like coffee, crayons, and winter coats.

A simple, humble place filled with Faith, Hope and Love.

Sort of like that tiny manger in Bethlehem some 2000 years ago.

READ THE ARTICLE IN THE NATIONAL CATHOLIC REGISTER!

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 and Merry Christmas! Jeff

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I didn’t expect a day at the beach to turn into a doorway into a cloistered monastery.

The manuscript was thick, intimidatingly so. I tossed it into my bag, with a bottle of water, a towel, and the excuse every work-from-anywhere person knows by heart: “I’m going to work… at the beach.” Ironically, I actually mentioned this very day in a previous piece.

The “work” was a draft by a cloistered Dominican nun friend from Our Lady of the Rosary Monastery in Summit, New Jersey. The title: Joy Within His House: A Cloistered Nun’s Reflections on Following Christ.

I’d already spent years photographing the community. Thousands of frames of their life behind the grille. But that afternoon, beneath a Marian blue sunny sky, with waves crashing on the shore, I journeyed deep into that world through the heart and mind of one of their own, Sister Mary Magdalene of the Immaculate Conception, OP.

By the time the sun started to set, I knew two things.

First: this was not just a “religious book.” It was a brutally honest, surprisingly funny, deeply wise tour through the spiritual life, narrated by a millennial bride of Christ who has lived this vocation long enough to know what it costs and why it’s worth it.

Second: whatever it took, this book needed to get out into the world.

The Hill in Summit

Our Lady of the Rosary Monastery sits on a hill, a kind of quiet city on a hill, to borrow a biblical image that actually fits. Founded in 1919, the community has prayed there for over a century, with adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and a steady stream of women who have left everything to live a hidden life of prayer.

Most people only ever see the grille, or the “public side” as it’s referred to.

You’d come into the chapel. The air smelling faintly of incense and old wood. Light slants in across worn wooden pews. The nuns are behind a screen, chanting the Office, present and yet unseen. It’s beautiful and mysterious. You know there is more there, more humanity, more joy, more little moments of grace that never make it past those walls.

But for reasons that still feel like pure Grace, the community opened that door to me.

Over roughly five years, I photographed what almost no one outside ever sees: work time in the laundry and kitchen, sisters hunched over sewing projects, recreation with games and laughter, the quiet intensity of prayer in choir. I was present for first vows and solemn vows, for the moment when a young woman lies prostrate on the floor and offers her entire life to Christ.

As the hard drive filled with thousands upon thousands of images, I said the fateful words photographers say far too easily and far too often: “I should make a book.”

“Hey, I Wrote a Book.”

And so I did what modern people do when they have an idea: I posted about it. Somewhere on social media, I announced my intention to put together a book about the Dominican Nuns of Summit.

Then, like a message dropping in from another world, I heard from one of the sisters.

“Hey,” wrote Sister Mary Magdalene. “I wrote a book.”

She attached a draft. I opened the file and just kept scrolling. This thing was dense—in the best way. Not saccharine, not pious clichés, not a tourist brochure for cloistered life. It was thoughtful, theologically rich, often humorous, occasionally bracing—a description of her vocation and the daily realities of monastic life.

She wrote about the call to be a bride of Christ in a world that struggles to understand marriage, let alone vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. She wrote about community life, conflict, laundry, silence, prayer that feels dry, and prayer that feels like fire. She wrote from inside the mystery.

Suddenly it hit me: my “book idea” had already been written…by a nun. In reality, her book was infinitely better than anything I could even dream, let alone write anyway…but let’s not let facts get in the way.

All I had to do was hold up the images to the words.

The Long Road to Print

Around the same time, Rebecca Martin, the acquisitions editor from Our Sunday Visitor, reached out to ask if I’d ever considered writing a book. I said “Absolutely!” But I also said something else: “You really need to look at this manuscript by my cloistered nun friend in Summit.”

At that point, I felt called and responsible for getting this hidden life in front of people who would never walk through the monastery door.

Then began the waiting, the bouncing around, the mysterious discernment process inside a publishing house.

And the edits…

Meanwhile, I called in someone who had shaped my own path more than she probably realizes: the legendary writer and editor Elizabeth Scalia. Years earlier, Elizabeth had encouraged/forced me into writing for Aleteia. She gave me my first real platform as a Catholic photojournalist. When I needed an expert for Sister Mary Magdalen’s epic manuscript, she was the obvious choice.

At first, life swallowed her time. The pages sat. Then, in the kind of twist God seems to enjoy, Elizabeth eventually went to work at OSV. And the book she’d once had to set aside ended up on her desk again—this time as its editor.

Fast-forward through design meetings, photo selections, and quiet prayers inside the Summit chapel. Joy Within His House was finally released through OSV Books and the community’s own Cloister Shoppe, tucked among the soaps and candles like a small spiritual hand grenade waiting to go off in someone’s heart.

Deacon Greg Kandra , a veteran deacon and writer, called it “an instant classic… a clear-eyed, hope-filled, wisdom-saturated look into the life of a wonderfully down-to-earth Dominican nun.”

He’s not wrong.

The Eyes That Smiled

What was it like, making the images that now live inside the book?

It felt like being handed a key I wasn’t entirely sure I deserved.

You don’t march into a cloister with a camera and start firing away. Every release of the shutter is an act of trust—and, frankly, of risk for the community. These women live hidden lives on purpose. Allowing a layman, let alone me, into that space is not a small decision.

It progressed over time. And somewhere along the way, friendships formed.

One afternoon, I was photographing Sr. Maria Lucia as she worked on calligraphy. She was bent over the page, serious, focused—the kind of concentration that makes you hold your breath so you don’t disturb it. I was close beside her, maybe too close, peering through the viewfinder.

The only sound was the gentle scratch of her pen on paper. And then I saw it: her eyes starting to smile.

She was trying to hold it together. I was trying to hold it together. The seriousness of the moment—this hidden life, the sacred work, this photographer bearing witness—all of it suddenly struck us both as ridiculous and wonderful at the same time. We burst out laughing.

That’s an image of cloistered life I carry with me. Not grim asceticism. Not pious distance. A beautiful community living in communion with Christ and each other, doing their work, and then the laughter, breaking through the seriousness of it all.

That’s the tone of the book, too: grounded, honest, breathtakingly oriented on Christ—but never afraid of joy.

A Door Left Open—for You

What I love about Joy Within His House is that it does, in words, what I tried to do in pictures: it quietly opens a door.

Most people will never ring the monastery doorbell or sit in the parlor with a grille between them and a nun in full habit. They won’t see the second cup of coffee at breakfast, the sister who always burns the cookies, the nervous laugh of a novice trying on the full habit for the first time.

But they can pick up this book. They can read a chapter on prayer that explains how cloistered nuns stand at the heart of the Church, holding the world’s needs in a silence that would terrify most of us—and yet is the place they meet Christ most deeply. They can see that this life is not an escape from reality. It’s a deeper plunge into it.

I started as a guy with a camera, grateful to be allowed beyond the grille. I ended up as a kind of courier—carrying a cloistered nun’s reflections and a community’s hidden life out into the world.

Every time I flip through its pages and see a familiar face, a chapel corner, a bit of sunlight on a wooden floor, I remember what a gift it was to be let in at all.

I think of that day at the beach, the waves, the thick stack of pages that looked a little overwhelming at first.

It turns out the same is true of the cloister: from the outside, it can feel distant, mysterious, “not for me.”

But once you step inside—even through the pages of a book—you discover something else…there’s a deep and abiding joy within those walls.

And we’re all invited into that joy, too.

Joy Within His House: A Cloistered Nun’s Reflections on Following Christ is available now from OSV Books and the Cloister Shoppe at summitdominicans.org.
If you’ve ever wondered what hidden joy looks like, this is your invitation.

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

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

This past weekend, I did something I’d never done before.

I attended a Witness for Life event…

In Philadelphia.

I thought it might be a bit more tame than the NYC Witness for Life events. Wrong. And from what I was told, that day was considered a “quiet one.” I suppose it stands to reason. It’s a city. A real city, and everything that means.

As I stood off to the side observing…the usual shenanigans of the protesters, the hatred, the rage, the noise, in stark contrast to the peaceful prayers of the faithful. But something felt different.

Something felt off.

I thought back to the other times I’d covered events in Philadelphia: Pope Francis’s visit, the Philadelphia March for Life…and the rally…in the shadow of Independence Hall. Within earshot of the Liberty Bell, if it had the ability to ring.

In an instant, it became clear; this is the very ground where the right to life was first enshrined in our national conscience.

The Founding Order of Rights

Thomas Jefferson didn’t invent the phrase “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” He was echoing a moral framework older than the nation itself. John Locke and William Blackstone had already written of life and liberty as rights endowed by God and accessible through reason. Rights that governments exist only to protect, never to bestow.

Jefferson’s genius was to take those philosophical truths and hammer them into a declaration for a fledgling people. He placed life first for a reason. Without life, liberty and happiness are meaningless abstractions.

Freedom presupposes life.

That hierarchy—life before liberty—became the cornerstone of the American project.

The Duty to Defend Life

Pennsylvania’s own 1776 Constitution makes this crystal clear. Its Declaration of Rights proclaims that “all men are born equally free and independent,” with “certain natural, inherent and inalienable rights, amongst which are the enjoying and defending life and liberty.”

Not just enjoying—defending.

Those words weren’t penned as moral poetry; they were meant as marching orders, as doctrine. Across the new republic, life and liberty were treated as natural rights that governments were created to secure. They were the moral architecture of a people who believed freedom carried responsibility.

Standing in Philadelphia today, that structure felt shaken. As if the right to life, the one right that makes all others possible, has become the one that must apologize for existing.

A History That Knows Better

America’s history has always been one of widening the circle of who counts as human: abolishing slavery, expanding civil rights, defending the disabled and elderly. Abortion reverses that moral current.

It narrows the circle dramatically.

By the mid-19th century, most states had laws restricting abortion at every stage. They weren’t importing foreign moral codes, they were applying Jefferson’s own first principle: that life is a gift no state may rightfully take away.

When Liberty Becomes License

Yet today, that moral trajectory has been interrupted, even reversed. Those who defend abortion often invoke liberty. They speak of equality, autonomy, and freedom from government interference. These are deeply American instincts. But liberty, in the American tradition, was never license to destroy another’s life.

Even the most radical defenders of freedom among the Founders understood that liberty was bounded by natural law. It carried moral limits.

If the child in the womb is human, and modern biology leaves no doubt that it is a distinct human life, then that child stands under the same unalienable right that anchors every other: the right to life. The mother’s liberty is sacred, but it cannot eclipse the child’s existence.

When rights collide, the Founders’ hierarchy points the way: life before liberty.

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The Moral Imagination of America

Every moral advance in American history has followed that pattern, returning to our founding words and applying them more honestly. Each step forward has expanded the definition of “person,” not restricted it.

Abortion asks us to do the opposite. It demands that we redefine humanity itself. It insists that certain lives, because of size, stage, or dependence, can be erased in the name of liberty…by choice.

That’s not progress. It’s moral regression…an inversion of the very promise that made America different.

To call abortion a “right” is to detach liberty from truth and equality from life. It turns our creed inside out and leaves us with nothing to stand on but a collapsing foundation.

The Battle Beneath Independence Hall

Back at the Witness for Life, the Rosary and the shouting continued. One side prayed quietly for conversion, hope and healing mercy. The other shouted for “liberation” through destruction.

It was the oldest American argument playing out again: freedom ordered to virtue versus freedom unbound from it.

That’s why abortion isn’t merely a religious issue. It’s an American one. Because if life is negotiable, liberty is too. And once the first unalienable right can be denied, none of the others will stand for long.

The truth becomes clear: Those who kneel to defend life when it is most voiceless and unseen are not fringe.

They’re standing in the very mainstream of the American promise.

And those who demand the right to erase that life in the name of autonomy, however loud, powerful, or culturally reinforced, are asking America to betray its own first principle.

For all our failures and hypocrisies, this country began on a claim that shocked the world: that every human life is endowed by God with rights no king, no parliament, no majority can take away.

If that’s true, then a culture that normalizes abortion isn’t just morally tragic.

It’s un-American.

Somewhere between the prayers and the protests, the Liberty Bell hangs silent…cracked, imperfect, but intact. Its inscription, from Leviticus, reads: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.”

All the inhabitants. Even the smallest. Even the unseen.

So maybe, just maybe, the most patriotic thing you can do on a cold morning in Philadelphia, on this ground where liberty was born, is to kneel in prayer, and pray that this nation full of promise takes to heart that “Life” truly means life and “all” really means all.

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

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

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If Los Angeles is the City of Angels, then New York City might just be the City of Saints.

There are the familiar names: Mother Cabrini, Dorothy Day, Isaac Jogues, John Neumann, and of course, Elizabeth Ann Seton. But the real secret of the city lies in those whose names are known only in Heaven, the quiet heroes of the Faith who love fiercely, serve humbly, and go largely unnoticed by the world.

Unless you happened to be riding a certain subway car last week.

Because if you were, you might’ve witnessed something miraculous.

An entire car full of young adults, laughing, chatting, practically glowing with anticipation. Most of them had just arrived in New York for the first time. They hadn’t come to sightsee or chase careers. They were here to give a year of their lives to serve in Seton Education Partners’ mission: to teach, to love, and to bring hope to inner-city kids.

They were here to be missionaries.

I spent the day photographing this incredible group, nearly sixty recent college graduates, as they kicked off their journey with a day-long pilgrimage and retreat across the city. They came from every corner of the country. Some had never even ridden a subway before. By Monday, they’d be teaching math, reading, and science in charter schools across the South Bronx, living in intentional community while earning their teaching credentials.

We ended the day at St. Joseph’s in Greenwich Village—a parish that’s quietly becoming one of the beating hearts of Catholic young adult life in the city. And when we walked in, there it was: a sky-high stack of pizzas from John’s of Bleecker Street.

As a native New Yorker, let me just say, if you know, you know. John’s isn’t just pizza. You don’t just stumble into a pie from John’s. You wait for it. You fight for it. But that day? There was enough for an army. And I couldn’t think of a more deserving group to receive it.

Seton Education Partners is a nonprofit bringing high-quality, faith-centered education to underserved communities. In neighborhoods where schools have failed and hope has thinned, Seton’s networks of charter schools Brilla, Brillante and Catholic Schools Romero Academies, charter networks offer academics grounded in virtue — and a chance for families to dream again.

But it’s the Seton Teaching Fellows who make it personal.

These young men and women sign up for a one to two year post-grad mission. They teach. They evangelize. They witness. In neighborhoods known more for headlines than hope, they become living signs of Christ’s love.

During Adoration that afternoon, I looked around and saw it in their faces, unmistakable. A clarity of purpose. A love for Christ that was unshaken, even at the threshold of what would be a beautiful, demanding, sacrificial year.

These aren’t just volunteers.

They’re future saints.

While on assignment a few years ago, the first time I encountered the work of the Seton Education Partners, I met a young mother. She lived in the projects—single, struggling—with four young children. Her oldest daughter, just eight years old, attended a Brilla school.

That little girl led her siblings in prayer before meals. She taught her mom the Rosary. She asked if they could start going to Mass together.

And so they did.

Now the family attends Sunday Mass. They have joy, they have direction, and they have hope. It wasn’t a grand theological argument or flashy event that led them back to the Church.

It was the quiet witness of a Seton fellow who taught a little girl who led her family home.

That’s what this mission looks like.

The truth is, most of the world will never hear about this. They’ll never know about the subway ride filled with joyful missionaries. They won’t see the kneeling figures in Adoration. They won’t witness the baptisms, the tears, the hard-won math lessons, or the whispered prayers over a struggling child’s desk.

But I’ve seen it. This is the Catholic Church. This is faith lived out. This is Christ healing and calling and sending and creating the saints of tomorrow, today.

So if you ask me what holiness looks like in the heart of New York City? It looks like young adults giving everything they have, fueled by faith, ready to teach and love, and serve. It looks like a little girl praying the Rosary in a kitchen in the projects.

And sometimes, holiness looks like a subway full of joy ending with a mountain of New York’s best pizza.

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The Reason Why…

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Thanks for reading! This is a truly independent, reader-supported periodical. Your support is crucial. If you are able, please consider a paid subsciption 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

“Did you meet Mother?” asked a particularly enthusiastic Sister of the Missionaries of Charity, her eyes bright with expectation.

She’d heard I had spent time in Calcutta and wanted to know if I had met Mother Teresa herself.

“Nope,” I replied. I had been there during her canonization, years after she had passed. I explained that I’d spent hours beside her tomb—praying, writing, simply being, but that was the extent of it.

At this, she burst out laughing, her joy infectious. “Oh! Then you DID meet Mother!” she declared with a certainty that made me laugh.

But her words stayed with me.

Deep within her conviction was a truth…saints are more alive now, in the Kingdom of God, than they ever were on earth. Their souls, radiant in Christ’s glory, continue to walk with us.

That thought came rushing back as my plane touched down at LAX last week.

California, with its Marian blue skies, the thundering surf of the Pacific, and palm trees gently dancing in the warm mid-October breeze, felt like another world compared to the cold, rainy city of New York I’d left behind.

But I didn’t come for the scenery…that was a bonus.

I had come for a sacred reason: the relics of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, the Little Flower who conquered the world with love, were arriving in Los Angeles, and I had been invited to document this historic moment.

St. Thérèse and I have a complicated relationship.

For years, I wanted to read her autobiography, Story of a Soul, but I never seemed to get to it until one day I found a copy on top of a stack of ‘free books’ in a parish rectory.

But every time I would start it, something would get in the way.

So I downloaded the audiobook.

Same thing. I never seemed to be able to find the time.

But this time would be different. I was arriving in Los Angeles a day early, and I was determined to finally immerse myself in her words before encountering her relics.

On the beach.

Where all great reading is done.

So there I was, with the Pacific stretching endlessly before me, finally, finally, reading the autobiography that had eluded me for years.

And when I finished it, I sat there thunderstruck, overwhelmed by the power of what I read.

How could words written by a young, cloistered nun over a century ago reach through time and grab the human soul?

How could her simple phrases so profoundly rearrange something fundamental in a person’s understanding of love and holiness?

I understood, in that moment on the sand with waves crashing and seagulls crying overhead, why millions have fallen in love with this young Saint.

This wasn’t just a book, it’s a miracle in print.

As a young girl entering Carmel at just fifteen, she dreamed of becoming a great saint. Yet she quickly realized her littleness—her weakness, her ordinariness—made that impossible on her own.

And it was precisely there that God revealed to her the “little way”: a path not of grand gestures, but of childlike trust, hidden sacrifices, and simple acts of love.

Her heart ached to live every vocation at once—to be a missionary, a martyr, a contemplative. And then came the revelation that would change everything:

“I understood that the Church has a heart, and that this heart burns with love. I understood that Love embraces all vocations, that Love is everything… My vocation is Love.”

Thérèse wanted to be love at the very heart of the Church, to burn so brightly with Christ’s love that her entire life, and even her heaven, would draw souls closer to Him.

The next day I caught up with the relics at St. Thérèse Carmelite Church in Alhambra—a parish in its 101st year, with nearly forty of those years spent in perpetual adoration, where Christ in the Eucharist is adored day and night.

I’d been to Alhambra before, when the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage passed through on the St. Katharine Drexel Route. The community carried the weight of trial. Just up the road lay Altadena, scarred by the disastrous wildfires that had swept through earlier in the year. Charred hillsides and empty lots where homes once stood.

And yet, in those same streets, thousands processed with Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. It was a place touched by both heaven and hell—now marked again by Grace.

And now, that Grace returned in a new and profound way.

The relics of St. Thérèse, the Little Flower who promised to spend her heaven doing good on earth, had come to this parish. As Christ once walked those streets in the Blessed Sacrament, now His saint arrived in the bones that once held her heart.

The procession moved solemnly to the Sacred Heart Retreat House of the Carmelite Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart of Los Angeles.

The lines to venerate her stretched as far as the eye could see, winding through church grounds and spilling into the street. From dawn until dusk they never ceased.

Many have met Thérèse through her autobiography. Others through her sister Céline’s, Sister Genevieve of the Holy Face’s, famous photographs. And millions have met her through answered prayers, conversions and healings beyond counting.

Her life a testimony that holiness isn’t reserved for the extraordinary few. God can take the smallest, most ordinary soul and make them luminous with Grace.

A cloistered nun who never traveled became one of the most influential voices in modern Christianity. Her “little way” inspired Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day, and countless others who discovered that greatness lies not in grand gestures, but in doing small things with immense love.

As twilight fell, I thought again of that Sister’s words: “Then you DID meet Mother!”

So if someone were to ask me today, “Have you met St. Thérèse?”

My answer would be a joyful and resounding “Yes!”

Not just through her relics, but by meeting her through her insatiable love of Christ and her desire to draw us all to Him.

She’s waiting, ready to show you her ‘little way’ which begins with simply taking who or what is directly before you, however big or small, and attending to that with great love.

Her relics continue their pilgrimage across America, bringing heaven close to those who seek her intercession. Each stop is an opportunity for encounter, for Grace, for the transformation that comes when heaven brushes against our ordinary lives.

What I witnessed in Los Angeles—the tears, the quiet miracles, the experience of her presence—awaits at every stop.

You should meet her, the encounter will change you.

St. Thérèse is coming.

Don’t miss the opportunity.

Meet her.

Photo Gallery: The Little Way in California

St. Thérèse of Lisieux never dreamed of accomplishing grand feats. Her deepest desire was simple: to love. In every hidden moment, in every small act, she wanted to pour herself out for God.

Her relics, now journeying across America, carry that message to parishes, colleges, and communities. They remind us that sanctity is not beyond reach. It is near, tender, and ordinary. It is the “little way.”

At the Carmelite chapel in Alhambra, banners stretched across the church façade proclaim her message: “Everything is grace.” Children in school uniforms scattered rose petals along the path as priests and sisters processed forward. The arrival was joyful yet hushed, as if heaven itself had bent low to listen.

“I will let fall from heaven a shower of roses.”

Processions spilled into the streets of Alhambra—priests, sisters, children, and families walking together, each step a little act of love offered in her honor.

“Holiness consists simply in doing God’s will, and being just what God wants us to be.”

In the choir loft, Carmelite Sisters raised their voices in chant. Their hidden song recalled Thérèse’s own offering: a life small in the eyes of the world, but radiant with love.

“My whole strength lies in prayer and sacrifice; these are my invincible arms.”

Inside the Chapel of the Sacred Heart, people pressed their rosaries against the reliquary glass. A woman bowed her head, eyes closed, silently praying. A young girl, rosary in hand, touched the reliquary with childlike faith. Another woman sobbed openly, her pain and prayer poured out together.

“For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward heaven.”

Soon, it was time to go. The reliquary was lifted with care into the ThereseMobile, handled not as cargo but as a treasure. Even the smallest tasks. The careful tightening of straps, the steadying of hands became offerings of love.

“Remember that nothing is small in the eyes of God. Do all that you do with love.”

At Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, students carried the reliquary. Their solemn faces bore witness to the continuity of faith. Thérèse’s little way passed into the hands of a new generation.

“I understood that love comprises all vocations… my vocation is love!”

The reliquary entered beneath the California sun, its light casting long shadows across the chapel grounds. The moment seemed wrapped in grace.

“I will be love… I shall be everything.”

Inside the great nave of the chapel, the reliquary rested beneath soaring arches and golden stone. From above, the small wooden casket appeared even smaller, a sign of her humility magnified against the grandeur of the church.

“Jesus does not demand great actions from us, but only surrender and gratitude.”

A single shaft of light fell across the pews, resting upon bowed heads and folded hands. To see it was to remember her constant refrain:

“Everything is grace.”

One by one, pilgrims came forward. A boy pressed his lips to the glass in a tender kiss. Families knelt with children, teaching the next generation that prayer is simple, honest, and close to the heart.

“To remain little is to recognize our nothingness, to expect everything from God as a child expects everything from its father.”

Men and women leaned their foreheads against the reliquary, hands trembling, hearts surrendered. Tears, smiles, whispered prayers—all mingled into one act of love.

“Love can accomplish all things. Things that are most impossible become easy where love is at work.”

One young woman gazed at the reliquary intently, her face reflected in the glass among the gilded carvings. Holiness mirrored itself back to her—an image of Thérèse’s little way alive in her own.

“Holiness consists simply in being what God wants us to be.”

Finally, at Thomas Aquinas College, the reliquary stood beneath the towering baldacchino, dwarfed by marble and gold yet radiant with presence. The smallness of Thérèse revealed the greatness of God.

“Miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice, here by a smiling look, there by a kindly word; always doing the smallest right and doing it all for love.”

At the altar in Alhambra, Carmelite Sisters, Brothers, Priests, and Novices gathered for a group portrait with the relics. A spiritual family, joined across generations and continents, bound together by Thérèse’s promise to “be love in the heart of the Church.”

“In the heart of the Church, my Mother, I will be love.”

Upcoming Pilgrimage Stops:

Visit https://stthereseusa2025.com/ for more details

Royal Oak, Michigan (October 1-8, 2025)
Ten dioceses throughout California (October 10-30)
San Antonio, Texas & Carmels throughout the South (October 31-November 14)
Holy Hill, Wisconsin (November 15-18)
Washington, DC and surrounding areas (November 19-30)

Miami, Florida (December 1-8)

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

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

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Whatever else she may have been called, she was a New Yorker.

Her gaunt figure was a fixture on Mott Street at the Catholic Worker house, where she could be seen with a cup of coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other, her heart perpetually outstretched to whoever crossed her threshold.

She bore the weight of her ambitious vocation calmly, but humanly. And when the burden grew too heavy, she would flee to the place that held her heart, with its salt air and gentle breeze and restless shores.

Staten Island.

In the early days, it was more no-man’s-land than borough. The north shore congested with tugboats and barges steaming upon the Arthur Kill. Snug Harbor, where the sea captains of old sat crookedly on their benches, regaling anyone who’d listen with tales of the high seas, having put out to sea for the last time.

And the west shore…the dreaded west shore…the garbage dump of the city, with its mountainous landfills heaped high. A gift from its cousins, Brooklyn and Manhattan. But a favorite haunt for returning seagulls as they picked their way through the refuse.

But the south shore. There, where the land peaked between the lighthouse at Sandy Hook and the Rockaways, gazing wistfully at the sea like a mistress waiting longingly for her lover’s return.

It was there, upon those shores, that Dorothy Day would find peace and salvation.

Throughout her life, she returned again and again to that rock-laden, sandy shoreline of this outcast island. From her tiny bungalow in Huguenot to the cabin at the Spanish Camp, she would write, pray, and recollect herself.

It’s questionable whether Staten Island has ever been referred to as Heaven.

But it was as close to it as any place on earth for Dorothy.

So to stand upon the gently rolling deck of the ferry that bears her name is to connect to her spirit in a unique and intimate way.

When she would board at Whitehall, a stone’s throw from Our Lady of the Rosary in Lower Manhattan, home to another saint, Elizabeth Ann Seton—she carried the weight of the world. The struggles of her heart. The shortages of food, money, patience. All those things that St. Joseph House, Maryhouse, the farms needed to survive.

But as she stepped from the dock onto the wide steel ramp, as the lines were slipped and the rudder turned, as the harbor breeze increased while the ferry’s hull cut through the storied waters of New York Harbor—a little of that weight would ease, replaced by a hint of peace, a glint of hope, and the promise of moments of solace to soothe her weary soul.

And after a time, some fresh-caught fish, the old coal stove, her writing, her soul would be restored.

If only for a moment.

When she boarded again at St. George on Staten Island, the cutting breeze now from the northeast as the vessel plotted its return to the birthplace of New York City, perhaps she felt a sense of melancholy, as one leaving a beloved behind. Perhaps mixed with thoughts of a future return, and the bittersweet solace that thought bears.

And as the ferry loomed toward the silently awaiting pier, the thick chains thundering with the gangway’s release, announcing arrival, she would once again cross over the threshold from solace to struggle.

The bridge between these two worlds…a mountain of floating steel called the Staten Island Ferry.

When the City of New York announced the commissioning of a vessel bearing her name, they enshrined—immortalized—this journey.

Today, the ferry bearing her name continues this endless voyage for countless thousands. A bridge between work and home, loved ones and responsibilities, struggle and solace.

For Dorothy May Day and those who sail upon her namesake, the timeless words of Christopher Columbus ring true: “El mar concederá a cada hombre una nueva esperanza.” (“The sea will grant each man new hope.”)

And as her lines are cast off, as the throaty whistle pierces the salt air, the 320-foot-long, 7,200-horsepower MV Dorothy Day pushes out into the waters in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty—free again, bringing souls to their destinations.

Just as the Servant of God Dorothy Day lived to do.

Only the destination she strived to bring people to was, in fact, Heaven.

“Love and ever more love is the only solution to every problem that comes up. If we love each other enough, we will bear with each other’s faults and burdens. If we love enough, we are going to light a fire in the hearts of others. And it is love that will burn out the sins and hatreds that sadden us. It is love that will make us want to do great things for each other. No sacrifice and no suffering will then seem too much”. - Servant of God Dorothy Day

A Note to My Subscribers:

I owe you an apology—and an explanation.

Over the past eight weeks, our family has walked through some difficult valleys. The kind that pull you away from everything else and demand your full presence. I’ve been called away to provide support where it was needed most, and honestly, there simply wasn’t room for much else.

I’m grateful to say that things are beginning to improve. Light is returning. And within the next few weeks, I hope to be back to producing the weekly articles you’ve come to expect.

Thank you for your prayers, your support, and above all, your patience. In a world that moves so fast, your willingness to wait means more than you know.

God bless,
Jeff

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There are a lot of articles written about Carlo Acutis.

And rightfully, most of them focus on the most critical aspects of his life: his Faith, his virtue, and his love.

But there’s an aspect of his life.

Perhaps a hidden aspect…that warrants a deeper view.

His coding achievements.

As someone who began web development for evangelization around the year he passed, I thought it would be helpful to paint a portrait of the ‘ancient’ digital world in which he lived.

Before Instagram apostles and YouTube priests, before “influencer” was even a thing, he basked in the glow of a CRT.

A teenager with bushy hair, beat-up Nikes, and a Rosary tucked in his pocket.

And while most of us were torrenting music on Kazaa or mastering Counter-Strike, he was hand-coding pages and wrestling with browsers, because he wanted the world to meet Jesus in the Eucharist.

By fifteen, he’d launched a full-scale online exhibition of Eucharistic Miracles. Two decades later, it’s still touring the world—because he didn’t just post content; he built infrastructure. (Miracoli Eucaristici)

This was the IE6 era—quirks mode, broken box model, and CSS floats that collapsed without clearfix hacks.

DevTools were primitive; debugging meant alert() and guesswork. If you shipped a modal gallery, you wrote it yourself. If your layout was consistent, it’s because you measured every pixel and knew how each browser lied to you.

Deployment wasn’t a one-click CI/CD. It was FTP. ASCII vs. binary. CHMOD on folders. One bad .htaccess , and the whole site threw 500s.

You learned as much about servers as about CSS.

So when we say “a kid built a global digital exhibit,” understand the lift.

He wasn’t propagating templates. He was designing an information architecture, normalizing content, and building navigation that scaled to hundreds of pages across multiple languages back when UTF-8 still broke on you at 2 a.m.

The exhibition you see today traces back to that architecture.

Carlo’s site wasn’t a brochure; it was a museum.

A museum with a mission.

Each page was curated: miracle, place, date, Church approval, source. Image assets were optimized by hand so a 56k modem could still reach the mystery. He practiced ‘progressive enhancement’ before it was a buzzword: get the content to everyone, then layer on whatever gloss the browser can handle.

For him, user experience, the ‘removal of friction’, was an act of charity.

Fast pages respect the visitor’s time.

Clear structure respects the mind.

And beauty respects the heart.

He wrote clean code not for a linter score but because order serves contemplation.

No Stack Overflow. No Git. No Bootstrap. No React. No Copilot.

Every include, every stylesheet, every nav update—intentional. If something broke, he fixed it by reading the source and trying again.

In today’s terms, he wore every hat: content strategist, IA designer, front-end dev, back-end tinkerer, release engineer.

In 2004, we’d have just called him a techie.

Today, a techie Saint.

Silicon Valley optimizes for “time on site.” Carlo optimized for time in prayer.

In encounter.

He saw the internet not merely as a network of machines but as a network of souls.

Each HTTP request a person.

In that frame, performance budgets become moral choices.

And when the tools fight you, as they sure did in 2004, you decide whether frustration becomes cynicism…or sacrifice.

The tools got easier; but the mission didn’t. We have frameworks, pipelines, clouds, and AI. Yet the hardest part remains: publishing truth with love, clarity, and courage.

Carlo proved you can be deeply technical and deeply faithful, that the same mind that contemplate a CSS cascade can live a life of prayer.

Today, the Church declared him a saint; but for those of us who live between terminal and tabernacle, he’s already become our role model..

Our patron.

Our Saint.

Carlo Acutis, internet evangelist, coder, and Saint of Silicon Valley.

Please pray for us.

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

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

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I vividly remember sitting in the Adoration chapel, contemplating the upcoming journey to Milan for the canonization of Blessed Carlo Acutis.

If that doesn’t make sense—it's because it never happened.

Except for the part about sitting in the chapel.

The trip to Milan never came.

But at the time, to say I was stressed would be an understatement.

I had pitched the story to my friend Shannon Mullen, a veteran newsman and Editor-in-Chief at the National Catholic Register. My angle was simple: I wanted to be in Milan—not just for the canonization—but to spend time in the places where Carlo lived, prayed, received the Sacraments, and fell in love with Christ.

Surely there would be festivities in Milan.

"Or," Shannon mused, "it could be a ghost town…"

After all, it was only a two-hour drive from the Vatican, where the main celebrations would be taking place.

I kept hoping I was right. I prayed. A lot. And then I prayed some more.

But somewhere in the silence of that chapel, I imagined Carlo smiling at me, saying:

"Come. It'll be great!"

Maybe I imagined it.

Maybe I didn't.

But I took it to heart.

I went to bed with every bag packed, the suitcase by the door, ready for the early morning flight.

The flight that would never come.

At 5:00 a.m., I blinked away the sleep and reached to silence my alarm. I glanced at my phone. The first notification. Then the third. Then the thirteenth.

All bearing the same news:

"Pope Francis has died…"

I laid back down in the pre-dawn darkness and let the moment wash over me. The carefully planned pilgrimage to celebrate a new saint had transformed overnight into something entirely different.

I thought back to that night in 2013, standing in the rain with a sea of journalists in St. Peter's Square—so packed you couldn't lift your hand to your face—when Pope Francis was first introduced to the world.

I remembered his first ride in the Popemobile.

The look he gave me as he passed.

The blessing.

His visit to New York, when the air in St. Patrick's Cathedral was electric with hope and gratitude and awe.

My alarm clock went off again, shattering the reticence of the moment, and the present snapped back into focus.

Did I still have a plane to catch?

Was there still a canonization?

The chaos that followed was something like spiritual whiplash. The Church was reeling. The world's media scrambled. My plans dissolved like morning mist.

And a few days later, I boarded a plane—not to Milan, but to Rome.

Not to witness a canonization, but a conclave.

I had absolutely no idea what was coming.

Why would I?

But the moment white smoke poured from the copper chimney and curled in the breeze above the Sistine Chapel, tens of thousands in St. Peter's Square—and countless millions around the globe, erupted in a symphony of earth-shattering joy.

And I broke down.

Tears of joy streamed down my face, epically inconvenient for someone supposed to be photographing other people's reactions to this historic moment.

And yet, there I stood.

Paralyzed with joy.

Paralyzed by the Holy Spirit.

I wiped my eyes, raised my camera, and saw that same Spirit alive in the faces around me.

I wasn't alone in this.

I was in the best company imaginable.

All swept up in the embrace Holy Spirit, the source of all joy.

Habemus Papam.

Praise God.

By Saturday, the fever pitch of the conclave had settled. Pope Leo XVI was now leading the Church, and Rome, after holding its breath for days, finally exhaled.

And I found myself without much to do.

So I went to Mass.

I prayed.

I thought back on the chaos and beauty of the week, and that one moment from before it all began came rushing back:

"Come. It'll be great!"

Shannon's voice echoed behind it:

"It's only two hours away…"

Two hours. Not from Milan to the Vatican, but from Rome to Assisi, where Carlo's body rests.

That was all I needed.

After the final blessing, I found a rental car agency, a place where many adventures begin, where a cheerful Roman woman handed me the keys to a car the size of a lunchbox, chuckled, and said, "Watch out. Italians are crazy drivers..."

With that warning ringing in my ears, I plugged the destination into the GPS: Assisi.

I’d never driven outside Rome before.

The city gave way to olive groves, wide fields, and hills that seemed to breathe with centuries of prayer. It reminded me of Upstate New York…if Upstate had medieval castles, sun-warmed vineyards, and gas prices that could make you weep for different reasons.

And then it appeared.

Assisi.

I'd never seen anything like it before.

A medieval city, perched high atop the surrounding farmland like a crown of stone and Sanctity.

Everything I'd heard was true: the narrow, cobblestone streets built for horses and sandals, the staircases tucked into impossibly narrow alleys, the homes built directly into the hillside as if growing from the rock itself. And that view…rolling green Umbrian hills stretching beyond the horizon, dotted with olive trees that had witnessed centuries of pilgrims.

I parked the car and climbed.

The Italian sun was unforgiving, and the incline steeper than expected, but I made my way slowly up to the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, where Blessed Carlo Acutis rests.

But I went towards the wrong church.

The towering Basilica of St. Francis dominates the skyline, and “naturally”, I assumed that's where Blessed Carlo would be laid to rest.

I was wrong.

Carlo is entombed in a much smaller church…Santa Maria Maggiore…a more intimate, humble space. A place for pilgrims, more than tourists. A place that somehow felt right for a teenager who wore jeans and sneakers to daily Mass.

And pilgrims were everywhere.

Young and old, locals and foreigners, families with children, teenagers with backpacks all shuffling slowly toward the glass tomb that held the boy saint.

Some paused to pray.

Others simply stood in awe, as if trying to absorb holiness through proximity.

He was taller than I expected.

And he looked… asleep.

Not dead. Not gone. Just resting. Waiting.

His face peaceful, almost smiling, dressed in his favorite jeans and sneakers—the uniform of every teenager, made sacred.

I found a place nearby and sat down to pray the Rosary.

And in that quiet, sacred moment, after weeks of uncertainty and disrupted plans, I felt something I hadn’t felt in a long time…

Peace.

Joy.

Kinship.

Not just spiritually, but personally.

As if he were someone I'd known for years. As if we'd been friends all along, and I was just catching up with him after some time apart.

But there was something more. As I moved through the Glorious Mysteries I felt that same gentle invitation I'd sensed in the chapel back home. That same encouragement to trust, to follow, to say yes to whatever Grace was unfolding. Here was this teenage boy who had lived so fully, loved so completely, and now seemed to be extending that same enthusiastic welcome to everyone who came to meet him.

If everything else had fallen apart, if every plan had unraveled, this moment alone would have made the entire journey worthwhile.

Eventually, I had to leave.

It was still a two-hour drive back to Rome, and my basinet of a car was waiting, parked at an angle on a cobblestone slope that I was pretty sure violated several traffic laws.

As I coasted down the winding hills of Assisi and the green fields rolled by, I thought back to that first moment in Adoration. That flicker of a smile I'd imagined. That invitation I'd heard in my heart:

"Come. It'll be great!"

It echoed now with even more clarity.

Because that's who Carlo was…

Is.

A boy who radiated joy. Who loved video games and built websites about Eucharistic miracles and God above all else. Who showed the world that holiness wasn't about leaving life behind,it was about living it fully, freely, Faithfully.

And I can picture him, even now, inviting his friends to Mass…

"Come on. It'll be great!"

Or perhaps encouraging someone to go to Confession:

"Come on. You'll feel amazing after!"

Or maybe, just maybe, calling out to a tired, overworked photojournalist who stumbles forward on the spiritual road, trying to share a glimpse of Jesus with the world…

"Come on, Jeff. It'll be great!"

That's the Acutis Code.

It's not a complicated algorithm. It's not a growth hack or a viral strategy.

It's simpler than any line of code he ever wrote.

To bring people to Christ joyfully, enthusiastically, and in love.

To say with your whole life: "Come on. Meet Jesus! It'll be great!"

And to mean it.

He’s right, you know.

It is great.

And that’s why he’s a Saint.

And there’s little doubt he’s inviting you to be one too…

“Come on, it’ll be great!”

Thanks for reading! This is a truly independent, reader-supported periodical. Your support is crucial. If you are able, please consider a paid subsciption 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