Tony Rossi, Director of Communications, The Christophers
The Healing Power of Praying the Rosary
May 11
As a boy, Gary Jansen believed that Jesus didn’t like him. It might seem strange for a Catholic school student to hold that view, but it stemmed more from environment than theology. Because Gary’s family was poor, he got ostracized by other kids and thought that God looked down on him the same way they did. Over time, Gary learned that wasn’t how God actually saw him. And in retrospect, those experiences of being made to feel “less than” taught him not to be judgmental of others based on outer circumstances because you never know what is going on behind the scenes.
As the practice of his faith became a key part of Gary’s adult life, he spent more time in prayer, eventually turning to the Rosary he had learned as a child. During an interview about his new book “The Healing Power of Praying the Rosary,” he said he appreciates the fact that the prayer “incorporates body, mind, and soul” through the dimensions of vocal prayer, holding rosary beads, and contemplating the events of Jesus’ life: “I like to think of the Rosary itself as a scrapbook of Mary’s memories. There’s four different parts to this scrapbook that she keeps, and it’s the early years, the middle years, and the later years, and then also times when her son suffered. I think if you want to get to know someone, ask their mom lots of questions. The Rosary is a great place to ask Mary, and to be in [her] presence, because she can give you great insights about her son.”
This is exactly what happened for Gary. Because he practices Ignatian spirituality—which encourages people to mentally and spiritually put themselves into specific Bible scenes—Gary felt the Scriptures come alive. He explained, “Coming back to the idea of this scrapbook—let’s say the nativity of Jesus—it’s like you’re sitting next to Mary. She’s going through all these pages, and [says], ‘This is the day I had my son. You’re not going to believe who showed up, and they brought all these gifts.’ It’s a way of making Jesus relatable without taking away the importance of who He is and His story.”
Gary has also learned that the Rosary is not just good for the soul, it benefits the body. “Chronic inflammation can lead to heart disease, arthritis, or cancer over time,” Gary noted. “The leading factor that a lot of researchers and medical professionals see now is stress…It made me think: if chronic inflammation happens in the body, it must also happen in the soul and in the intellect. The book talks about both spiritual inflammation and physical inflammation. Meditative practices like the Rosary can ease that. There’s been a lot of studies over the years that meditation and prayer can help reduce stress, reduce blood pressure, lower your heart rate, boost your immune system…First and foremost, the Rosary is about praying and being in the presence of Jesus, but there’s a healing quality to it that’s a byproduct that can help us mentally and physically.”
Ultimately, Gary hopes that people who read his book get to “fall deeper into love with Jesus and see that, through the Rosary, we’ve been given a great gift. One, to be in the presence of Jesus, to learn through these mysteries. And two, realize that there’s a byproduct for engaging in this: that it can make people healthier. So give it a shot.”
A Sign of Hope
April 20
Anyone who has ever lost a loved one (which means just about all of us) can find hope in Jesus’ resurrection and the idea that “all will be made alive in Christ,” as St. Paul writes. Yet the grief of separation can overpower our belief that our loved one is not really gone but has rather moved on to a new life with God. Sometimes when this happens, God sends us a pinpoint of light in the darkness to renew our spirits. That was the case with actress/writer Bonnie Hunt, who is known for classic films, such as “Cheaper by the Dozen,” “Jumanji,” and “Return to Me.” I shared this story a few years ago, but it bears repeating because grief is a common human experience.
Bonnie grew up in a large Catholic family in Chicago. Though she wanted to pursue a career in Hollywood, she entered nursing school at the encouragement of her beloved father, Bob. When Bob shockingly suffered a heart attack and died at age 50, Bonnie endured near-total despair and anger at God. She also decided to quit nursing school. Her motivation for that career died with her dad. Bonnie’s mom, Alice, convinced her to give it one more week in Bob’s honor.
On her first day back, one of Bonnie’s nursing instructors told her, “You know, Hunt, you’re not the only person whose father ever died, so you’ve got to buck up...You can’t be telling people what’s going on in your life.” Though Bonnie accepted these orders, inside she felt pained at the heartlessness of the instructor’s comments. Bonnie was then assigned to a patient named Mr. O’Brien. He cheerfully called her “my Bonnie lass” and told her he had terminal cancer. Bonnie was taken aback by how casually he spoke of his own impending death, but Mr. O’Brien explained, “I feel lucky to have cancer…I’m Irish, and there’s a lot we don’t say to our families…But now I’ve been able to tell my boys [and my bride] how much I love them…I had a friend who died suddenly, and he’d always talk about his kids as his greatest accomplishment. He didn’t get to say goodbye, and I’m getting that opportunity.”
Bonnie developed a deep affection for Mr. O’Brien, so when she learned he worked at the Board of Education, which was where her father had worked, she broke the rules her instructor had given her and asked him if he knew Bob Hunt. Mr. O’Brien touched Bonnie’s arm, saying, “That’s the man who died suddenly that I’ve been speaking about.” Bonnie and Mr. O’Brien cried together about the loss of Bob and this unlikely connection between the two of them. She decided she couldn’t leave Mr. O’Brien, so she stayed his student nurse until his death a few months later.
Bonnie reflected, “When I look back at my life, becoming a nurse defined me in so many ways and gave me a more thoughtful approach to my life. And patients gave me a deep perspective. I believe in divine intervention because I think my Dad got to heaven and said, ‘Don’t let her go to Hollywood! Don’t let her leave nursing school! Can we find anyone within a five-mile vicinity that could stop her?!’ Somehow, they found this one patient out of 500. I mean, I was [only] assigned one patient!”
That connection also helped Bonnie resolve her anger at God and realize that her father was still looking out for her after all.
The Harrowing of Hell
April 13
As we enter Holy Week, we focus on the Last Supper on Holy Thursday and Jesus’ crucifixion on Good Friday. Yet there is an element of these sacred days which we often overlook. The Apostles’ Creed notes that after Jesus died, “He descended into hell.” What does that mean exactly? Well, actor Jonathan Jackson explored this story in an epic poem he wrote, titled “The Harrowing of Hell,” about Jesus’ descent into Hades to set imprisoned souls free.
As an Orthodox Christian, Jonathan learned a perspective on hell he had never heard during his many years as a Protestant. It stemmed from Father Thomas Hopko, who suggested that “even the flames of hell are God’s love.” During a “Christopher Closeup” interview, Jonathan elaborated, “It’s not that God [is] like a pagan deity full of wrath and punishment. It’s that God is always love…As Christ said, the Father is not willing that any should perish. That’s the desire of God’s heart. And yet we have free will. So, the experience in hell…it’s the experience of a soul that has rejected perfect love. And the flame of God’s love experienced by a soul that has rejected goodness and beauty and mercy and all of those things, that love feels like it’s burning you…I think a lot of the intent for me was wanting to explore the mercy of God and free will in that context.”
Free will becomes a major part of “The Harrowing of Hell” early on when Jesus goes to Absalom, who is chained to hell because he sinned against God and his father, King David. Jesus invites Absalom to repent of his sins, let go of his shame, and join Him in heaven. Absalom is unsure at first, so Jesus explains that the decision is his alone. “Don’t you understand?” Jesus tells Absalom. “I am helpless before your freedom.”
Jonathan also set out to explore the humility of Jesus, noting, “In the Orthodox Church, there’s a title for Christ. He’s called ‘the Great Humility’…There’s an icon that is called ‘The Great Humility’…where Christ’s head is tilted down from voluntarily accepting the sins of the world for us. There’s such beauty there…The humility of taking on our flesh…receiving beatings and mockery and spitting and false witness…and never returning any of that except with love, grace, mercy, and truth. To be hanging on the cross and say in that moment – not philosophically or ideologically preaching forgiveness – but literally hanging from the cross saying, ‘Father, forgive them,’ that is just incredible.”
The mercy of God is another aspect of Christianity that Jonathan sought to examine. In “The Harrowing of Hell,” Jesus offers salvation to souls that human beings may not think are worthy of being offered salvation. As Jesus says in the story, “Mercy, Absalom, not sacrifice, is the way to heaven.”
“It’s impossible to impress God with our self-righteousness,” Jonathan reflected. “Look at the thief on the cross. There was nothing he could do in that moment to earn anything, except [express] this beautiful repentance and say, ‘Lord, please remember me when You come into Your kingdom.’ Christ doesn’t turn to him and say, ‘Well, a little late here, buddy. You don’t have time to earn it. You’ve wasted your life.’ No, He turns to him, and He sees the honesty of this repentance…and He says, ‘Today, you will be with Me in paradise.’”
May we all embrace the mercy and humility which Jesus modeled for us as we await the celebration of His resurrection.
Actor Seeks to Imitate Christ
March 30, 2025
The term “child star” sometimes brings to mind stories of kids whose lives went off the rails after achieving celebrity at a young age. Jonathan Jackson, however, never fell prey to those temptations, thanks to the supportive family members and co-workers who surrounded and grounded him after he was cast on ABC’s “General Hospital” in 1993. In addition, Jonathan felt called from an early age to pursue a relationship with God, so he kept his ever-growing Christian faith as the foundation of his choices and actions.
In the years since then, Jonathan moved through various Protestant beliefs, but ultimately found a home in Eastern Orthodox Christianity a little more than 10 years ago. Jonathan also returned to “General Hospital” recently, so he joined me on “Christopher Closeup” to discuss his life, career, and faith.
When Jonathan joined the cast of “General Hospital” at age 11 as Lucky Spencer, he was inducted into soap opera’s most famous family, portraying the son of the iconic Luke and Laura Spencer. “I was so blessed because my parents in real life are beautiful people that I’ve learned so much from,” Jonathan explained. “And then in the artistic world, I was given Tony Geary and Genie Francis as these incredible parental figures and mentors.”
That made a big difference in Hollywood, where the wrong environment can derail young people’s lives. Jonathan recalled, “I was seeing very successful people, many of them with a high degree of fame, and I was seeing a lot of different versions of that…Anthony Geary, for instance…was always one of the most humble people that I ever worked with…It’s the same thing for Genie…Then, [there were] other examples that I would see around me of success and wealth and power—and they were miserable. Their lives were in chaos. I was a kid at the time, so I’m observing all of this and going, ‘Wow, fame is horrible…and it’s corrosive to the soul.’…So…at a young age, to have [Tony and Genie] that are so good at what they do and seasoned and everything, to have them tell you, ‘Listen, block it all out, trust your instincts,’ that was a huge blessing.”
Another blessing was the way that Jonathan was slowly exposed to different Christian beliefs that kept him grounded. He noted, “I’m very thankful that in the various Protestant circles that I grew up in, I was sheltered from the most fundamentalist, puritanical, legalistic [views], which can often be a bit traumatizing for people…There was, I would say, a very orthodox balance of grace and truth.” After reading C.S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity,” Jonathan realized how prideful and judgmental he could be sometimes: “I started to become aware of it, and then every time it would happen, I would repent, and I’d say [to God], ‘Take that from me.’”
“One of the main things that is focused on in Orthodox Christianity is, ‘I am the chief of sinners,’” Jonathan continued. “And whoever you’re talking with, no matter where they come from or what background they are, the disposition of the soul should be an imitation of Christ, one of humility to say, ‘You will most likely enter the kingdom of heaven before me, so please pray for me and put a good word in for me. And I want my disposition to be that when you reach the [pearly] gates before I do, that, if Christ says, ‘What was your experience with that person?’ you might say, ‘He never judged me.’”
Late Hostage’s Mother Notes, ‘God is My Strength’
March 16, 2025
When Diane Foley’s son, journalist James Foley, was covering the Arab Spring in Syria in 2012, he was taken hostage by ISIS. The Catholic mother retired early from her job as a nurse practitioner to work with the U.S. government to secure Jim’s release. However, there was no dedicated person or office to handle hostage situations, and Diane felt that the government largely gave her the runaround.
In 2014, a video of Jim’s beheading was widely shared on social media and became international news. Diane felt grief-stricken, but prayed for the grace to move forward. During a “Christopher Closeup” interview about her memoir “American Mother,” she said, “I felt the Lord wanted me to somehow use the horror of all this for the good of others because I know that’s what Jim would’ve wanted…But it was a challenge, and it required a lot of faith, a lot of the goodness of others. When bad things happen, we need God with skin on. We need people who care. That’s been my experience. We received buckets of mail for a full year after Jim was murdered, and it was through a lot of that goodness and some of those donations, we were able to start the Foley Foundation.”
The James Foley Legacy Foundation advocates for the safety of journalists in conflict zones and has helped bring home more than 140 innocent U.S. nationals. Its work also resulted in establishing a government point person to handle hostage situations.
Years later, two of Jim’s murderers were captured and extradited to the U.S. One of them, Alexanda Kotey, plead guilty and offered to meet with victims. It was not an easy decision for Diane, but she felt it was something Jim would have done. Her co-author, Colum McCann, came along and documented what occurred.
Diane credits God with giving her the peace to get through this unusual exchange. “One of Jim’s gifts was as a listener,” Diane said, “and I wanted to be able to see Alexanda Kotey. I wanted to hear him as Jim would’ve heard him…But I also, as a mom, wanted him to know who Jim was because I knew that a lot of the jihadists objectified the prisoners and just saw them as images of anything bad our country’s ever done, and not as people. But thanks be to God, I was able to hear him, and I felt he heard me. He ended up writing me three letters after our encounter…He won’t probably ever see his family or home country again, which is important. Accountability needs to happen when people commit horrific crimes. But by the same token, there was a humanity.”
Would Diane say she has forgiven Kotey? “It’s grace, it’s mercy. He never asked me to forgive him. He did express remorse…Certainly I’m willing to forgive…Hatred is sad. When we choose to hate one another, everybody’s hurt. Everybody. And when we dare with God’s grace to try to love, there’s hope for everyone.”
In co-writing “American Mother,” Diane hopes that Jim’s story offers future generations hope and courage in pursuing truth. The book is also a testament to the strength and guidance we can all draw from faith. She concluded, “The challenge is for all of us to use whatever happens in our life, gifts or tragedy, to try to find God in it because then God meets us and gives us the strength to do what we can, to do what He intends with whatever is there. So, God is my strength.”
Mother of Hostage Relied on Faith
March 9
In 2012, Diane Foley’s oldest son, James, was working as a freelance journalist in Syria when he was taken hostage by terrorists. After two years of torture, they murdered James and posted video of the atrocity online. Devastated and heartbroken, Diane’s Catholic faith instilled her with the strength and guidance she needed to get through that experience. She shares her story in the book “American Mother,” co-authored with Colum McCann.
From his earliest years, Jim (as Diane calls him) was a good-hearted, easygoing child who went out of his way to help others. “One of the turning points for Jim,” Diane recalled during a “Christopher Closeup” interview, “was when he went for his undergraduate work to Marquette University in Milwaukee because their ethos is: be the difference…The university challenged him from freshman year to volunteer in the inner city…It opened his eyes to the fact that there’s a lot of poverty, there’s people who don’t have a mom or a dad or breakfast.” As a result, Jim worked at Teach for America, volunteered at a care center for unwed mothers, and worked at Chicago’s Cook County Jail helping inmates earn their high school diplomas.
Jim chose to become a journalist to help readers know and care about people in need and, eventually, people in conflict zones around the world. Diane believes his international focus stems from Jim having “three younger siblings who were in the Army, Air Force and Navy, and two of them were in Afghanistan and Iraq at the time.”
Though Diane worried constantly about her sons in Iraq and Afghanistan, she admits she was “clueless about the risks that journalists take.” That became evident in 2011 when Jim and several other freelancers working in Libya were taken hostage by Qadaffi loyalists. Unlike journalists for major outlets, freelancers do not have security teams to back them up, so the danger they face is high. Diane was shocked when she received the news about Jim’s abduction. His brother Michael took a leave of absence from work to engage with the U.S. government and try to get help to secure Jim’s release.
Meanwhile, Diane and her husband, John, relied on their faith for strength. She recalled, “I remember John and I going to the adoration chapel and praying…It was like the Lord had been preparing me for this in so many ways. I became a Catholic not until I was 16…I remember as a preteen, my dad had an office in our little town in New Hampshire, and I would go down to St. Bernard’s Catholic Church…I remember being drawn to the Blessed Mother, to the stillness and the sacred space…No matter where in the world I’ve been, I’ve been able to find a Mass to go to and the Blessed Sacrament to sit before. What a gift! It’s a treasure that I think often we Catholics forget about or take for granted perhaps.”
When Jim was released after six weeks, he said that he could feel people’s prayers lifting him up during his captivity. He also revealed that a fellow prisoner had passed some Scripture verses to him through a hole in the cell, allowing him to meditate on them. Though the entire experience could have prompted Jim to pursue a safer career, he instead found himself even more deeply committed to practicing “moral courage.” What came next would test Diane’s ability to practice the grace and mercy Jesus taught. I’ll share that story in my next column.
Sister Orianne Dives Deep for Youth
Feb 23
Sister Orianne Pietra Rene Dyck, a Daughter of St. Paul, converted to Catholicism at age 12, while being raised in a half-Protestant, half-Druze family. During a “Christopher Closeup” interview, she reflected, “I think the beauty that comes—along with the confusion—of being raised between two different faiths is that you have to ask questions. I fell in love with the Lord at a very young age. I was reading Scripture and the Koran at home. That kickstarted a lot of questions in me…The more I asked questions, and asked them of God Himself because I knew that He was the one who had all the answers…He really started to bring me back to that question of, who is love beyond the human conception of what love could be…I found in the Catholic Church this beautiful ability to hold who Jesus was, as our most personal, intimate friend—and also as God, who created the universe.”
As a former teacher, Sister Orianne thought about her former students and the struggles they faced. She realized she dealt with some of the same spiritual struggles herself and believes there is a universality to them. She felt God invite her to break open Scripture for youth “in a living way,” which is what He did for her at their age. That’s what led her to write “Dive Deep: 40 Days with God at Sea,” which is geared towards kids ages 9 to 12. And as the daughter and granddaughter of scientists, Sister Orianne used elements from both faith and the natural world to convey her insights.
For instance, she related Pharaoh (from the story of Moses) to a porcupine fish. Why? When reading about the Exodus, Sister Orianne initially felt troubled by the statement, “The Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh” because it sounds as if God is infringing on his free will, which would raise all kinds of theological problems.
Upon further investigation, Sister Orianne learned the opposite was true. She writes, “In Scripture, when God says that He will harden the heart of someone, He isn’t saying He is going to make that person unable to listen to Him. He is saying that is the reaction the person is going to have to His words. In fact, before this story in Exodus 8, it explicitly says that Pharaoh hardened his own heart, showing us that Pharaoh was choosing not to listen to God’s words. And God, respecting Pharaoh’s free will, let him choose this.”
So how does this relate to porcupine fish? Pharaoh reacts like one because he feels threatened.
“[Porcupine fish are] small and unmenacing in a usual day,” she explained, “but they swallow a bunch of water when they feel threatened. It puffs them up and makes their spikes stick out so you cannot touch them. I thought that was a profound, visible example of what we often do to ourselves, to our own hearts, when we feel like someone is infringing on our ability to control what is around us. We get defensive…and we’re like, ‘I don’t care why you’re here. I feel threatened. Go away.’ So often, we do that to people who love us, who are trying to help us. But we also do it to God, who’s trying to heal us and set us free…To be able to see that reflected in a physical example can make us realize, ‘That’s exactly what I’m doing, and maybe I don’t want to do that to God.’”
A Book of Saints for Families
Feb 9, 2025
As Gary Jansen was preparing for Confirmation at age 13, his mother gifted him a book about the saints that she found at a garage sale. He quickly embraced this collection of the Church’s holiest figures because they reminded him of the comic books he enjoyed. Only in this case, the leading characters were not Batman or Green Lantern, but rather “the superheroes of my faith.” Gary grew up to become a Christopher Award-winning author and editor of spirituality books, often focusing on Catholicism. He also never forgot that childhood gift. So, when an opportunity arose for him to write a similar book for the modern era, he jumped at the chance. Featuring nearly 400 profiles, Gary’s book is titled “Saints, Angels, & Demons: An A-to-Z Guide to the Holy and the Damned.”
While Gary highlights the saints’ heroism and character, he also makes it clear they were “imperfect individuals.” During a “Christopher Closeup” interview, he observed, “I loved seeing the trajectory of the saints’ lives because, in many ways, they’re just like you and me…They have foibles, they make mistakes. Sometimes they’re plagued with touches of arrogance…And through living life, they gain wisdom, they gain spiritual insight. As much as sometimes I could think of our canonized saints as the superheroes of the faith, it was important for me to try and get across the humanity of these folks…It helps us to think…we can be saints, too.”
The relationship between Catholics and the saints is often misunderstood by Protestants. As someone whose family has a devotion to St. Jude, Gary explained, “We don’t worship saints. That gets all confused. It’s all propaganda. But we do venerate, we do set aside certain people to celebrate their lives and what they can do to inspire us…I think the lives of the saints are integral to the life of the home, so that was something I wanted to do with this book as well: to make it a family experience. The early feedback I’ve been getting…[shows] parents are reading it, their teenagers are sitting down with it, and their preteens are checking out the pictures. I wanted this book to be a family affair, something that you could keep on your shelf or your table, hopefully take it down and explore your faith.”
Among the saints Gary profiles is St. Ambrose of Milan, whose story is unusual because he was appointed a bishop before he was even a priest—and before he was even a Christian. While Ambrose served as governor of Milan, the local bishop died. The position needed to be filled, so Ambrose made a persuasive case to the citizens about nominating a worthy candidate. He did such a good job on his speech that the people demanded Ambrose be made bishop. He was quickly baptized and ordained a week later.
Ambrose took the position seriously and learned everything he could about Christianity. He left his pagan beliefs behind and came to embrace Jesus Christ. He became a proponent of the separation of church and state, combated heresies such as Arianism, and served as a mentor to St. Augustine. Gary noted, “Essentially, a pagan is elected as bishop, and then from bishop, he does this crash course in Christianity to become one of the most important figures in early Christianity.”
Gary’s ultimate hope for “Saints, Angels, & Demons” is that it inspires and informs readers of all ages and sets them off on their journey of wanting to learn more about their faith.
Trust God’s Whispers
January 19, 2025
Since childhood, Kathy Izard felt like she was being called to do something important with her life. She mostly ignored that still, small voice until she was 44 years old. She then pursued a seemingly impossible goal, for which she was unqualified. But with God’s help, Kathy made it happen. In sharing her story, she set up chains of events that led other people to discover God’s purpose for their lives. She shares those stories in her book “Trust the Whisper.”
Kathy earned a Christopher Award in 2017 for her memoir “The Hundred Story Home,” which chronicled her life-changing encounter with formerly homeless man Denver Moore at a soup kitchen in Charlotte, North Carolina. Though they fed the homeless, they had no beds for them, so Denver challenged her to change that. His words haunted Kathy and amplified what she calls “the whisper” that had long been encouraging her to do something more. During a “Christopher Closeup” interview, she explained, “That [whisper] felt inconvenient and uncomfortable…But at the same time, it was insistent.”
Kathy quit her job to focus on this new dream, then she connected with the right people. Together, she said, “We first started a pilot program called Homeless to Homes, and moved 13 people directly from street to home, chronically homeless men and women who had been on the streets an average of eight to 10 years.” That program changed the lives of the homeless people who participated, so Kathy and her team created a new residence for the homeless that they named Moore Place.
Kathy credits God with making all this happen: “In the beginning, when I was hearing those whispers, I thought, ‘I can’t be called to this because only priests, nuns, monks, and ministers are called.’ But I came to think we’re all called, there’s something whispering to each one of us…I do believe that God doesn’t leave us alone in our whispers. He brings along the folks that we need to help us.”
As an example, Kathy shared the story of Betsy Blue, who she got to know on a “girls’ trip” with some of her friends. Betsy shared her interest in helping the mentally ill because she had a family member with bipolar disorder—and because there was not one residential facility for mental health care in a 100-mile radius of Charlotte. Betsy had no experience in this area, though, so she was unsure if she should follow these promptings inside her.
Across the street from the inn where Kathy’s group was staying were the grounds of an old monastery, so the ladies went to walk around one morning. There was an outdoor chapel and an altar where people had left flowers, crosses, rosaries, etc. Betsy found some pages there, started reading them, and began crying. “It turned out it was a letter written by a mom who had a bipolar daughter,” Kathy explained, “and it was pleading to God for help. Her daughter was a runaway, and the mother didn’t know how to find her. She didn’t know how to help her…Betsy took this as her sign [to move forward with her idea].”
Kathy, Betsy, and 10 others came together to get this project off the ground. Three years later, they opened Hope Way, Charlotte’s first residential mental health treatment center. Kathy concluded, “I do think these small stirrings in our soul are connecting us to each other, to God, and to our truest purpose in the world.”
Magnificat in Ordinary Life
January 12, 2025
As a child, Sister Ave Clark decided that she wanted to become either a Rockette or a nun. Her mother responded that she should pursue her performing dreams first, then enter the convent. The young Clark mulled it over, ultimately deciding, “I’m not going to be a Rockette. I’m going to be a nun who dances a lot.”
Having recently celebrated her 61st anniversary as a Dominican Sister, Sister Ave still enjoys kicking up her heels—though not quite as high as in her younger days. But her true specialty is helping the spirits of downtrodden people to dance again by showing them grace, mercy, and compassion. She shares some of her wisdom in the recent books “Joy is Blooming” and “Alleluia: A Grace to Hold Life’s Interruptions.”
Sister Ave’s father once told her she was going to “evangelize the world.” That became true when she joined the Dominicans, who are a preaching order. She has served others joyfully for more than six decades. And it’s clear that evangelization comes naturally to Sister Ave. She’s one of those people who connects with everyone she meets: the workers at her bank, the gas station attendant who fills her tank, the handyman, the postman, etc.
“Anybody that comes into my space in life or I into theirs, I hope we’ll remember each other,” Sister Ave told me during a “Christopher Closeup” interview. “I love sharing my joy, my happiness. Have I had tears in life? Yes. And this past week, three of my dear Sisters returned to heaven. You have that moment where you miss them. Then, all of a sudden, I say, ‘I’m glad I had the moment of cherishing what they gave to me: friendship, example, inspiration, simplicity.’”
The way Sister Ave lives was greatly impacted 20 years ago when her car was hit by a runaway train, and she spent one year in intense recovery and rehabilitation. Though she was tempted to dwell in her misery, she chose instead to tell herself that she could make at least one small step towards healing every day. “I started looking at the little moments,” Sister Ave explained, “of being able to use my hand again, to write, to get up and walk. [My] right foot is constantly in pain from that injury, but if I focus only on that, then I’m going to feel more of the pain. I’m not Pollyanna; I’m a realistic person. But I truly believe that joy wraps around us that beautiful grace of saying: you can do this today.”
Sister Ave finds particular inspiration for joy in the words of Mary in her Magnificat, when she proclaims, “My soul magnifies the Lord.” Sister Ave notes that we don’t have to magnify the Lord in large ways. It can happen through the smallest acts of love.
“I look across the street every day,” Sister Ave said, “and I see a man put his special [needs] son, who is nonverbal, on this bus…He’s back out there at 3:15 waiting for his son. When the bus pulls up, the son gets off, gives his father the bag, reaches out his arms, and they hug each other. The father will not change the son’s mental capacities or his emotional life, but what I see is love. That’s what I see through Mary. Each one of us can magnify…Mary’s loving ‘Yes,’ her loving trust, her loving humanity, her loving [in] walking to the cross. That’s where our magnificat happens in our ordinary life.”
Reflections Old and New
December 29, 2024
Around the time I turned 40, I realized that once the calendar hits September 1st, the days until the end of the year fly by at a rapid pace. This wasn’t the case, of course, when I was a kid. The wait until the opening of presents on Christmas Eve seemed endless. But age brings a new perspective, right? Whereas then, I wanted life to speed up, now I’d love it to slow down a little. Unfortunately, I have no say in the matter, and here we are, already on the brink of another new year.
I can’t help but think back to my childhood and my elderly aunts and uncles (at least they seemed elderly at the time). When the new year or a birthday approached, they would say, “So long as you’ve got your health, you’ve got everything.” I didn’t understand that sentiment at the time. Sure, good health is nice, but a new Atari videogame is pretty great, too! Now, after a year with a root canal, a slowly-healing sprain, and other minor medical issues, their words ring more true than ever! Plus, as a caregiver for my mother with dementia, challenges are never far away.
So, where does God fit into the picture? If I’m being truthful, I have to admit He has left me frustrated more than once. There are problems it would be easy for Him to fix, and yet He doesn’t do so. I’m not talking about major medical healings; just small things. Those are the days when faith becomes a choice more than a feeling. It’s nice to feel that spiritual connection with something bigger than myself—and I still do at times—but there are also hours or days when it feels absent.
That’s where perspective comes in, where the concept of lighting a candle rather than cursing the darkness is a key to moving forward. Do I have problems? Absolutely! But you have problems, too, don’t you? They’re probably different from mine, but they still add stress to your life. Those are the moments when it’s important to count your blessings and not just dwell on your difficulties. I’ve got a roof over my head, food on my table, a good job, decent health insurance, etc. On the days when frustrations threaten to overwhelm, I have to make a conscious choice to focus on the things for which I have to be grateful. No, it doesn’t make everything better or my problems go away. But it does make a difference. Maybe the same can be said in your life.
So, as 2025 quickly approaches, I can’t help but think of a New York Times article by Melissa Kirsch, who asked readers to send in the best advice they had received during the past year. Here are a few of the answers she received: 1) “Keep a running list of the nicest things anyone has ever said to or about you. It’s a lifesaver on days when the world is getting the best of you.” 2) “Life is too short not to tell the people you love that you love them.” 3) “Instead of calling someone out, call them in: Invite them into a judgment-free conversation with the intention of promoting understanding.”
I’ll add my own and say: do your best not to dwell on negative emotions that drain the joy out of life. And do something that makes you smile. We’re all getting older. We might as well make the best of it. Happy new year.
Come As You Are
December 15, 2024
When Sarah Hart was writing original songs for her new Advent and Christmas album “All the Earth Alive Rejoicing,” she was struck by how complicated Mary and Joseph’s situation must have been in light of Mary’s pregnancy and the scandal it would cause. Sarah felt inspired to write a beautiful duet, titled “By Your Side,” in which the two reveal how much they mean to each other.
Mary sings to Joseph: “In a world of judging eyes and whispering tongues / I’m aware that it may all just be too much for you to stay. / I know this burden isn’t light / But I want to be by your side.” Joseph responds: “I confess I wrestled with such doubt / But as soon as God and I had had it out / I saw the light. / How could I run from where Love resides / So I’ll stay right here by your side.”
The Holy Family’s humble love, which reflects the humble love of God, runs as a thread throughout Sarah’s album. For instance, the track “As You Are” was inspired by Sarah’s visit to the Mansfield Correctional Institution. Sarah performed a concert at a parish in Mansfield, Ohio, so they invited her to take part in their prison ministry program. Having never played in a prison before, she agreed to lead the music for a Mass among the inmates.
During a “Christopher Closeup” interview, Sarah noted she has likely sung at 3,000 Masses in her life, but this was the most beautiful: “The men sang with such gusto, they had a choir, they had instruments. Afterwards, we were all able to talk…Some of them told me why they were there. We talked about music, they talked about their struggles... A lot of times, I think, when we as Christians go into charitable situations, we think, ‘I can’t wait to bring Jesus to these people.’ But I’m here to tell you, those guys know Jesus better than I do. They brought Jesus to me that day.”
“I wanted to write a song to assure them and anyone who’s struggling,” Sarah continued. “There’s so many people in this world who feel on the outside of church…so many people who feel excluded and outcast. Here comes Jesus again in this little form literally speaking to us, [saying], ‘Come just as you are. I don’t need anything from you. There’s not a thing you can give me except your heart.’ There’s no more beautiful concept than that. I wanted to write a song to thank [the inmates] for opening my eyes to that...It allowed me to hear the voice of God saying, ‘You see, Sarah, nobody is excluded. My desire is that all come to Me.’”
Though Christmas is a season of joy, some people are going through grief and hardship. Sarah prays that “All the Earth Alive Rejoicing” speaks to them as well. She concluded, “Christmas for so many is a difficult time because we’ve lost people that we love. Statistically, suicide rates tend to go up during December and post-Christmas because for some who are alone, it is a very difficult time. But I hope that the messages contained in the record [reach listeners]: [God’s] love is for all, all are welcome, come as you are, and especially, you aren’t alone. Even though we can be lonely, it is not the same thing as being alone. In Christ, in God, in this gift that He's given us, we aren’t alone.”
An Amazing Testimony to Love
Dec 1, 2024
Adoption has been a major theme in Catholic singer-songwriter Sarah Hart’s life this year. Not only did she release an Advent and Christmas album, which celebrates the season in which God adopted us as His sons and daughters through Jesus’ birth, the adult mother of two finally went through the process of being adopted by her stepfather decades after he became part of her family.
Sarah’s biological father was never a big part of her life. So, when she was a child, she prayed that God would send her mom someone who loved her. It took 12 years for that prayer to be answered, but when it was, God got it perfectly right. During a “Christopher Closeup” interview, Sarah noted, “He’s not my stepdad, he’s my dad. To my dad’s credit, he jumped into a household with two teenage daughters. My sister is a year older than I am. That was a lot of bravery and love.”
When Sarah and her sister eventually had children of their own, their dad took to being a grandpa “like a fish to water”—and the kids adored him right back. Though the topic of adopting Sarah and her sister had come up through the years, the timing never worked out. “About a year ago,” Sarah recalled, “we had a family member who was not well. I said to my dad, ‘If something happens, we will not be listed as your next of kin. We have to do this. I don’t want you being sick in the hospital and having nobody who can legally take care of you.’…So, we finally did it…The judge was crying, our lawyer was crying, we were all crying. It was an amazing testimony to love.”
The Christmas story, of course, is another amazing testimony to love. That is what Sarah celebrates on her new album “All the Earth Alive Rejoicing.” She noted that she would happily record a Christmas album every year if she could because, “I am an incarnation girl…I love the incarnation from a theological standpoint, that concept that God condescends and comes to us and says, ‘I got you. I love you.’”
In light of that, one of her songs is titled “Lowly the Cradle,” which reminds listeners that the God of the universe humbled Himself to be born in a manger. Sarah observed, “We live in a world where many of the strong want to lord it over the weak, and want to keep the poor and powerless in their place, and want to keep people enslaved in different ways...God understood that about our human preconditions to be sinful people who want power—and some want to lord it over others.
“For Him to come as a king in a completely powerless state is such an incredible, beautiful image—to literally say, ‘I come as the poor, I come as the weak, I come as the innocent, I come as the stranger and the immigrant.’…In writing ‘Lowly the Cradle,’ it was important for me to address the humility of God. I worry about a culture where we focus too much on God as power and contorting God in our image, if that makes sense. The way that Christ came to us is the antithesis of a lot of what’s happening in the world right now: to come humbly and quietly, to fall among us to lowly birth parents with no money and no stature, but people who had love and kindness to give.”
For free copies of the Christopher News Note THE GIFTS WE GIVE, write: The Christophers, 264 West 40th Street, Room 603, New York, NY 10018; or e-mail: mail@christophers.org
Disability Ministry for the Life of the Church
November 17, 2024
When America magazine’s Delaney Coyne set out to explore the Catholic Church’s ministries to people with disabilities, she found St. Therese of Lisieux Church in Cresskill, New Jersey. Its pastor, Father Samuel Citero, O.Carm., was inspired by a trip he took to Lourdes in 2015. He witnessed the work of the American Special Children’s Pilgrimage Group, which offers trips to Lourdes for people with disabilities, providing them with specialized care. After seeing the community and fellowship that people with disabilities experienced there, he suggested starting Masses in a similar style at St. Therese. As a result, the church celebrates a monthly special needs Mass that welcomes both those with disabilities, as well as the wider parish community. People with disabilities serve in all parts of the Mass, from altar servers to lectors to the choir.
When she attended one of these special needs Masses, Delaney found herself deeply touched by its life-affirming and faith-affirming spirit. During a “Christopher Closeup” interview, she said, “People with disabilities are often marginalized and isolated, and their families struggle to find resources because they’re also isolated. This is a way of bringing people together. It’s also led to growth in their parish. They have seen membership rise from people that are joining because of this ministry. It’s focused on personal relationships. They meet in the parish hall after the fact, and it cultivates this relationship between the pastor and community.”
Delaney also spoke with Lori Weider, chair of the National Catholic Partnership on Disabilities Committee on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (NCPD). She learned there has been “significant growth” in disability ministries in the last 20 years. The U.S. bishops are making this a priority. “The flip side,” Delaney explained, “is that it needs to trickle down to the local level. So much of this work depends on individual relationships because all people with disabilities are different. What is true for someone who might have mobility issues and be in a wheelchair, is not true for someone who might have severe sensory issues, which is not true for someone who might have severe cognitive impairments. It has to happen at the parish level.”
Pope Francis’s 2020 statement that we shouldn’t deny people with disabilities the sacraments has also been a positive factor. Delaney said, “I spoke to multiple families who did experience that with their children. People who wanted to receive the Eucharist, the pastor said, ‘No, they don’t understand enough’ or ‘We can’t prove that they understand.’ Not all will want to receive, but many do. A lot of this is a shortcoming [because people with intellectual and developmental disabilities] say that they don’t understand. But without catechesis that can help them understand, it is essentially leaving a major portion of the Church high and dry and without access to that grace that they deserve by virtue of their baptism.”
Ultimately, people with disabilities need to be seen by all their fellow Catholics as “members of the body of Christ,” Delaney concluded. “They’re not doing something different or something lesser or Catholic lite. They are brothers and sisters. They belong just as much as we do as neurotypical Catholics…Disability ministry is not something that is done specifically for people with disabilities. It’s done for the life of the Church as a whole. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t center people with disabilities in that ministry, but it’s incumbent on all of us.”
Theology Lesson in Sister’s Love
November 10
When writer Delaney Coyne set out to explore the Catholic Church’s ministries to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, she approached the topic with firsthand knowledge. Her younger sister, Charlotte, has an intellectual disability. As they were growing up together, Delaney witnessed the challenges and victories that Charlotte experienced when it came to learning and practicing her faith. That made Delaney wonder how the Church was currently meeting the needs of this sometimes-overlooked community.
During a “Christopher Closeup” interview, Delaney told me that Charlotte, now age 21, “is in a transition program through the public school in the state of Illinois…She loves going to church. She loves finding community with her peers. She’s super social. At our parish, there’s a special friends Mass that she loves attending. She’s also involved in the community of Misericordia, which is a home for people with disabilities in Illinois. She’s not a resident, but she…goes to their events and makes friends there, and it’s really lovely.”
There were some bumps along the road, however. For instance, Charlotte experiences severe anxiety about going to the front of the church in front of other people. So, on the day of her Confirmation, she ran out of the church because she did not want to receive the sacrament. Her family followed her, as did the bishop, who forcibly anointed her with oil in the hallway while she screamed, “No, I don’t want!”
Delaney recalled the incident, noting, “I’ve come to a kind of compassion for the bishop. I still think what he did was wrong. It is not in line with the guidelines for the celebration of the sacraments with people with disabilities, but I don’t think he totally knew what to do in that moment because this has not always been the top priority of our Church. We haven’t always put people with disabilities at the center.”
That incident also challenged Delaney’s faith because she came to see the Church as being too rigid. Charlotte, however, provided the theology lesson Delaney needed to find her connection to God again: “Charlotte reminds me that there’s something a lot deeper to faith than just knowledge. My background is in academic theology…It’s beautiful, but that’s not what faith is, in and of itself. You have this in Joseph Ratzinger’s ‘Intro to Christianity.’…[Faith is] an encounter with the man, Jesus, and in this encounter, it experiences the meaning of the world as a person. If it’s strengthened by intellectual pursuit, that’s wonderful. Knowledge can be liberating. It has been in my own experience, but it’s not the only way. This very cognitive model of faith has been limiting for our brothers and sisters with intellectual disabilities.”
“My sister does not want to receive the Eucharist,” Delaney continued. “She engages with the faith in a different way than I do. She’s often a much better Christian than I am. She sees the good in everyone. She shows love to everyone, and she’s open to love. It reminds me to break from my own rigidity and see the mystery of God’s abundant love. So, my image of faith and image of the Church was bound up in my relationship with my sister. I came to know God through going to church with my family and sitting next to her, and I learned who God is and what love is. It reminded me that there’s this real power of unity in diversity. There’s no one way to be a Catholic Christian.”
Young People Tap into Creativity
October 20, 2024
Every year, for more than three decades now, The Christophers have sponsored two contests for young people that invite them to tap into their creative sides. Our Video Contest for College Students asks entrants to create a video or film (five minutes or less) that communicates the belief that one person can make a difference. Similarly, our High School Poster Contest asks students to interpret the theme “You Can Make a Difference.”
With schools back in session, this would be the perfect time to tell the young people in your life about our contests. Not only do they offer an opportunity to win prizes, they highlight the love, faith, hope, and charity that the youth of today incorporate into their lives.
For instance, first prize in The Christophers’ 36th Annual Video Contest for College Students went to Alexandra Carson, a film and television major at Missouri Southern State University in Joplin, MO. Her winning video, titled “My Friend, David,” documents the life of her older brother David, who has low-functioning autism. Alexandra succeeded brilliantly in allowing viewers to get to know the human being behind the autism diagnosis. In her narration, she states, “[David] shows me what it means to be alive…Whatever he feels, he feels with his whole being. He exists only in the moment…loves with everything he has.”
“When I mention David…has autism,” Alexandra continued, “most people freeze up. They don’t know what to say, how they should feel…To some, autism is this great ‘other.’ It exists outside of their universe…When it confronts them, they shut down…maybe, it’s fear. Fear of saying the wrong thing…of offending…of looking ignorant…We can’t always be right, but we can always try. And when that fear doesn’t hold us back, doesn’t stop us from…trying, from asking questions and making mistakes, from improving and growing, then maybe the world can change. Maybe, understanding can deepen. I don’t…pretend to be any sort of expert on autism, nor is this some great moral narrative. It just is. David just is…David…isn’t the lesson, but maybe, you can be.”
What a lovely tribute from a sister to a brother! And what an ideal reminder that we are all created in the image and likeness of God and worthy of respect, no matter what challenges we deal with.
The first prize winner in our 34th Annual Poster Contest for High School Students looked at creation itself and what role we play in it. Mattelyn Hall, a senior at Groesbeck High School, located in Groesbeck, TX, utilized watercolor paints to recreate a photo of herself and her fellow Agriculture Club (AG) members tending to their communal garden’s array of crops.
“In this picture, my AG teacher, peers, and I were digging up potatoes,” Mattelyn recalled. “We dug up around 100…that day and donated them to school staff…I believe that growing one’s own food, understanding the hard work that goes into farming, and learning about agriculture is incredibly important…So…the poster has two main messages: give back to the earth, and the importance of agricultural education.”
If you know any high school or college students with artistic or creative talents—and who are looking for ways to tap into the “better angels” of their nature—please encourage them to look at our website at Christophers.org/youth for more information about past winners and entry forms for this year’s contests.
Herod and Mary
October 13
A paranoid ruler feels so threatened by manipulative forces around him that he suspects his children are trying to overthrow him, leading him to torture and execute them. No, it’s not the plot of some new TV show. It’s a piece of history about King Herod, the man who ordered the murder of all boys under age two after hearing from the Magi that the king of the Jews was born in Bethlehem.
Matthew’s gospel only gives a taste of Herod’s evils. But now, his story—as well as a contrasting one about a model of holiness—is being told by television legend Kathie Lee Gifford in the new book “Herod and Mary: The True Story of the Tyrant King and the Mother of the Risen Savior,” co-authored with Dr. Bryan Litfin.
During a “Christopher Closeup” interview, Kathie Lee told me that a trip to Israel a little more than 10 years ago changed her understanding of Scripture. She said, “Unless we study what the original languages of the Scriptures were and are—meaning Hebrew in the Old Testament, Greek in the New [Testament]—we are not hearing the word of God. We’ve been reading the King James version of the Bible and thinking that’s the only [one]…That’s where we all learned Jesus was a carpenter. Well, guess what? He was not a carpenter. There was no buildable wood in first century A.D. Everything was stone…So, when I started learning how to study the Hebrew…and the Greek…it lit a fire in my very bored and lukewarm faith.”
During that trip, Kathie Lee first heard about Herod’s background. “He murdered anybody that was a true enemy or [that] he thought might become [one],” she explained. “He was a paranoid man, but incredibly gifted, probably the greatest architect that has ever lived…This man was so genius, he found a way to pour concrete 150 feet into the Mediterranean Sea and build a marina for Caesar’s ships. That’s the way Pontius Pilate got there.”
Despite Herod’s many sins, in his own mind, he believed he was favored by God. “Herod wanted to be his own god,” Kathie Lee said. “He knew there was a God out there that he kind of needed, and he’d give money to everything. Every time he’d honor a Roman god or a Greek god, it would anger the Jews and the Zealots…It was a melting pot of disaster and chaos waiting to happen…How truly relevant his story is even now. People are doing this all over the world, still this kind of evil. So, it’s always been here, but God has always had a presence in the midst of it.”
God’s presence in “Herod and Mary” obviously comes from the second of those two names: Mary, the mother of Jesus. Kathie Lee included Mary as a contrast to the self-absorbed, power-hungry, violent way that Herod lived his life. She said, “I want to give people hope, and nobody represented hope more than a little Jewish virgin…Born into poverty…certainly not born into what the world would say would be greatness. But she found favor with God. Why? Because of her pure heart, because of her spirit, because of her goodness.”
Kathie Lee hopes that people who read “Herod and Mary” find it enlightening from a historical perspective, but that it also offers them light on the best way to live their lives. She concluded, “God Himself became one of us so He could walk humbly with us. We’re all sinners saved by grace.”
Awaken Your Spirit in ‘Three Minutes a Day’
Sept 22
Chances are a cup of coffee or tea clears the drowsiness from your brain when you wake up in the morning. But what do you do to awaken your spirit? Maybe you have a prayer routine or are able to go to Mass. Some spiritual reading can also be helpful, so on that account, let me make a suggestion: Volume 59 of The Christophers’ annual “Three Minutes a Day” book series of daily stories and reflections. Technically, you can read it during morning, noon, or night. And as the title suggests, it only requires a few minutes of your time. What kinds of stories does the book include? Let me give you some examples.
Ellen Cheng works with LAMP Catholic Ministries in New York, offering material and spiritual support to those who are poor. One day, while out in LAMP’s truck serving sandwiches, a man named Angel approached her group and told them he couldn’t stop drinking despite trying various programs. As recalled in LAMP’s newsletter, Ellen questioned whether Angel had ever asked God for help. He responded, “God won’t help me. I’m a bum.”
Ellen then revealed that she, too, once had a drinking problem, and believes that God helped her. Angel noted that Ellen was “not a bum.” She replied, “My family thought I was when they threw me out. Bosses, friends, and others called me that. But I discovered that God doesn’t make bums.”
Angel stepped aside to eat his sandwich and ponder Ellen’s words. Before leaving, he told her, “A lot of people come by with food, but that’s it. You come here, you see us, look us in the eye, and talk to us. You listen. [We] appreciate it so much.” Ellen prayed that Angel would experience God’s unconditional love and move forward towards recovery.
The line “God doesn’t make bums” stood out to me in this story. It’s a reminder that we each have inherent dignity and value, regardless of what we may have done in the past. Another entry offers a similar reminder: Many years ago, the publication Bits and Pieces shared a story about two brothers convicted of stealing sheep. As punishment, the letters ST, for Sheep Thief, were branded on their foreheads.
One brother couldn’t stand the shame. He moved away, but wherever he went, he was asked about the letters and what they meant. Eventually, he became embittered and died a lonely forgotten man. But the other brother stayed put. “I can’t run away from my past,” he reasoned, “but I can try and win back the respect that I once had.”
This brother began to build a reputation for kindness and fair dealing. He went out of his way to be friendly and helpful. Years later, he was a revered member of the community. One day, a stranger came to town and asked a villager about the letters on the old man’s forehead. The villager said, “It happened a long time ago. I’ve forgotten the details. But the letters are an abbreviation for saint.”
The stories in “Three Minutes a Day” offer beautiful examples of loving God and neighbor, of finding strength when life’s inevitable tragedies strike, of lighting a candle rather than cursing the darkness. So, consider buying copies of “Three Minutes a Day: Volume 59” as a Christmas gift for yourself and others for $10.
Call 1-212-759-4050, ext. 241
A Million Miles Away
Sept 15, 2024
“I want to be an astronaut.” José M. Hernández remembers saying those words at age 10 after watching Gene Cernan walk on the moon during the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. It was highly unlikely that dream would come true for any child, much less one whose parents were migrant farmworkers from Mexico who picked fruits and vegetables in California. However, with guidance from his father, the support of his family, and an unwavering commitment to his Catholic faith and hard work, José eventually achieved his goal, becoming an astronaut on the Space Shuttle Discovery in 2009. His story was turned into the Amazon Prime movie, “A Million Miles Away,” which earned a Christopher Award earlier this year.
When José told his father about his goal, his dad did not discourage him. During a “Christopher Closeup” interview, José recalled, “I think [my father] saw the determination of a 10-year-old kid…He validated that dream by saying, ‘I think you can do it,’ as opposed to saying, ‘This is too far of a stretch for you. Select something else.’...Then he said, ‘If you want to reach this, follow these five simple steps...[First], determine your purpose in life. What does José want to be when he grows up? Second, recognize how far you are. Third, draw yourself a roadmap so you know how to get there. Fourth, prepare yourself according to the challenge you picked. And fifth, develop a work ethic second to none...That’s the recipe to succeed.’ I still live by those steps.”
José noted that his Catholic faith has long served as a guiding force, calling it “my refuge.” He attends Mass every week with his wife, took several family religious items into space with him, and makes it a point to pray in good times as well as bad ones.
José needed both faith and guidance when he received his sixth rejection from NASA. He crumpled up the letter and threw it at the garbage can, ready to give up his dream. But the letter wound up on the floor where his wife, Adela, found it and read it. “I think that was God’s divine intervention,” José recalled. Adela pointed out that he would become a “bitter old man,” always wondering what might have been. As she walked away, she added, “I don't know what [the other applicants] have that you don’t have.”
José had never thought of that question. When he began exploring the answers, he discovered that those in the astronaut program were pilots and scuba divers, so he acquired those skills. And to differentiate himself, he signed up for a nuclear nonproliferation project which took him to Siberia several times a year. “Sometimes, we have to do things we don’t like in the short term to reach the end game,” José said, “and that’s what I decided to do. Lo and behold, on my 12th try, I got selected.”
As a man of faith, José’s trip to space made a major impression on his spiritual life. He said, “You make your way to the window that faces the Earth, and you see the Earth from the outside for the first time…Then, you go to the opposite window, and you see the universe. You realize…this is too perfect to be a coincidence, that everything is in its place, and we’re just one of billions of planets…that God created. I said, ‘There has to be a higher spirit, higher being that created all of this.’ So, it only solidified my faith in my religion.”
Soccer Grannies Inspire the World
September 8, 2024
In 2010, when the FIFA World Cup was being held in South Africa, Jean Duffy of Lexington, Massachusetts, saw a video about a group of women in the province of Limpopo, ranging in age from their 40s to their 80s, who had started playing soccer to improve their health. Dubbed the “Soccer Grannies”—and led by a humanitarian nicknamed Mama Beka, who’s been compared to Mother Teresa—they exuded joy on the pitch and demonstrated that getting older didn’t mean your life had to go downhill. As a soccer-playing mom herself, Jean connected with Beka, which led to a life-changing trip to the U.S. for her team and an opportunity to learn about the selflessness, faith, and community that motivated these grandmothers. Jean turned that story into the Christopher Award-winning book “Soccer Grannies: The South African Women Who Inspire the World.”
“Beka Ntsanwisi is absolutely the heroine of this story,” Jean explained during a “Christopher Closeup” interview. As a young girl, Beka would take food from her parents’ cupboard to feed hungry children. As an adult, she hosted a national radio show on which listeners with problems would request “a wheelchair or assistance to conduct a proper funeral for a relative. Beka would coordinate the resources needed to assist…The AIDS epidemic hit South Africa very hard, and women lost adult children…to the disease. These women found themselves responsible for eight, 10, or 12 grandchildren. They needed to clothe, feed, and house them, so Beka collected donations to help them out.”
After being diagnosed with colon cancer at age 35, Beka needed treatment in the hospital. There, she saw many older women “suffering from heart disease, diabetes, and various mobility issues.” Rather than focusing on herself, Beka asked the doctor how she could help these women. He responded that their conditions were largely caused by stress, and that exercise would improve their health, just as it would Beka’s. So, Beka invited these grandmothers to start an exercise program with her. At first, that mainly involved taking walks. But one day, some boys playing soccer let the ball get away from them, and it rolled over to Beka’s group. They started kicking it around and truly having a good time. Beka noticed this, and the Soccer Grannies were born.
After playing together for some time, Jean explained, “Their blood pressures were lower. Their cholesterol was reduced. Some of the grannies boast they don’t take any medications now, and they have better movement...This team formed a new circle of supportive friends around them…If they’re hitting one of life’s rocky periods, they help each other out. They pray together, they sing and dance together.”
At the heart of the Soccer Grannies’ lives is their faith. Jean noted, “[Beka] once said that helping people is a God-given talent...She takes on ambitious projects that might seem impossible, but she states her dreams with conviction, and accomplishes great things as a result…Her trust in God is fundamental...She knows that He’ll help make it happen…[In addition], every single one of the women spoke about their strong faith and what a comfort praying provided them to get through the tough periods in their life…As Granny Nora says, ‘My soul has settled,’ and what a gift [that is] at this time of their life.”
Today, there are more than 240 teams of soccer grannies across Africa, all inspired by Beka’s team. Jean concluded, “That’s thousands of older women who are healthier, more confident, feeling empowered, with this additional community of support.”
Author’s Mom Taught Him Lessons of Peace
August 18
Author Torrey Maldonado has a gift for finding hope in dark situations. That gift stems from his own life growing up in a neighborhood where drugs and crime were everywhere—and in a home where he witnessed his mother become a victim of domestic abuse. Through it all, his beloved mom served as a beacon of light and font of wisdom so that he would choose a better path than some of the people around him. And Torrey has done exactly that through his writing career, penning short novels for tweens and teens that speak to their real lives.
Several years ago, Torrey earned a Christopher Award for his book “Tight,” and this year he won his second Christopher Award for the semi-autobiographical novel “Hands,” about a 12-year-old boy named Trevor who is torn between using his hands to create art or using them to fight his abusive stepfather, who is soon being released from prison.
Torrey explained to me, “Like Trevor, I like to draw. Trevor is an amazing illustrator…That’s where his light is. But he’s gotten messages that young people get throughout the ages: if someone hits you, you better hit them back. He’s trying to decide: is he going to use his hands to build and create and elevate—or is he going to use his hands to knock down and destroy?”
Trevor’s mother in the book, like Torrey’s mother in real life, is a proponent of the former. She wants him to use his hands to develop his artistic gifts and build a good life and career for himself. At the same time, Trevor’s reasons for wanting to fight his stepfather are reasonable and justified. He simply wants to defend his mother. She, however, realizes that succumbing to an impulse towards violence can lead to unintended consequences, especially for a 12-year-old. She shared with him the famous quote, “An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind.’”
“Trev doesn’t realize that by him trying to seek revenge…violence is going to beget violence,” Torrey observed. “He has a pure heart and pure intentions in learning how to use his hands, because he wants…to defend his family…However, he doesn’t realize that the sword is a double-edged sword. So, it’s hard for him to follow another piece of advice…implicitly set inside ‘Hands,’ but it’s not explicitly stated. It was explicitly stated to me. My mom loved the Bible quote, ‘If a man hits one cheek, you turn your cheek and you give him the other cheek.’ Meaning, don’t give into your anger, don’t give into your rage because violence will beget violence. Instead, try to be humble because the meek shall inherit.”
Torrey believes his books exemplify the Christopher motto, “It’s better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.” He also discovered another unexpected connection when he won his first Christopher Award for “Tight.” Throughout his childhood, his mom had a copper image in a silver frame hanging on the wall of their home. It featured a man hunched over carrying a child on his shoulders. That was St. Christopher carrying the child Jesus. Fast forward to many years later when Torrey received his first Christopher Award: “When I saw the award,” he recalled, “my jaw dropped because the image on the award was the exact same image that I had seen growing up my whole life…It’s fascinating that my mom had planted the image of St. Christopher in my head long before you planted the Christopher Award in my hand.”
Prayer Got “General Hospital” Actor Through Cancer
August 11
John J. York, who plays Mac Scorpio on ABC’s “General Hospital,” approaches each day with hope, gratitude, and faith, no matter what life throws at him. And life hurled some major health issues his way in late 2022. John was diagnosed with two blood and bone marrow cancers—myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) and multiple smoldering myeloma—that would have likely killed him in the next three to five years. During a “Christopher Closeup” interview, John explained that he kept the news quiet, informing only his immediate family and boss. He and his wife, Vicki, were also in the process of moving to Tennessee to be closer to their daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren.
John began chemo treatments at Nashville’s Vanderbilt University Medical Center in March 2023, while they searched for a donor who could provide stem cells for a life-saving transplant. Meanwhile, he traveled to and from California to work on “General Hospital.” During those months, John was encouraged to go public by Courtney at Be the Match (now the National Marrow Donor Program) because it could help not only him find a donor, but also other people. He followed her advice, and by September, they found a match for John.
The night after his stem cell transplant brought severe discomfort because John’s new cells were fighting his old cells for dominance. He recalled, “I lay in bed, and I prayed the rosary. I said a million Hail Marys, a million Our Fathers. I prayed to St. Jude, St. Philomena, St. Theresa, St. Faustina, St. Josemaria, St. Pio…I thought about my friends, and [told myself to] be calm, and take one second at a time, one minute at a time.”
John never contemplated the thought that he wouldn’t get better. His hopeful outlook reflects the Christopher ideal that “it’s better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.” John observed, “All there is in my life is light…And even in the darkness, there’s light beyond that…I know whose hand is there for me, and I’m always reaching out for that hand…I’m very thankful for all the blessings in my life, and I want to make sure that I take time every day to say, ‘thank you.’”
After 100 days in quarantine and six months off work, John returned to “General Hospital” in June with warm welcomes from cast, crew, and fans. That warmth is indicative of the kind of person John is, always trying to put his faith into action by loving his neighbor. He reflected, “In one of [my] prayers, [I say], ‘Help me to see the face of God in the people and experiences of my life,’ and that’s what I try to do. I make it a point to think about that when I’m talking to someone…I’m going to stop, look that person in the eye, listen, give them my full attention, and see the face of God in that person, in that experience, in that moment.”
John knows he is not the only person going through illness, so he offered some words of advice for others: “Stay positive. Have faith in God. Have faith in Jesus Christ. They are leading you on your way. Whenever you think you might be alone in whatever circumstance, they’re there for you. In your deepest and most incredible pain you might be feeling, they’re there for you. They’re not causing it. They’re there for you for your comfort and your healing. Trust in them. Believe in them. Feel their presence in your life. That’s what I would say.”
Gifts of Faith and Hope
July 28
One of the great things we discover when hearing from supporters is how long they have been connected to The Christophers. While we always receive new requests for our Christopher News Notes and other literature and media, we also have friends who go back 50 years! We believe that’s because our work is accessible to everyone. As one supporter told us, “The Christopher message is important because it is inclusive and helps people with their faith, whether they are devout or lax.”
As another example, we received a letter from Anne, who told us that her mother introduced her to Christopher News Notes many years ago in the family home. When Anne and her siblings moved out, her mom signed each of them up to receive News Notes in their new homes. Anne now does the same with her children. What a wonderful tradition of spreading the message that “it’s better to light one candle than to curse the darkness!” That philosophy remains our focal point in picking Christopher News Note topics. Recent titles include “Let Us Pursue Mutual Upbuilding,” “Follow God’s Path Towards Joy,” “Look for the Best in People,” “Moving Beyond Anger and Resentment,” and “While We Have Time, Let Us Do Good.”
It’s interesting that the people who most appreciate our News Notes, books, and other materials are those in need of hope. They may be facing challenges in life—as we all do sometimes—and they need an affirmation that God is still with them and loves them, that there is a light at the end of the dark tunnel they are in. We were reminded of that when a letter came into our office from Father Mike, who works with those in recovery from addiction, in addition to his other ministries.
Father Mike wrote, “I am deeply grateful for all the materials that you have sent to me, free of charge. In particular, the [copies of] ‘Three Minutes a Day, Volume 58,’ have been greatly appreciated. Stories of many ordinary people leading faith and hope-filled lives can and do generate a lot of light and powerful impacts. I am continuing to distribute copies here…at the Alcohol and other Drug Recovery Center, to graduates from high school and college, and in various parishes as well as a health care facility.”
We also received a beautiful letter from Father Matthew, the Catholic chaplain at New York’s Sing Sing Correctional Facility, to whom we mailed “Three Minutes a Day” books to share with the incarcerated. Father Matthew wrote, “The men at Our Lady of Hope at Sing Sing Correctional Facility wanted to reach out and extend their sincerest gratitude for your latest donation…Many of the men are exploring their faith for the first time…Receiving the tools to open their hearts and minds to the Lord is an amazing blessing, one that they are grateful to receive. You have been very generous to us over the years, and it is comforting to know that there are organizations like yours who continue to provide for those who have embraced the way of Christ.”
It stood out to us that the men who received these materials are the ones who wanted to extend their gratitude. Unlike the story of Jesus healing 10 lepers but only one returning to thank Him, here we have many men who feel thankful and want to make sure we know it.
We pray that these “Light One Candle” columns and our other materials are a blessing to you as well.
Rest in Peace, Mandisa
When news came out this past April that Christian singer Mandisa was found dead in her home, the reaction from everyone was shock, especially because she was only 47 years old. Since she had revealed mental health struggles in her past, some people wondered if she might have committed suicide. But the autopsy report showed that she “died of complications from Class III obesity.”
I had interviewed Mandisa several times in the last 15 years, and always found her to be a charming, happy person. But as with many happy people, there were tragedy and sadness beneath the surface. When we last spoke in 2022 about her memoir “Out of the Dark,” she noted that she was raped as a young woman, and that led to her weight struggles because she sought solace in food. Simon Cowell famously insulted her weight during season five of “American Idol,” when she was a contestant on the show. Just as famously, she confronted him about his rudeness, and he apologized.
As she became successful in the music industry, Mandisa went through a public weight loss journey, dropping more than 100 pounds. However, after the death of one of her closest friends, she isolated herself from her family and friends for several months and wound up gaining 200 pounds. Mandisa came out of that dark period with the help of loved ones and therapy. And in fact, she spoke about it publicly because she wanted to normalize therapy in the Christian community, where the idea that you can pray away mental health struggles still exists.
In 2022, Mandisa told me, “I want to de-stigmatize counselors and therapists in the body of Christ, particularly. Because I sometimes hear the phrase, ‘Well, I’ve got God and that’s enough for me.’ It’s a little bit of a red flag for me, because I feel like He’s made us for community. He made us to depend on one another. So, if you can have somebody come alongside you in your journey—a professional and even my friends, my tribe—they’ve become so important to me as well, because I’ve come to understand, we really do need one another.”
I don’t know what happened with Mandisa in her final months. It would seem her weight became an issue again. Regardless, it’s more important to remember how she lived. I found a quote from our 2011 interview that remains good advice, and that I know she tried her best to live by:
“I think so often, as Christians, we feel like we have to put on our brave face and show the world how wonderful everything is. The fact of the matter is, we’re not promised that everything is going to be wonderful. We’re actually promised the exact opposite. We’re promised that in this world, we will have troubles. But the solution to that is not the absence of troubles. The solution is that we have the opportunity to walk out of those troubles with the Lord. It’s not to say that we’re perfect. It’s to say that we’re to bring our imperfections to Him, the only one who truly is perfect, and that He’ll help us to walk those things out.”
I pray that Mandisa is now walking and talking with the Lord she devoted so much of her life too. Eternal rest, grant unto her, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon her. May her soul, and all the souls of the faithful departed, rest in peace.
Amen.
Meditations at Midnight
June 30, 2024
Though Gary Jansen has written numerous books, he had yet to fully integrate into a single volume his creative interests as a self-described “literary geek,” film lover, and devotee of Ignatian spirituality. He finally accomplished that goal with his latest work, “Meditations at Midnight: Poetry and Prose,” which explores both Jesus’s life and the human experience in ways that are both imaginative and memorable.
Via Dolorosa, the book’s first section, consists of 14 exquisite poems in which Gary imagines what was going through the mind of Jesus during His Passion. The seeds of these poems were planted by the band U2’s “Until the End of the World.” Though the song is from the 90s, Gary only realized six years ago that the lyrics occur from the point of view of Judas talking to Jesus.
During a “Christopher Closeup” interview, Gary explained, “It got me thinking…‘What if I could use my imagination to get into the imagination of Jesus during the Passion?’ So, there’s 14 stations in the Stations of the Cross, and there’s 14 poems in this first section…the Way of Sorrows. Each one is an interpretation of Jesus’s Passion following the Stations…[It was] such a spiritually fruitful experience for me to get into the mind of having the conversation with Jesus and Judas, Jesus and Pontius Pilate, and observations of when He’s having memories of His mother and growing up as a little boy.”
This kind of exercise is a regular part of Ignatian spirituality, which involves reading a passage of Scripture and using your imagination to get into the scene. Gary observed, “When you think about all the movies that have come out over the years—whether it’s ‘Passion of the Christ’ or TV shows like ‘The Chosen’ or ‘Jesus of Nazareth’—they’re taking this Ignatian approach: let me imagine what this scene would be like…what Jesus would be like…I wanted to engage in that and…create something that was artistic but also approachable.”
Though Gary is a practicing Catholic now, he spent his young adult years wrestling with God. He revisits that time in the Via Memoria section of “Meditations at Midnight.” At age 27, he felt a deep desire to “go search for God” by visiting various churches in Europe. The only problem: he had no money.
Gary recalled, “I had a job, but I had no savings, and I struggled about what to do. This thing was eating at me. I wanted to go for 40 days and 40 nights, to make this my own pilgrimage. I remember thinking strongly about this and saying, ‘God, I really need a sign.’ And so, I was walking around Lincoln Center in New York City, and I stumbled upon this huge Dante statue, which I’d never known about before. And Dante was like a patron saint for me, even though he is not a patron saint…When I stared at that statue, I felt like God had given me a sign, so I quit my job and went off on this journey.”
Europe was the site of numerous spiritual encounters for Gary, some of which make their way into “Meditations at Midnight.” Regarding his hopes for people who read the book, Gary concluded, “This book is supposed to be like the app Hallow, but in book form. You could open it anywhere, read a little bit, and then hopefully, it brings a sense of peace and a sense of connection with yourself, your creativity, and hopefully with God.”
Lessons from Sister Who Fell Off a Cliff
June 16
What started as a day when Sister Julia Walsh planned to revisit some favorite childhood memories ended with her in an emergency room due to traumatic injuries sustained in a fall that could have killed her. As with many instances of suffering, this one led Sister Julia to reflect on her life and faith. She shares her story in the memoir “For Love of the Broken Body,” and we discussed it recently on “Christopher Closeup.”
Shortly after entering the novitiate for the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration at age 25, Sister Julia learned that her parents were selling the farm in Iowa on which she and her siblings grew up. The prospect of that loss made Sister Julia want to return to her old home one last time to “pray my goodbyes” and come to terms with the new direction her life was taking. While she was there, she decided to climb down a cliff to go swimming in the creek below. It was something she had done many times as a child, without incident. But not this time.
Sister Julia recalled, “As I climbed down, one of the rocks I stepped on crumbled, and I fell face first, maybe 15, 20 feet. My hand went up to my forehead. It protected my skull, so my knuckle and my wrist were broken. Then, everything from my eyebrows to my jaw were shattered…I felt teeth break and fall out of my face immediately, and I felt my jaw crack into two. So, there I was all alone in the woods. Nobody was home on the farm, and I had to make my way back up to the farmhouse. It was a major ‘choose life’ moment for me.”
As the ambulance raced her to the hospital, Sister Julia felt ashamed that she had done something so risky because her actions were now inconveniencing so many friends and family. She also experienced a profound sense of gratitude and even began singing songs of praise in the emergency room.
“Only after I made my final vows and dove deeper into the memories,” Sister Julia explained, “did I start to recognize that I was living the charism of my congregation…The Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration are a Eucharistic community. We’re adoring the Eucharist…in our chapel in La Crosse, Wisconsin, all the time….I hadn’t put it together that Eucharist means ‘thank you’ or ‘thanksgiving.’ Besides the shame and embarrassment and the pain and suffering, [I was feeling] joy and gratitude...that God had saved my life, that I was being well taken care of by a phenomenal medical team, even the bonus of, ‘Wow, my friends drove hours to visit me here in the ICU.’ So, this gratitude was the natural thing.”
The injuries – and subsequent lengthy recovery – that Sister Julia endured made her better appreciate the incarnational nature of Christianity and how it forms a common bond with all people.
“I came to recognize that everyone has an experience of brokenness,” she said. “Everyone can unite with Christ in their own woundedness, and that is one of the ways that we can know intimacy with Christ. At the same time, we live in a society and a culture where we’re sort of taught to hide our brokenness. If our sense of brokenness is preventing us from...being a loving presence to others, then, in a way, we’re saying no to an opportunity for union with Christ. I think I came to know that through my own story, too.”
Soul Food on ‘When Calls the Heart’
June 2, 2024
If you need a break from the cynical stories that make up a good chunk of our media landscape today, take a trip to Hope Valley, the fictional town at the center of the Christopher Award-winning Hallmark Channel series “When Calls the Heart.” Currently in its 11th season and airing Sunday nights at 9/8 C, the show, set in a 1920’s Canadian frontier town, celebrates the better angels of our nature and the common good. The show’s co-creator, Brian Bird, joined me recently on “Christopher Closeup” and credited the series’ success to the fact that few other networks are making this kind of “soul food…about community, sacrifice, and people helping one another.”
In the last three decades, Brian has noticed that TV programs often focus on the dark side of human nature. “When Calls the Heart” offers the opposite: “There’s not a cynical bone in the body of this show. It reminds people that they need to be part of something bigger than themselves, that there’s a reason for them…We’re not just staring into the void of mindless, pitiless indifference, which is where I think secular culture has taken us…I believe we’re put here by a Creator, and there is a purpose for our life. At a time when not too many people are talking about those kinds of subjects on television, we are.”
Faith is also a recurring theme in “When Calls the Heart.” In a recent episode, after Pastor Joseph mediates a dispute between his son and daughter, he looks up to heaven and mouths the words, “Thank You.” It is a subtle expression of faith in a show that incorporates spirituality without thumping you over the head with it. “I’ve never believed personally in creating content that was just a sermon on film,” Brian said. “What’s important to me is that whatever we stir up on the screen stirs up something that pulls people together into conversation, into community, so they can help each other out…Sometimes, there’s Scripture in the show and sometimes there’s a sermon or a prayer, but we try to let the media become the facilitator for the human conversation.”
Brian grew up spending a lot of time in church and came to faith at age seven. That faith was tested in his college years, while attending journalism school. Brian recalled, “I was being confronted with a much broader world…and a lot of questions. Journalists are naturally skeptics, right? You don’t want to just drink the Kool-Aid every time you’re given it from whoever you’re talking to…You want to get to the truth.”
Brian sought guidance from one of his journalism professors, asking him, “How do I reconcile who I have been…with this more complex, messy worldview that I’m now seeing?” The professor responded, “I’m also a believer. My advice to you is: don’t be afraid of the marketplace of ideas because…truth will always show up. Ultimately, truth will rise to the top. But if you’re afraid of the questions, you’re going to be afraid of the answer. So, don’t ever be afraid of the questions.”
Brian explained, “For me, as an adult Christian, who reaffirmed my faith and my relationship with God and with Christ all those years ago in college, I’m now not afraid of questions. The Bible is full of questions, lots of existential doubt on display all across the Bible. And yet, there’s a harmony of truth there that is as right-side up as the world is upside-down. Truth emerges despite the questions.”
Food for Hope
May 19
Food banks are a blessing to hungry people. But did you know they were started by a Catholic man, John van Hengel, inspired by his faith and the hardships he endured? The Christopher Award-winning children’s book “Food for Hope,” written by Jeff Gottesfeld, tells that story.
During van Hengel’s early life, there were no indications he would ever go hungry. He grew up in Wisconsin, attended college and grad school, moved to California, married a model, had two children, and thrived as a salesman for a sportswear company. Then, it all fell apart. Van Hengel lost his job and got divorced. He returned to Wisconsin and found work in a rock quarry. But while breaking up a fight, he endured a spinal injury, which required surgery. Still, he was in pain and needed rehabilitation, so on his doctor’s advice, he moved to Arizona, where the warmer weather might help his recovery.
That’s how van Hengel, now destitute, wound up in Phoenix in 1967 at a St. Vincent de Paul-run soup kitchen at St. Mary’s Catholic Church. In “Food for Hope,” Gottesfeld writes, “John liked people. He talked with everyone in the dining room — disabled veterans, the homeless, and kids whose parents had to choose between rent and food. Their stories opened his heart. He found work at the kitchen, shelter in a cheap room above a garage, and faith in prayer with Father Ronald at St. Mary’s Church.”
The menu at the soup kitchen was minimal (soup, rice, beans, powdered milk), so van Hengel asked a local citrus orchard if he could collect the grapefruits that had fallen off their trees and would otherwise be thrown away. They agreed, and fresh fruit made its way onto the menu. Then came the incident that changed everything. A woman took van Hengel to a supermarket dumpster and showed him all the edible food that had been discarded. She said, “I just wish I could put this stuff in a bank.”
Van Hengel loved the idea, so he went back to St. Mary’s and told Father Ronald, a Franciscan priest, that they should start a bank to store food. Father Ronald agreed and told van Hengel, “Do it.” Van Hengel protested that he already worked at the soup kitchen and didn’t have time. Father Ronald responded, “You heard the call, John. Decide if you want to listen.” He listened. And above his desk, van Hengel wrote a Biblical quote, but gave it his own twist: “The poor we shall always have with us, but why the hungry?”
Gottesfeld said, “St. Mary’s Church gave him an abandoned bakery on Skid Row in Phoenix, and he started there...They did 125,000 pounds of food their first year...This past year, the St. Mary’s Food Bank in Phoenix did 125 million.” Motivated by his faith, van Hengel kept growing the food bank idea and eventually turned it into the nonprofit America’s Second Harvest, which helped create food banks around the country. He also chose to live in relative poverty because he looked back on his life and realized that money had not made him happy.
Gottesfeld hopes that children and families read “Food for Hope,” and find that it motivates them to make a difference. He concluded, “Don’t take food for granted. It is not automatic for big segments of our society…[Also], volunteer…What’s great about food, it’s completely nonpartisan…All it has to do is with feeding people…Know that you’re working alongside other Americans doing the same thing...What matters is your energy and your goodness.”
Finding St. Ignatius in “Star Wars”
May 5th
Two of Eric Clayton’s great passions are Ignatian Spirituality and “Star Wars.” He has found his faith nurtured by St. Ignatius’s ideal of seeing God in everything—and by the heroic moral and spiritual journeys of the characters from a galaxy far, far away. Eric explores both these topics in his books “Cannonball Moments” and “My Life with the Jedi.” We discussed them recently on “Christopher Closeup.”
“Winning wars and wooing women.” That may not seem like the kind of life that would lead a man to sainthood, but that’s how St. Ignatius started out during the late 1400s and early 1500s. Everything changed when he was a soldier at the battle of Pamplona. Eric explained, “He’s defending the castle against the superior French forces, who offer terms of surrender to which Ignatius says no…He gets the rest of his troops to go along with him, and it’s a terrible outcome. He gets a cannonball to the legs, but everyone else is killed or grievously wounded…He realizes, ‘My pride has brought about such devastation unnecessarily.’ So, he spends 11 months in bed recovering in his castle in Loyola, and it’s there that he’s given two books: one on the life of Christ and one on the saints.”
“He’s imagining two different paths for himself,” Eric continued, “or really, God is inviting him to imagine these different paths. One is his old way of life, and one is this potential new way of thinking, of being a pilgrim for God. So, the cannonball moment is just one moment, and it gets held up as, ‘He was knocked down a soldier, and he stood up a saint.’ That’s not it at all. He was knocked down, and then he had a long time to pray, think, and grapple with different ways his life could unfold, his vocation story. Then, he has to go out and begin the journey. It’s not like he gets the answers all at once…He has quite a journey ahead of him, but it’s one that he does carefully through discernment in the company of the Spirit.”
Another key moment in St. Ignatius’s journey occurred while he was living in a cave, a site that Eric can’t help but relate to the Dark Side cave on Dagobah in “The Empire Strikes Back,” where Luke Skywalker faces his fears. Though Ignatius comes to write his Spiritual Exercises there, he also struggles mightily. “He’s having these profound experiences of God,” Eric said, “and he’s also going out and serving God’s people in the nearby town of Manresa. At the same time, the evil spirit is tempting him and saying, ‘How can you, lowly that you are, live this life you’ve committed yourself to for all these years yet to come?’ [Ignatius] struggles with depression, he struggles with suicide. He struggles with thinking God wants him to suffer.” Eventually, however, the Light Side wins out in Ignatius’s heart, mind, and soul.
Eric felt a spiritual connection to St. Ignatius’s story, noting, “God is in all stories. God is in all the details, as mundane and ordinary as they may be. Everything is worth sifting through and exploring to find God…Thinking about stories on the screen, even these so-called ‘godless stories’…God is necessarily there because God is everywhere. And so, stories like ‘Star Wars’…are ways for us to put ourselves in these other worlds and think about, ‘How is God speaking in this fantastical language that might be relevant to me in my very real, mundane world.’”
Mental Illness in an Era of Silence
April 21, 2024
In many ways, Meg Kissinger’s childhood was idyllic. Growing up Irish Catholic in late 1950s/early 1960s Chicago with her mom, dad, and seven brothers and sisters, there were fun times aplenty. But behind closed doors simmered a largely unacknowledged darkness: mental illness. Nobody knew much about mental health at the time, and they certainly didn’t talk about it. That stigma and lack of communication eventually played a role in the suicide of two of Meg’s siblings. As a result, Meg devoted much of her award-winning journalism career to covering the mental health system (or lack thereof) in the United States in order to reduce the stigma around this sensitive topic. She has now shared her story in the memoir “While You Were Out.” We discussed it recently on “Christopher Closeup.”
For Meg’s parents, the practice of their Catholic faith was an important part of their lives. She reflected, “It was expressed in different ways, which matched their personalities. My mother was quieter, but I would say her faith was bedrock to everything about her…Every night, no matter what shape she was in, she always knelt by the side of the bed and prayed. That left a big impression on me. My dad was a lot more outgoing, a lot more vocal. He wrestled with his faith a lot…So, I’m glad for that gift of their expression of faith because it stuck with me and has proved to be quite a life raft.”
As years passed, Meg’s sister Nancy expressed suicidal ideations. Her parents supported her as best they could, but eventually she committed suicide at the age of 24. Instead of being open about the truth, however, Meg’s father told everyone to tell people Nancy’s death was an accident. This occurred during an era when Catholic churches might deny someone who committed suicide a funeral Mass because they were considered to be in mortal sin. Thankfully, Nancy was buried in the church, which brought great comfort to her parents.
Never talking about Nancy’s suicide, not even with each other, produced negative long and short-term consequences for the Kissingers. Meg said, “We began, in time, to show the effects of that, which was turning to the bottle too much ourselves or acting out.” In addition, another one of Meg’s siblings, Danny, went on to kill himself as well. “That just felt like a bomb went off in all of our souls,” Meg recalled.
By the time of Danny’s death, the Catholic Church’s attitude toward those who committed suicide had thankfully evolved to a more compassionate approach. The family received “so much outreach, love, support, and comfort from the parish,” Meg noted. In addition, her father and brother, Jake, took part in an Archdiocese of Chicago program called Loving Outreach to Survivors of Suicide (L.O.S.S.), which brought them both healing.
Regarding her hopes for those who read “While You Were Out,” Meg concluded, “I want readers to understand that shame is toxic. Shame kills. When we internalize things and we’re not honest with ourselves [or] not honest with each other, it boils inside of you, and you’re singed by that. We need to find ways to talk about how we’re feeling…and speak about these things in very loving, understanding, non-judgmental ways. And that goes both ways. If you’re suffering, you need to have the courage and the humility to say that. Then, on the receiving end, if someone you love is going through something difficult, find the compassion and the care to be with them.”
Become a Model of Christlike Mercy
April 7, 2024
Several years ago, The Christophers published a News Note entitled “Become a Model of Christlike Mercy.” Since this is the weekend of Divine Mercy Sunday, it seems appropriate to share some excerpts from that reflection.
Let’s start with a story about Daryl Silva, who is known as “The Boston Dad” on Facebook and Youtube, where he relates funny stories about life and faith with a thick New England accent. In one video, he recalled a road rage incident that he feels was defused by the Holy Spirt giving him strength and mercy. As Silva was pulling out of a parking lot, a pickup truck taking up two lanes zoomed towards him, with the driver honking his horn and screaming obscenities. Instead of responding the same way, Silva says he felt the Holy Spirit inspire him to lean out his window and say to the angry driver, “Would you like me to buy you a coffee? It seems like you’ve had a bad day.”
Though taken aback, the driver followed Silva into a nearby Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot, still wondering if this offer was real. Silva bought him coffee and started praying with the man, who broke down in tears and started sharing all the troubles in his life. Silva said, “He started letting go of all that was going on in his life, crying, and I started getting teary-eyed. It was amazing. I told him to connect with me on Facebook.” Silva concluded his video by saying, “If somebody is acting cruel to you, mean to you, they need that heart of yours. They need God more than anyone. So don’t react to their anger. Answer with love.”
That is a great example of mercy. But what exactly is the origin of the word. As our Christopher News Note stated, “In the original gospels, mercy (eleos in Greek) can also be translated as compassion or pity, but without the negative connotations we have in English for pity. It’s a feeling of positive emotion: kindness or goodwill towards the afflicted, combined with a desire to help them.
“Mercy means to show care for the individual, and it indicates a dimension of forgiveness when referenced in terms of judgment. To give and receive mercy is to recognize that errors may have been done and wrongs committed, that one may stand rightfully condemned, but clemency and compassion override the pull towards harsh judgment, strict retribution, or worse, revenge. It is a central message in the Christian worldview and one from which we all benefit, as our Lord took on the weight of our sins out of merciful compassion. Mercy also encourages forgiveness, which can heal both the victim and the offender. We are called to mirror God's mercy in our lives.”
Like many virtues we are called to embody, mercy is not easy. After all, when someone hurts us, hurting them in return feels like the most natural reaction in the world. It might even seem like justice. Yet, Jesus calls us to something higher. In the Sermon on the Mount, and the sermon on the plain, Christ teaches, “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy,” and He implores His audience, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” So, on this Divine Mercy Sunday, let’s try to pray for the strength to be more merciful towards others. As St. Vincent de Paul once said, “Mercy, according to God’s desires, has no limits and in fact, if it is like God’s mercy, it embraces everyone.”
Finding Hope in Christ’s Resurrection
March 31, 2024
Death and grief are inevitable parts of all our lives. But Christian hope is grounded in the resurrection of Jesus that we celebrate this Easter Sunday. The belief that we will be reunited with our loved ones in the joy of heaven some day can serve as a light in the darkness of grief. Until then, we can find guidance on how best to deal with life’s most difficult moments through the words of Scripture and the example of Christ’s followers in this world.
Author and theologian Henri Nouwen, for instance, offers these thoughts: “The resurrection of Jesus is the basis of our faith in the resurrection of our bodies…Our bodies, as Paul says, are temples of the Holy Spirit (see 1 Corinthians 6:19) and, therefore, sacred. The resurrection of the body means that what we have lived in the body will not go to waste, but will be lifted in our eternal life with God. As Christ bears the marks of His suffering in His risen body, our bodies in the resurrection will bear the marks of our suffering. Our wounds will become signs of glory in the resurrection.”
People with mental illness are among those who endure suffering in this world. I recently shared the story of Deacon Ed Shoener, who lost his 29-year-old daughter Katie to suicide due to her bipolar disorder. Deacon Ed co-founded the Association of Catholic Mental Health Ministers to help other families dealing with this type of loss, as well as to bring acceptance and healing to those with mental illness.
Though Katie is no longer physically present in Deacon Ed’s life, his faith affirms his belief that she is still with him in some way. During a “Christopher Closeup interview, he told me, “The communion with the saints is not just the saints who are painted on a wall…We all hope to be a saint one day, to live eternally with God. So, our loved ones, we’re still in communion with them. And yes, absolutely, I pray to Katie. I pray for Katie all the time, as I do other saints too, and other loved ones…Also, if anyone asks me if they can do anything for me, I always say, ‘Have a Mass said for Katie.’…I wasn’t brought up Catholic. I was raised Protestant, and have come to the faith later in my life…But I think this idea of purgatory is a beautiful teaching of the Church, this idea of purification. And that’s what we do when we pray for someone or have a Mass said for someone. We help them during their period of purification.”
Deacon Ed has taken the most horrible experience of his life and turned it into a vehicle to help others, all while maintaining a connection to his daughter. It is the light that Jesus’s resurrection brought into his life—that Jesus’s resurrection brings into all our lives—that allows him to do this.
Pope Francis summed up this state of belief beautifully when he explained, “If Christ is risen, we can look with renewed eyes and hearts on each event in our lives, even the most negative. The moments of darkness, failure and even sin can be transformed and herald a new path forward. When we have reached the bottom of our misery and weakness, the risen Christ gives us the strength to rise again. If we entrust ourselves to Him, His grace saves us. The crucified and risen Lord is the full revelation of mercy, present and at work in history.”
Jesus, the Metaphor Master
March 10
To nurture her faith and follow a path toward flourishing in life, Joy Marie Clarkson began viewing herself—and all human beings—using a tree metaphor. She drew her inspiration from Scriptural passages, such as Psalm 1, which states, “The blessed person will be like a tree which is planted by streams of living water, which bears its fruit in season, and all that it does prospers.” But Joy also realized that there are other metaphors used in the Bible that can guide humanity. She discussed some of them during a “Christopher Closeup” interview about her book, “You Are a Tree: and Other Metaphors to Nourish Life, Thought, and Prayer.”
Metaphors are crucial to our spiritual lives. Joy observed, “[They] allow us to speak about God, but they keep us in that posture of wonder and humility knowing that we can’t contain Him in words.” And Jesus is a metaphor master who refers to Himself as “the Way, the Truth and the Life” and the “Light of the World,” among other things. In fact, the imagery of light as wisdom – and darkness as ignorance – is common throughout the Bible and in our everyday language. You might describe a person as “dim,” for instance, or as “brilliant.”
Joy said, “Especially in Proverbs and in the wisdom literature…God is characterized as both light and the source of wisdom. That gives us a way to think about wisdom…that it’s not just factual knowledge…but it’s a sense that wisdom is a…source of illumination that allows us to proceed in a wise way…It means being oriented towards the source of wisdom, oriented towards God, and also having a sense of clear perspective on things.”
Another metaphor Joy addresses is that of sadness being heavy or a burden. In Matthew 11, Jesus says, “Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest…For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
Joy observed, “[Jesus] doesn’t say you will have no burdens or you’ll have no yoke. He says that the burden you’ll carry will be light, that I can carry it with you…For life to be meaningful, there is a sense that we have to carry burdens. To love somebody, to have children, that comes with burdens…But that creates what Augustine describes as the weight of love. These burdens [of love] that we carry actually keep us on the path of life. They give us a gravity to life that moves us forward. But we, in the Christian life, need to know that we don’t bear those burdens alone, so there’s the sense that Christ bears our burdens…In Galatians, it says, ‘Bear each other’s burdens so you fulfill the law of Christ.’ So, just like Christ bore our burden of sin and of death, we get to image Him when we bear each other’s burdens and help each other carry things that are too heavy for us.”
Ultimately, Joy hopes that people who read “You Are a Tree” will realize “that our everyday experiences – looking at a tree outside our window, watching the sun go set in the afternoon as it falls across our living room, climbing up a hill, carrying something – all of these experiences, which are very basic to human beings, give us ways to think about ourselves, to think about God, and to think about the world. [They] remind us that the world is shot through with meaning and with integrity because God is always speaking to us through the world.”
You Are a Tree
March 3, 2024
Joy Marie Clarkson had spent most of her life as a potted plant, but realized she was ready to become a tree. Metaphorically speaking, of course. Joy is a writer, so metaphors are her stock-in-trade. And she doesn’t just apply them to herself, but also observes how they are used in our culture. Lately, Joy noticed that our terminology often compares human beings to computers, as if we were machines. A more fitting comparison, Joy believes, is to take inspiration from the Bible and view our lives like a tree and all that entails. She shares her insights in the book, “You Are a Tree: and Other Metaphors to Nourish Life, Thought, and Prayer.”
When she was growing up, Joy’s family moved 16 times. After college, she pursued graduate studies and worked in various universities internationally, which led to her relocating 10 more times. As she was packing up her apartment for yet another new season of life, she noticed a plant that had gotten scraggly because it had grown so much that the pot it was in was too small to contain it.
Joy realized, “Oh my gosh, I’m a potted plant! I’ve grown too much to fit into my little portable life. If I’m going to grow anymore, then I need to be in a place where I can have roots and sunshine.” Joy’s mind turned to imagery from Scripture, specifically Psalm 1, which states, “The blessed person will be like a tree which is planted by streams of living water, which bears its fruit in season, and all that it does prospers.”
That passage, explained Joy during a “Christopher Closeup” interview, helped her put words to the epiphany that “as human beings, we need to be rooted somewhere: to people, to a particular place; that we need sources of nourishment; and even that we have seasons…when we are fruitful and there’s abundance of harvest – but there are also seasons of winter.”
Trees can even teach us about community. For instance, while trees seem to be isolated individual entities, their roots below the surface reach beyond what the eye can see and intermingle with the roots of other trees. If one tree is lacking in nourishment, the other trees sustain it by passing along some of theirs. When a person is facing difficult times, he or she can also receive nourishment if enough people reach out to build that person up.
These ideas are more compatible with humanity than the computer imagery we often use about ourselves, when we speak of “processing things” or “downloading information.” Also, when we think of ourselves as machines, we are denigrating an essential part of our humanity. Computers, for instance, are designed for a functional purpose. If a computer stops functioning, you get rid of it. Humans, on the other hand, reflect the image and likeness of God. And while we do contribute to society, we possess an inherent dignity. Humans should never, therefore, be considered disposable.
Joy noted, “The metaphors we use shape how we live. So, if I describe myself as a machine…then I expect myself to act like a machine. I get frustrated when I don’t have the same amount of energy every day…The metaphor makes me feel bad for being a human being and not being like a machine. In that case, you need other metaphors to help you describe what’s happening inside of you and help you think about what it looks like to be a human.”
Bringing Hope to a Hopeless Cause
Feb 25, 2024
CNN’s John Blake and his brother, Pat, grew up in inner city Baltimore during the late 1960s/early 1970s. Their father, who was Black, worked as a merchant seaman and was away from home for eight months of the year. As a result, the boys often found themselves in abusive foster homes because their mother was not around. All they were told was that she was white, her name was Shirley, and her family hated Black people. For John, the hatred went both ways. Though no one in his community told him he should hate white people, “it was just something I absorbed like the humidity,” he explained during a “Christopher Closeup” interview about his memoir “More Than I Imagined: What a Black Man Discovered About the White Mother He Never Knew.”
During John’s childhood, one person served as his “lighthouse in the sea of chaos”: his paternal Aunt Sylvia, who taught him the value of books and the power of faith. He recalled, “I went to this church where a lot of blue-collar Black people attended. Outside of Sunday, a lot of them were considered nobodies …But when they came to church, they had this dignity and this love of God that even as a kid I could sense. It really impressed me.”
At age 17, John’s life changed radically when he and Pat were finally taken to meet their mother. They arrived at a mental institution called Crownsville, which was known for abusing patients. “It’s the saddest place I’ve ever been,” John said. A hospital orderly soon brought a thin white woman into the room. Her eyes lit up, and she exclaimed, “John and Pat, it’s so good to see you!” It was their mother, Shirley.
That meeting resulted in several epiphanies for John. “No one told us that our mom had this severe mental illness called schizophrenia,” he recalled. “We didn’t make that discovery until that day…[Also], before I met my mom, I didn’t think that any white person could empathize with what it meant to be Black…to be looked down upon because of nothing that you have control over. But when I met my mom, I thought, ‘Wow, I’ve never seen a Black person suffer like that.’…That was the first time I developed empathy for a white person.”
Before John left, his mother asked him to send her a St. Jude prayer book. He didn’t know who St. Jude was, but soon learned he was the patron saint of hopeless causes for Catholics like his mom. She considered herself a hopeless cause and relied on St. Jude to help her. Shirley’s life improved in the ensuing years, and St. Jude brought hope to other “hopeless” situations.
John explained, “I’ve seen people in my mother’s family who denied they were racist—even though they used the N-word—I’ve seen them change…There’s a Scripture…in the New Testament where Paul talks about we’re all new creations in Christ…People can change. Racism is not embedded in our DNA. That’s one of the things I try to show in my book.”
In the end, “More Than I Imagined” provides readers with a complex, nuanced view of humanity where our sins coexist with our virtues, and we can’t just put each other into a box of good and bad. John’s story also proves that we can each choose to become better through love, humility, mercy, and getting to know each other as human beings rather than stereotypes. Because none of us should be seen as hopeless causes.
The Church Needs Mental Health Ministries
Feb 11, 2024
Since the suicide of his 29-year-old daughter Katie, who had bipolar disorder, Deacon Ed Shoener has made it his mission to reduce the stigma and misconceptions around mental illness in church circles and to guide parishes in creating their own mental health ministries. Deacon Ed joined me recently on “Christopher Closeup” to share his story.
Katie’s bipolar first manifested itself when she was in high school, though she hid it well from her parents. Their introduction to the problem occurred after she tried to commit suicide. Counseling and medication stabilized Katie once she received help, but every once in a while, she would fall prey to a bipolar episode. Katie managed her mental illness for more than a decade and was building a life for herself. Deacon Ed believes that her suicide was likely an impulsive choice made in the midst of a major depressive episode.
In the aftermath of her death, Deacon Ed wrote an obituary about what happened so that there wouldn’t be any “gossip or speculating” in their parish or small town of Scranton, Pennsylvania. That obituary went viral, shocking Deacon Ed, but also teaching him a vital lesson. He said, “It spoke to what so many people with mental illnesses live with. The stigma, the discrimination, being defined by their illness…I was open that [Katie] had this illness, but she wasn’t defined by this illness, and she’s a beautiful child of God, loved by Jesus Christ…This viral response, for me, was almost a mystical experience, of so many people around the world saying that the Church needs…to start ministering to people that live with these illnesses and their families and their caregivers.”
This is especially important in light of the beliefs of some that mental illness can be prayed away with a stronger spiritual life. Deacon Ed noted, “This outdated notion that they have a mental illness because they don’t pray enough, that’s harmful…because people, often, with depression and anxiety, already the illness is telling them they’re not good enough. The illness tells them that they’re not worth living, that they’re a terrible mistake. So, to have someone heap on top of that by saying, ‘Well, you’re thinking that way because you don’t pray enough,’ that just makes things worse. So, I hope people stop thinking that way.”
To that end, Deacon Ed helped launch the Association of Catholic Mental Health Ministers, along with Bishop John Dolan from the Diocese of Phoenix, Arizona, who lost three siblings and a brother-in-law to suicide. They offer resources to parishes on ways to begin their own mental health ministries, as well as resources to individuals and families looking for prayers, community, books, and more.
“When Katie first experienced bipolar disorder,” recalled Deacon Ed, “we had no one to talk to. And to be honest with you, the last place I thought to go was the Church to talk about mental illness and what happened. Now we encourage parishes to have support groups for the parents and caregivers, where they can come in and talk about this. So often, people are isolated. They think they’re bad parents, [that] they did something wrong [because] their child had a mental illness…So we offer this online training program…It’s free. You can go to our website, [catholicmhm.org]…We offer other things on grief support after a suicide…So, I would encourage people, go to our website, take the training courses, and it’ll give you the confidence that you need to start this type of ministry in your parish.”
Lidia Celebrates Food, Family, and Faith
January 28
If you’ve tuned in to any of Lidia Bastianich’s cooking series on PBS over the past 25 years, you’ll know they are multi-generational affairs. Her grandchildren were always a presence, and remain so today. In addition, her mother Erminia, who passed away at age 100 in 2021, also frequently joined Lidia in the kitchen. Keeping her mom involved with the show was important to Lidia. During a “Christopher Closeup” interview, she said, “In today’s world, the grandma generation is left behind, and it’s such a loss for the children because grandparents have unconditional love…They have life experience to share. I feel strongly about…being together. It brings strength to everybody in the family.”
Those bonds of family were forged early for Lidia. The section of Italy in which she was born was given to communist Yugoslavia after World War II. As a result, the practice of the Catholic faith and private enterprise were outlawed. Lidia spent her formative years around her grandmother, Nonna Rosa, being around nature and learning to cook. And though they couldn’t go to church, Nonna Rosa taught Lidia to pray.
Because Lidia’s father ran a business, he was arrested and held for weeks by communist authorities. When he was released, the family knew it was time to escape from their native region. Lidia, her brother, and mother made it to Italy under the pretense of visiting a relative, while her father escaped through the woods. In his pocket, he carried a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus that his mother had given him before she died. He had a harrowing journey, but arrived safely.
Lidia’s family joined the many other refugees in Italy, looking to build a new life somewhere else. The situation was difficult, but Lidia was able to attend a school run by the Canossian Sisters. She recalled, “They took me in, taught me, but I also got a chance to work with them. They put me in the kitchen with the other nuns. I would help peel potatoes and whatever…It was in those two years that I got back into understanding the Catholic religion and the whole gospel.”
Catholic Charities brought Lidia’s family to the United States and set them up in an apartment. Neighbors from the Italian Catholic community also supported them. Lidia reflected, “We were amazed that after being forbidden to do many human things…[we were able] to be free…to go to church, to speak Italian, and to ultimately become part of this wonderful America.” Lidia’s gratitude toward the U.S. led to a series of PBS specials, called “Lidia Celebrates America.” One of its episodes, “Overcoming the Odds,” earned a Christopher Award in 2022. Lidia explained that she wanted to highlight the opportunities that the U.S. offers from an immigrant’s point of view, opportunities that led her to pursue her dreams of becoming a chef and restaurateur.
The new season of “Lidia’s Kitchen” is filled with recipes from her cookbook, “Lidia’s From Our Family Table to Yours.” It features four generations of her family’s favorite recipes. Lidia also continues to rely on her faith to get her through life’s highs and lows. She concluded, “I have my prayers, whether it’s at night or the rosary, but I talk to God. Whenever I’m in a situation [that’s] beautiful…I just talk to God and thank Him like I would talk to you. And when in difficulties, I talk to Him: please get me through…and get me where you want me to be…So, I do a lot of talking to God.”
A Eulogy for My Father
January 14, 2024
For most people, the new year is filled with the promise of new beginnings. But for those of us who lost loved ones during the holiday season, the mood can remain more melancholy. My father died the day after Thanksgiving. Despite his numerous medical issues, he had been stable for years, so his passing during a hospital stay that aimed to heal him felt sudden and unexpected.
About an hour before he died, I was holding his hand, praying to channel some of my strength into him, still hoping for a recovery. I snapped a photo of that moment because the imagery seemed poignant. After my father’s death, I posted that photo on social media, thinking maybe a few people who follow me would offer prayers. Surprisingly, the post went viral, with more than 400,000 views and 3,000 comments. In scanning the responses, I could see from people’s profiles that they came from across the political spectrum. Apparently, the one thing that unites a divided America is the loss of a parent we loved.
During my father’s wake, funeral, and the aftermath, it was heartening to hear from the many people whose lives he touched. His was not the kind of life that makes headlines, but it is the kind of life that keeps humanity on the right path from generation to generation.
I would describe my father using a phrase from one of his favorite movies: he was a quiet, peace-loving man. He was a great husband and father, worked at the same company for 40+ years, served in the Air Force for four years, and attended Mass every week. What stands out the most to me are the acts of love that he performed for so many people. He wouldn’t use the term “acts of love.” That would be too mushy for his tastes. But if anyone needed a ride somewhere or help with something, he was there, willing to lend a hand or an ear. He was a role model for me of doing for others. He never sat me down and told me how to live a good life. He just modeled that behavior, and I got the message.
Looking back, I know I inherited my love of sitcoms and westerns, and Archie and Peanuts comics, from him. And I relish the times he and I spent together. The last several years have not been easy in light of my mother’s dementia, but he served as my companion in caregiving the whole time.
I’ll close with another movie reference. My father had true grit. He faced near-death situations numerous times: from his quadruple bypass, to internal bleeding, to a near-fatal case of pancreatitis. Most of the time, if you asked him if he was in pain, he would respond, “It’s manageable.” That line became a running joke between us. And if he did actually complain about something, I knew it was serious.
All those times, he beat the odds. But this time was too much for him. It’s ironic that it was his heart that gave out because he had one of the biggest hearts of anyone I know. The grief over missing his presence in my life remains, but I know I will carry my father, his love and good example, in my heart for the rest of my days, until we meet again. And when I get to those pearly gates someday, I hope he’s there to meet me in his old blue station wagon to give me a ride in.
Creating a Brighter 2024
DECEMBER 31
As 2023 comes to a close and another new year begins, our minds often turn to resolutions and ways to improve ourselves and our lives. While we usually approach these commitments from a physical perspective (losing weight, exercising more), there are also spiritual, mental, and emotional resolutions we can make that can lead us to a brighter future.
For instance, many of us carry a lot of baggage around. Not the physical kind, but old resentments, fears, or disappointments that drag us down, sapping our joy. Wouldn’t it be great to let those burdens go? Well, actress and humanitarian Jennifer Garner has an idea to help you do just that. During an interview with Allure magazine, she recalled a sermon that she and her family heard in their church when she was a child: “Our minister talked about taking something hard that had happened and imagining yourself going down to the banks of the river and fashioning a beautiful box out of what you find there, placing this hurt carefully in the box, and watching it float down the river. The power of letting go. Don’t carry it. Just let it go.”
Garner concluded, “So many times, my sisters and I have said, ‘You need to put that in the river.’”
As the new year approaches, consider putting your old hurts in a metaphorical box and sending them down the river. It’s the perfect time for a fresh start full of hope and promise.
Maybe you want to start the new year with a greater focus on gratitude. After all, it’s a sad truth that many of us don’t realize what we have until we lose it. But Father Luigi Maria Epicoco believes that it shouldn’t be that way. Writing for the website Aleteia, he explained: “People who are in good health don’t appreciate it until they get sick. People who have food every day don’t notice the importance of food until they’re hungry.”
Father Luigi continued, “Why do we have to wait until we’ve a bad experience in order to take seriously the good things that are present in our lives? Having a life of faith means not waiting for a tragedy to decide to be better people. Having faith means not seeing God, but seeing all the good that He puts into our lives in a hidden way, and living with a life-changing gratitude that makes us better people.”
Living with gratitude is also a way to become happier—and happiness was the theme of a story that was shared frequently on social media recently. It read: “A professor gave a balloon to every student in his class to write their name on. Then, he asked them to throw it in the hallway. The students were given five minutes to find their own balloon, but no one was able to do so.
“The professor then told the students to take the first balloon they found and hand it to the person whose name was written on it. Within five minutes, everyone had their own balloon. Finally, the professor said to the students, ‘These balloons are like happiness. We will never find it if everyone is looking for their own. But if we care about other people’s happiness, we will find ours, too.’”
One final thought. You probably know The Christophers’ motto is, “It’s better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.” That’s a wise philosophy to adopt at any time of year.
Wishing a happy and healthy 2024 to you all!
A Santa Who Emulates Christ
Dec 24
Christmas Eve is the night that children eagerly await the arrival of Santa Claus. And if your kids or grandkids have been out and about during the month of December, they’ve likely encountered one of Santa’s many helpers at shopping malls or Christmas parties. Sometimes, the birth of Jesus can get lost in the Santa excitement. But that was never the case with former Marine Ed Butchart, whose legacy of love and caring continues to this day.
It all started the day that Butchart helped a friend with cerebral palsy change a light bulb in his home. That act of kindness sparked a desire in Butchart to do more good, so in 1986, he left his job as a salesman to create an organization called Friends of Disabled Adults and Children (FODAC), which provides free or low-cost wheelchairs and other equipment or services to those with disabilities. As reported by Christianity Today, Butchart went on to become an ordained minister. When members of his church noticed that both his waistline and features resembled those of Santa Claus, they asked him to play the role for a Christmas program. He soon received requests to do the same in other venues throughout the Atlanta area.
At one event, he noticed an adult woman bouncing excitedly in line to see him. When she reached him, he realized she was mentally challenged. The woman’s mother told him, “You don’t have to mess with her. She…ain’t never been right.” Butchart responded, “She is also a child of God, and He loves her as much as He does any of His children, and so does Santa.”
On another occasion, Butchart, as Santa, spotted a mother pushing a wheelchair with her four-year-old daughter, who suffered from multiple disabilities. He waved them over and treated the girl with loving tenderness. In addition, he noticed a problem with the wheelchair, so he told the mother to take it to Friends of Disabled Adults and Children for free fixing.
When the mother went there the next day, she was surprised to see Butchart and Santa were one and the same. She also revealed that the previous year’s Santa looked at her daughter and said, “I’m not about to touch that kid.” Butchart was horrified and vowed to always live up to Santa’s image.
Through his work with Friends of Disabled Adults and Children, Ed Butchart “has given equipment to more than 30,000 disabled people in 51 countries and 35 states,” reports Christianity Today. He also sees a divine side to his work as his alter ego, noting, “Santa Claus is a good place for [children] to learn about the unconditional love they will eventually understand comes from Christ.”
When those children ask Butchart questions about how reindeer can fly and Santa can come down chimneys, he shares some insights with them that are valuable for people of any age: “On Christmas night, many years ago, God proved how much He loved the world when He sent us Jesus. And later, Jesus proved how much He loves us when He died on the cross. So that night, when God gave us Jesus, all the love in the world came together in an explosion of power. It’s the most powerful night in the world. The power that explodes is God's love. That’s when wonderful things happen. Reindeer can fly, and Santa can go down chimneys…[And] by being somebody’s Santa Claus, you’re emulating Christ.”
Advent’s Pilgrimage of Light
December 3
When Sister Ave Clark was a special education teacher, her students made her an Advent wreath. Only it wasn’t round like the store-bought ones. It was noticeably crooked. Sister Ave still uses that wreath all these years later. Why? Because, as one student told her, “It’s not perfect, but it sure was made with love.”
In her latest book “Advent ~ Christmas: A Pilgrimage of Light,” Sister Ave looks at ways that each of us, imperfect as we are, can help the light of God’s love be born again in our hearts during the four weeks of Advent. During a “Christopher Closeup” interview, she noted that the candles on our Advent wreaths represent hope, peace, joy, love, and, ultimately, Jesus: “Make time each day to take that pause and to feel the light within so that we [can] carry it better into the world.”
Taking a pause might seem difficult in a season of shopping and parties, but Sister Ave sees opportunities for stillness everywhere. She said, “You can be still at a red light in the car...Just say, ‘Lord, thank You for this moment.’ Stillness can happen in a shopping market, when you’re waiting on line. Stillness can happen at home when you carve out 10 to 15 minutes. But stillness isn’t just sitting in a chair. It can be taking a walk, looking out your window. It could also be listening to somebody on the phone telling you some good news—or some news they’re asking for prayer [for]. Stillness comes in a variety of ways.”
Sister Ave relishes the moments when God shows up in unexpected people and circumstances. She also admits that seeing God in times of darkness takes effort. That was the case when her car was hit by a runaway train 20 years ago, and she endured a year of recovery and rehabilitation. She reflected, “Do I wish it didn’t happen? Yes. But it brought different lights into my life: of understanding pain and having to adapt your life in a way you never thought you would...I said, ‘I wonder what God wants me to learn along this way?’ I remember my first Christmas after that accident, not being able to go to shops. I said, ‘You know what? A phone call to somebody means a lot. A little note means a lot.’ Maybe the best gift we could give each other is that light of caring: the kind word, the extra listening, the forgiving, too.”
Sister Ave has a special place in her heart for those who are infirm or homebound, especially her fellow Dominican sisters. Several of them are now in their 90s and 100s, living in Amityville, NY. “They used to be principals, nurses, college teachers, religious ed,” she explained. “Now, they’re sitting in their rooms.” After receiving “Advent ~ Christmas: A Pilgrimage of Light,” the sisters were taken by a quote on the back cover: “How will you be a Christ-bearer of the holy lights of Advent ~ Christmas time?” They decided to read the book as a group, reflect on its questions, and share the answers in prayer. In other words, even though they aren’t physically active, they remain spiritually active.
Sister Ave observed, “My Dominican sisters are the light of love...Christ took on humanity so that we would know God’s love. So, we have to take on each other’s humanity, the glory of it, and sometimes the frailty of it...God holds up each person’s humanity, and that’s the wonderful gift of the baby in the manger.”
Sister Caroline Tweedy Feeds Bodies and Souls
November 19
People who struggle with homelessness, poverty, or food insecurity can be thankful for Sister Caroline Tweedy, RSM. In fact, even those of us who have a roof over our heads and food on our tables should be grateful that this Sister of Mercy reflects the best of Catholicism to all those around her. As the Executive Director of the St. John’s Bread and Life food pantry program, Sister Caroline and her team provide four and a half million meals a year to 25 communities in Brooklyn and Queens, New York.
From where does this selflessness come? During a “Christopher Closeup” interview, Sister Caroline recalled her family teaching her, “As a Christian, your mission in life is to do good. Whatever road that takes you down, everybody has something to offer.” In addition, she helped out in her grandmother’s restaurant and bakery. Sister Caroline told me, “At the end of the day, my grandmother would give whatever was left to whoever was there, whoever needed it. She never turned anybody away.” (St. John’s Bread and Life has never turned anyone away either.)
Though her first reaction to someone suggesting she join the Sisters of Mercy was, “Oh no, I’ve got other fish to fry,” the idea became more appealing because of the order’s mission, work, and the idea of living in community. Sister Caroline went on to hold various jobs at Mercy Home for Children, which cares for developmentally disabled children and adults, both in residential programs and respite care programs. It was a life-changing experience that allowed her to view the world through God’s eyes. She said, “You see the face of God in those that are most fragile, those who don’t have a voice. You become their voice. You take a stand for them.”
That experience proved to be the perfect foundation for Sister Caroline’s current work at St. John’s Bread and Life. Not only do they provide hot meals to those who need them, they have a state-of-the-art digital food pantry, which gives people a sense of being able to shop for what they want instead of simply being handed a bag of food.
When we refer to “the poor” or “the homeless,” we can depersonalize these groups of people. But Sister Caroline and her team are meeting them face-to-face as children of God. She explained, “You are putting a face on someone who is in need of a service, who might be in crisis. And when you look at that person, you see the face of God. If you’re doing this work, that’s really what we’re doing. You can learn about…religious life and service in the Church by reading it or watching somebody else. But until you actually have that interaction with folks and you see progress, that’s when you’ve made a significant difference. For all of us, it’s very important to have that one-to-one relationship. We could walk through the neighborhood, and everybody knows who you are.”
Out of St. John’s Bread and Life’s 35 staff members, 10 are former clients who were able to get back on their feet with the assistance of the program, which also includes counseling on government benefits that can help them through a hard time. And food for the soul is always available to the guests who come there through the compassionate interactions of the staff. Sister Caroline concluded, “For me, personally, I think the greatest gift is to know that you’ve helped someone.”
What We Remember Will Be Saved
November 5, 2023
In August 2014, the terrorist group ISIS attacked the Iraqi city of Qaraqosh, leading more than 40,000 people, many of them Syriac Catholics, to flee their homes and country. They became part of a larger exodus of refugees fleeing wars in Syria and Iraq, desperate to find safety for themselves and their families. Author Stephanie Saldaña, a Syriac Catholic herself, has now collected the stories of several of these refugees who managed to take small pieces of their homelands with them as they embarked on their journeys of survival. Her book is called “What We Remember Will Be Saved,” and we discussed it recently on “Christopher Closeup.”
In 2004, Texas-born Stephanie moved to Syria to study as a Fulbright Scholar. She learned Arabic, met the man who would become her husband, and made many Christian and Muslim friends. When Syria’s civil war broke out in 2011, she was no longer living in the country, but knew many people who were. And in 2014, she empathized with the plight of Iraq’s Syriac Catholics who fled their homes. Stephanie traveled to Amman, Jordan, where many of them had resettled, and attended a Mass, where she was moved by the beauty of the choir singing in their homeland’s language of Syriac, “a liturgical form of Aramaic.”
Afterwards, Stephanie met many refugees, including Hana, who had created a dress unlike any that Stephanie had ever seen. Hana had extensively embroidered Qaraqosh’s history, traditions, and people into an article of clothing that could have hung in a museum as a work of art. Stephanie explained, “For [Hana], this is a dress for her, but also…for her town, for her family. It’s an act of memory. ISIS was engaged in the project of destroying memory, intentionally targeting religious shrines of Muslims, Christians, Yazidis. So, the people who were affected set out on this incredible act of…resistance…of saying, ‘You don’t have the power of destroying our memories, of destroying our pasts.’”
Though it would be understandable if the refugees in “What We Remember Will Be Saved” might lose their faith in God because of the horrors they endured, the opposite is true. The Syriac Catholics find comfort and unity in their faith. Others, such as Syrian pharmacists Adnan and Gharir, who are Muslim, put their trust in God. And Qassem, who is Yazidi, “talks about the power of preparing his prayer of offering himself for others.”
Another aspect of Middle Eastern life featured in the book is the prominence of interfaith friendships. Stephanie noted, “I have lived in the Middle East for nearly two decades, and that’s certainly a deep part of my life: my relationships with people of other faiths, how we take care of each other during holidays, how we give each other gifts.” As an example, Stephanie recalled meeting Munir, a Muslim, in the refugee camp Moria in Greece: “He lived in a mixed neighborhood in Mosul: Muslim and Christian. He tells the story of how Christians in his neighborhood were targeted beginning in 2003, and how he went systematically and protected his neighbors.”
Despite the horrors of war and genocide in “What We Remember Will Be Saved,” Stephanie believes it is ultimately a hopeful book filled with “extraordinary human beings” who have managed “to remain good and to remain kind and to love…I hope [readers will] come to see refugees not as victims or as threats, but as gifts, as people who have a lot to teach us.”
Be a Blessing from the Lord
October 29
Jesus told us that the two greatest commandments are to love God and love our neighbor. In today’s world, we often seem to fall short on both counts. It’s almost as if we need daily reminders to get in touch with the “better angels of our nature,” to use Abraham Lincoln’s term. While there are various ways to do this, I’d like to add one more to the mix: Volume 58 of The Christophers’ annual “Three Minutes a Day” book, which features stories, Scripture verses, and short prayers for each day of the year.
What kinds of stories are featured in the book? Here is one example: In 2021, Gean LeVar of Glendale, Arizona, lost her husband of 58 years when he passed away in their home. To make matters worse, the police—after entering the house and seeing how unlivable the conditions were—had no choice but to condemn it. Gean lost her husband and home all in the same day, and she had no family members to help her.
That’s when her neighbor, Carmen Silva—who barely knew Gean at the time—stepped in. As reported by CBS News, Carmen told Gean, “Don’t worry…We’re going to fix it.” Carmen invited Gean to live in her home. Although Carmen’s small, three-bedroom house with eight children was already full, the family eagerly made room for one more, treating Gean like an “adopted grandmother.” Carmen explained, “I’ve always taught my kids to take care of their elders.”
In another expression of neighborly kindness, the nonprofit group Operation Enduring Gratitude, which helps Arizona veterans and their families, heard Gean’s story and rebuilt her house, making it livable once more. Gean now plans to share her new home with her adopted family. The Scripture verse that goes along with this story is the obvious choice: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
The actions of Carmen toward Gean reflect a divine selflessness that each of us can choose as well. Or, we can emulate the generosity of someone like the subject of this other “Three Minutes a Day” story: For approximately 10 years, on the first of every month, Alabama farmer Hody Childress secretly performed a good deed. He would walk into Geraldine Drugs, a pharmacy in his DeKalb County community, and give a folded up $100 bill to owner Brooke Walker. His instructions? Use the money to help people who couldn’t afford their prescriptions. And if anyone asked where the money came from, he told her to say, “It’s a blessing from the Lord.”
When Childress began experiencing medical problems, he sent a relative to deliver the money to Walker, never telling the relative what exactly it was meant for. His acts of kindness were only revealed after Childress passed away at age 80 in 2023. Walker told AL.com that she used the money “to help children needing Epi-Pens for allergic reactions, families in between insurance coverages, and people just leaving the hospital.” Childress’s family and friends are working to establish a fund in his name to continue the practice.
Each of us can be “a blessing from the Lord” for others. Of course, sometimes we need blessings ourselves, and “Three Minutes a Day” also contains numerous stories about people dealing with the challenges and tragedies of life with help from their faith.
The Gift of Aging
October 22
Marcy Cottrell Houle spent many years caring for her aging parents as they endured numerous health problems. But it wasn’t until recently that an accident brought her face to face with the reality that she was getting older herself—and in order to do so with a minimum of complications, she needed to prepare herself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. That epiphany set Marcy on a path to research and co-author a follow-up book to her Christopher Award-winning “The Gift of Caring.” This latest work is titled “The Gift of Aging,” and we discussed it recently on “Christopher Closeup.”
Several years ago, while rushing from the Kroger’s parking lot towards the store’s entrance, Marcy tripped on a drainage gate and broke both her arms. This left her virtually helpless for several months, unable to do things like cut her food or tie her shoelaces. Thankfully, Marcy’s husband was able to take time off work to care for her, but the experience left her depressed. That led her to contemplate the infirmities many people face as they get older—and whether there were ways to stay healthy. She approached her “Gift of Caring” co-author, Dr. Elizabeth Eckstrom, who agreed this was a topic rife for exploration.
In meeting people who still thrived in their 80s, 90s, and even 100s, Marcy learned that a key factor to aging well is having a sense of purpose. While retirement and having fun sound appealing, human beings need more in order to thrive. “People who are doing the best,” Marcy said, “they’re the ones who are not just living for themselves. They’re living for the people coming after us, and they recognize our earth is hurting and people are hurting. You can find such joy if you get out of yourself a little bit, get out of your aches and pains and say, ‘How can I make life a little better for someone else?’”
One example is 97-year-old Rabbi Josh Stampfer. When Marcy met him, he was in a wheelchair, accompanied by a caregiver. Rabbi Stampfer had spent his life helping Jewish people suffering in countries such as Russia and China. He had lost his wife in recent years and obviously suffered from some health issues. Yet he also still worked as a teacher and gave sermons on the radio. How did he accomplish all this at 97? He said he had learned that life needs a higher goal than joy.
Quoting Rabbi Stampfer, Marcy said, “In all of us, there is an innate need for happiness, but happiness is not just based on good health. Not everyone has that…What I have found…[is that] the way to be happy is to be good…When people do a good deed for others, they enjoy life more…Bringing happiness to others is the quickest way to have it yourself.”
Another factor shared by many of Marcy’s interview subjects is the practice of faith, which offers guidance to people in general and helps them move through life’s most difficult seasons. As an example, Marcy quotes the words of 102-year-old Lucille, who offered this bit of wisdom: “Remember, death itself is just another phase of life. I’ve been lucky. I’ve enjoyed a long-lasting faith that provides a supportive community and a guide. I’m not sure what follows this precious life on earth, but my faith gives me not fear but a grand sense of wonder about it. In life and death, we have only to do one thing: simply let love in.”
Cancer, Creation, and the ‘Waiting Rosary’
10-8-23
In early 2023, when author Lisa Hendey should have been celebrating the publication of her latest children’s book, she was met with troubling news: a diagnosis of stage 3 breast cancer. The following months brought both physically draining treatment and spiritual support. With the worst now behind her, Lisa is promoting her book about caring for God’s creation, titled “I Am Earth’s Keeper,” as well as sharing her cancer journey.
After a bout with breast cancer 15 years ago, Lisa has been devoted to self-exams every month. While doing one recently, she didn’t feel any lumps, but something looked amiss. Her instincts told her to check things out, even though she wasn’t due for a mammogram for several months. The mammogram didn’t reveal any problems, but an MRI did: invasive lobular cancer, which spreads on a cellular level. “By the point that we intervened,” Lisa told me, “it was quite large, and I ended up having a double mastectomy, reconstruction, and radiation...So it was really good that I listened to my gut on this.”
Lisa’s recovery was painful and slow. She will take medication for the next five years. Thankfully, she had tremendous support throughout her ordeal, support which included the Paulist priests at her Los Angeles parish providing her with Anointing of the Sick, Confession, and prayers. Lisa added, “One of the most beautiful spiritual moments following surgery was to have my husband [Greg]…[bring] the Eucharist home to me. He was commissioned as an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion. I cried big, fat, happy tears to have my husband bring me the body of Christ.”
There were times Lisa could barely muster the strength to pray. But she felt the intercessory prayers of others giving her strength. And when she was able to pray herself, the rosary was her choice. Lisa said, “If you’re undergoing the kind of radiation treatment that I had…every day you’re in the same place surrounded by people who are very ill...I decided…to use that time praying for my fellow patients. I started praying what I would call a ‘waiting rosary.’ I would count 10 heads in the waiting room and intentionally try to…pray in that moment for their intentions.”
With the hardest parts of treatment behind her, Lisa is focused on “I Am Earth’s Keeper,” which was illustrated by Giuliano Ferri. It finds its inspiration in St. Francis of Assisi's “Canticle of Brother Sun and Sister Moon,” Pope Francis’s call to care for God’s creation, and a photo taken by Lisa’s friend in Mississippi. “One morning, [he] was out on the pond near his house,” she said. “It was at sunrise, he took this beautiful photo where the sun or the sky was reflected in the stillness of the water...He shared it on Facebook and said, is the sky up or down? Something about that photo and the majesty of that moment jumped into my heart. That day, I sat and wrote the poem that would eventually become this book.”
Everything she has endured this past year instilled Lisa with a deeper appreciation for St. Francis’s view of the world. She concluded, “St. Francis...reminds us that the natural creation around us is not just put there for us to use at our will, but that we’re called to live in union with everything around us. One of the gifts of being called to slow down because of illness is that it caused me to stop and see the little details that, perhaps in my haste, I may have been missing.”
Called to Put Beauty into the World
9-24-23
In her career, Sarah Hart has written and recorded thousands of songs for worship, for liturgy, and for Christian music stars such as Amy Grant and Matt Maher. Her work and her worldview are so imbued with the spirit of God that she relates most to St. Catherine of Siena who, at the age of seven, told her mother, “I see God in all things and all things in God.”
The seeds of Sarah’s faith were planted during her childhood. During a “Christopher Closeup” interview, she recalled, “Vatican II was new, and there was folk mass and community. I grew up in southeastern Ohio, and there were potlucks and people who gathered to sing and to pray, so I grew up a very free spirit in the church. My experience of faith as a child was that I was deeply loved and that there was freedom in faith and beauty in faith.”
Even the best church experiences, however, don’t prevent someone from questioning and wandering as they get older. When she went to college, Sarah wanted nothing more to do with “church,” until she later found a non-denominational fellowship that she stayed with during her young adult years and where she met the man who would become her husband. A few years into their marriage, Sarah felt called back to the Catholic Church and has chosen to serve God through her music.
Sarah believes God used her time away from the Church to make her better. She explained, “There are things that all of us have to learn from other faiths, other religions, other cultures, and other peoples. So, I really bless that time because I learned so much, and it made me embrace my faith all the more when I came back.”
One of Sarah’s strong points is that she doesn’t view the sacred and the secular as separate. She cites Thomas Merton’s experience on a street corner in Louisville when he suddenly saw clearly “the face of Christ in all people, and how all things are interconnected.” In our polarized world, Sarah hopes more people have this kind of revelation, and she hopes her music can enlighten others in this respect. She said, “Everybody has this universal sense of sadness, happiness, joy, sorrow, of everything in between…All I want to do is put beauty in the world…And that is how we all can help God…Whatever we choose to do in our lives, we can choose beauty and good and kindness and light and mercy. To do anything less, I think, is to do a disservice to the Lord.”
Sarah’s latest way of bringing beauty into the world is through the devotional booklet “How Sweet the Sound: Lyrical Reflections Based on Amazing Grace.” Her first reflection involves listening for the sound of grace in our lives. It’s something we all must learn to do based on our individual circumstances. “Because of the busyness [of my life],” she said, “I’ve learned to adjust my prayer life and my conversations with God accordingly. My life doesn’t afford me [time] to go to the adoration chapel every day. What I’ve learned to do is, tend to the adoration chapel in my heart, and take moments throughout the day where I’m talking out loud to God, or God is whispering to my heart. I’ll say that at this age in my life, I’ve never been more comfortable with God. I’ve never felt like we’ve had a sweeter or a better relationship than right now.”
Luke Russert Finds Healing in Communion of Saints
August 27, 2023
Eight years after his father Tim Russert’s death in 2008, broadcast journalist Luke Russert still had not processed his own grief at this tremendous loss. So, he took to traveling around the world on a quest to discover who he was apart from his father. As he shared during a “Christopher Closeup” interview about his memoir “Look for Me There,” Luke experienced numerous spiritual epiphanies along the way. For instance, he became more aware of how God was working in his life because he started to pay closer attention to the people and signs around him.
During his journeys, Luke also came to a new appreciation of his Catholic faith, experiencing elements of it like never before, especially pertaining to the communion of saints. A friend suggested to Luke that he could still talk to his father, even though he wasn’t physically here anymore. That sounded odd to Luke at first. Eventually, he said, “I got to a place of a deep, meditative peace through prayer and understanding that you can communicate with your lost loved ones. You can have these deeply spiritual, impactful meditative sessions where you can imagine conversations…There’s a real component of that in the communion of saints, and there’s a reason why it’s so prevalent in our faith.”
Luke’s travels did not just bring spiritual epiphanies, but ones about humanity and the world in general.
While it might seem Pollyanna-ish to say we are more alike than we are different, his experiences confirmed that belief. Luke said, “I traveled to over 67 places, and I didn’t have any bad experiences…And I went to places where America, at least in their government stance, is not an ally. It’s not liked…You’re always going to run into mean people…But I would say the vast majority, all they’re looking for is a semblance of respect. If you give off respect and kindness, it’ll come back to you. I’ve lived it and I’ve seen it.”
In light of his travel experiences, Luke has discovered the peace he was looking for by finally coming to terms with the loss of his father. He knows that Tim’s message to him would be akin to, “Don’t be angry. Do good. Live life to the best of your abilities. Be happy. Don’t be sad. And go forward living.”
“It took me a long time to get there,” Luke noted, “because [I] felt like I had to ask permission to be my own person and not directly fall into his footsteps. But what I realized after a lot of prayer and meditation and an epiphany in the Holy Land was [that] our lost loved ones would not want us mourning them all the time, especially now, 15 years after my father passed.”
Luke hopes that people who read “Look for Me There” find similar hope in processing their own grief or struggles. He concluded, “Your grief journey is your own. There’s no perfect way to go about it…You may never move on, but you can move forward…We reach crossroads in our lives where we’re trying to figure out, ‘What’s the best path for me? Maybe I need a minute to sit back and try to understand things.’ It’s okay to do that. Make that time for yourself, and make that time for prayer, for meditative prayer and thinking. So, my goal through all of it is that if folks can read the two parallel themes of self-discovery and processing grief, they come out of it feeling a little less lost.”
Luke Russert’s Road Through Grief
August 20, 2023
Two days before NBC News legend Tim Russert’s death in 2008, he was on vacation at the Vatican with his wife, writer Maureen Orth, and son, Luke. They attended a prayer service with Pope Benedict XVI before Tim returned to the U.S. for work, while Maureen and Luke remained in Rome. That’s where they received the tragic news about Tim’s fatal cardiac arrest. Because Tim was a public person, Luke had the eyes of the country on him as he experienced his own grief. That had its positives and negatives, he recalled during an interview on “Christopher Closeup” about his memoir “Look for Me There: Grieving My Father, Finding Myself.”
For instance, Tim’s wake in Washington, D.C. drew thousands of mourners. “It had the full ensemble of the American quilt,” Luke said, “meaning President Bush stopped by, as well as the short order cook who is an immigrant from Sierra Leone from the diner near NBC. It was a beautiful thing to witness.”
Luke ended up staying at the wake for nine hours to shake everybody’s hand. He said, “I felt…I was bringing comfort to people. But then, I was also getting some strength from people as they walked through.” Looking back on that period, Luke realizes he was being strong for others, but he never processed his own grief. He took a job with NBC News shortly thereafter, partially because it helped him stay connected to his father. It wasn’t until Luke had an unexpected encounter eight years later that he reconsidered what he was doing.
One day, Luke got called in to meet with the Jesuit-educated Speaker of the House, John Boehner. Luke thought he was going to get chewed out for some negative coverage, but instead Boehner told him, “You’re doing a great job, but you could do this job in your sleep. I’ve seen people that are here 20, 30, 40 years in the cycle that is American politics…There’s always the next election, a bill that has to be done, banquets to attend…You might benefit from having some time to learn a new skill or get out of Washington to see how the rest of the country lives, the rest of the world lives. Just do something that affirms that you actually want to be here for the long term and [that this] is the right decision for you.”
Boehner’s observations became a major eye opener for Luke, who said, “I believe that God has messengers out there. And I think in that case, [Speaker Boehner]…[offered] worthwhile advice, and it ended up being a catalyst for me to do some self-evaluation and decide that maybe I needed to take a step away to figure out, who am I independent of all this and what am I about?”
Luke decided to travel around the world, mostly by himself, on a voyage of self-discovery. Though he believes in the power of community, he compared his need for aloneness to “retreats in our own Catholic faith, especially silent retreats. Or Jesus, 40 days and 40 nights…There is something to be said about taking a moment for yourself, whether it’s meditative or just being off of social media…and being perceptive, thinking about what the Jesuit Examen [says]: What did I do well today? What did I do bad today? What did I learn today? Where do I see myself fitting in today?”
Those questions led Luke to some spiritual epiphanies and revelations about life.
A Renewed Practice of Sabbath
July 23, 2023
When we look at religious history, God introduced the concept of Sabbath to humanity thousands of years ago in the 10 Commandments, telling us we need to set aside one day a week to disconnect from our work and instead to connect with our deeper selves, our families and friends, and with God himself. It’s a practice many have let slip away, but it’s one we need to look at with renewed interest in light of our stressful, always-achieving, constantly-tech-connected lives today. Christopher Award-winning documentarian Martin Doblmeier explores that topic in his latest film, “Sabbath,” which is available to view for free at JourneyFilms.com and on various PBS stations.
In the film, Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, the senior rabbi of Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York City, calls Sabbath—or Shabbat—a “revolutionary concept” introduced to the world by the Jewish people. During a “Christopher Closeup” interview, Doblmeier explained, “If you go back 3,000 years, there was no sense of a rhythm [to life], a day off. It was the first time in human history that there was a mandated day off. And in the Hebrew tradition, the Shabbat is the day of rest. That, in some ways, transformed humanity.”
Doblmeier joined a Jewish family for its celebration of the Shabbat meal on a Friday evening, which begins with the lighting of candles. He notes that the atmosphere in the room changed immediately afterwards to one of peace, rest, and putting worldly cares out of everyone’s mind. Civil rights activist Abraham Heschel’s daughter reveals a similar family tradition, noting that her father never discussed politics on Shabbat. Doblmeier observed, “I thought that was refreshing because it’s one thing to say, ‘I’m not going to go to work today, but I’m still going to talk all day long about the culture wars.’…Not just the body, not just the mind, but the soul in some way needs that relaxation, to stop for 24 hours and say, ‘I’m not going to think about these kinds of things because they infuriate me…Today is my day of disengagement. I owe it to myself and I owe it to God.'”
Doblmeier also wondered what it would be like to practice Sabbath in a place already removed from the wider world and focused on prayer. That’s why he visited the Trappist monastery St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts. The monks, grounded in the concept of “Ora et labora” (prayer and work), labor on the land to produce the crops they need to make the jams and beers they sell. They also pray seven times a day every day. So what makes they’re celebration of Sabbath special?
“St. Benedict, 1,500 years ago, gave a prescription for what Sabbath was supposed to be like for the monks,” said Doblmeier. “Not only did he want the brothers to stop work for that particular day, but he also wanted them to study, to actually use the time for sacred reading….Lectio Divina, sacred reading, winds up being the focal point of why monasteries going back centuries were the place of education. The rest of the world was not literate, monks were literate. And why was that? That was because they had the insistence of St. Benedict that Sabbath in particular was the day that was set aside for sacred reading. You have to learn to read and then you have to be able to share that with others. So, it gave us another dimension to the whole Sabbath story.”
Celebrating Family Life and Guardian Angels
July 9, 2023
Though Kathleen Davis and Gary Jansen each tell different stories in their respective Christopher Award-winning children’s books “Feathers From Above” and “Remember Us with Smiles,” the one common theme is love. Kathleen explores the love of God that gave us each a guardian angel, while Gary (and his wife and co-author Grace) reflect on the profound love of family. Both authors joined me recently on “Christopher Closeup.”
Real life served as Kathleen’s inspiration for “Feathers From Above” when her four-year-old daughter started finding feathers in the house or outside and saying, “Mom, look, my angel must be nearby.” Though Kathleen had taught her children that God gave them guardian angels, she had never said that angels leave feathers as their calling cards. Her daughter came up with that idea all by herself. Kathleen said, “She would have different colored [feathers], and we would talk about them…We did it so often that I thought, ‘What a beautiful message that she has and what beautiful imagery it’s creating.’ I wanted other children to understand that [they] have an angel.”
For Gary, a father of two, “Remember Us with Smiles” began as a love letter to his wife Grace that recalled some of their memorable experiences as a family. The couple realized that it could be reworked into a children’s book, focusing on the extraordinary ordinary experiences of family and spending time together. This was especially important to Gary, who revealed that while his parents were wonderful people and hard workers, there was a lot of “brokenness” in his family when he was growing up. Creating fun and memorable experiences with his kids became one of his goals as a dad. He noted, “We all have plenty of bad memories we can focus on, but accentuating the positive and looking back—for me and for our family too—is a deeply spiritual experience.”
The spirituality in “Remember Us with Smiles” is implicit rather than overt. Gary explained, “Years ago, a friend invited me to go on an Ignatian retreat, and I didn’t know anything about St. Ignatius. I grew up Catholic and went to Catholic school but…faith wasn’t a big part of my life...[On that retreat], I got my first introduction to St. Ignatius and this idea of finding God in all things…So, there isn’t religion in the book per se, but each spread has a deliberate spiritual idea behind it.”
The faith element of “Feathers From Above” is more obvious, but it also introduces children to a complex idea in an age-appropriate way. Specifically, it points out that having a guardian angel doesn’t mean that nothing bad will ever happen. Kathleen said, “I know most people who have had anything terrible happen to them grapple with that.…Why would God let this awful thing happen? Kids, I’m sure, also are wondering this…I wanted [the book] to be honest and true to life. I believe that God doesn’t stop bad things from happening. God helps you when those bad things happen.”
Regarding his hopes for children and families that read “Remember Us with Smiles,” Gary said, “We want the book to open people’s hearts and for them to have an emotional experience and connect with the people that they love.” Kathleen’s goal with “Feathers From Above” also revolves around love. She concluded, “My hope is that kids will realize that they’re not alone in life, that there is somebody who is with them and they are loved…Life is going to be hard, but God is with you.”
Tony Rossi, Director of Communications, The Christophers
June 18, 2023
Dad Improves Inclusion of Special Needs Children
This Father’s Day weekend is the perfect time to remember 96-year-old baseball great Carl Erskine, a dad who improved this country for special needs children. Erskine had already modeled a humble Christian life by the time he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1940s, become a close friend of Jackie Robinson, and promoted more racial inclusion in baseball. But there was another chapter of Carl’s life waiting to be written, a chapter chronicled by filmmaker Ted Green in his Christopher Award-winning documentary “The Best We’ve Got.”
On April 1, 1960, Carl’s wife Betty gave birth to their son Jimmy, who had Down syndrome. This was not a welcoming era for people with intellectual challenges. During a “Christopher Closeup” interview, Ted explained that the Industrial Revolution led to factories being built and competition becoming king. Anyone who couldn’t keep up was blamed for pulling society down. That attitude led to the eugenics movement, which said people with intellectual disabilities “need to be eliminated or not allowed to have children. Otherwise, they’ll be like bad cattle who infect the herd.” Eugenics became popular and gained support from the highest levels of government. In 1907, Carl’s home state of Indiana passed the country’s first compulsory sterilization law for people with intellectual disabilities, and other states soon followed suit.
The eugenics movement in the United States lost steam during World War II because it was similar to what the Nazis were doing. However, that’s when parents were told they should institutionalize their “defective” children (the term used at the time) so their family wouldn’t be held back from an affluent lifestyle. “That is what the doctors were saying to everybody,” explained Ted. “That is what they said to Carl and Betty.”
But the Erskines pushed back. When Betty’s doctor suggested sending Jimmy to an institution, she responded, “No way. I’ve been carrying this guy for nine months, and he’s coming home with me.” Carl and Betty were not the first to make this choice. They became part of what was called “The Parents’ Movement,” in which moms and dads raised their own disabled children, highlighting that the best treatment for them is love and respect.
The Erskines, however, took it a step further by taking Jimmy everywhere they went and building a community with other families of children with disabilities. Both Special Olympics of Indiana and The Arc of Indiana cite Carl and Betty as being at the epicenter of improving inclusion of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
When Jimmy was born, doctors predicted he would only live to age 35. Well, Jimmy turned 63 a few weeks ago. He worked at Applebee’s for 20 years, competed in Special Olympics for 50 years, and has even moved out of his parent’s home to live by himself (with some outside assistance). He is living a rich and full life, thanks to his parents.
Regarding the totality of Carl’s life, Ted believes he is worthy of the term “hero.” And he believes Carl’s is the best kind of heroism because it is attainable by anyone. “You don’t need to be able to dunk a basketball or memorize Beethoven’s fifth,” Ted concluded. “We all have it in us to put others first and to look out for others ahead of ourselves.” To view “The Best We’ve Got: The Carl Erskine Story,” you can visit the film’s website at CarlErskineFilm.com or check your local PBS station.
Baseball Legend Models Love of God and Neighbor
June 11
Carl Erskine may not be a household name anymore, but he deserves to be. During the 1940s and 50s, he helped the Brooklyn Dodgers win their only World Series against their crosstown rivals, the Yankees. But Carl’s legacy exceeds anything he accomplished on the field. Long before the word “inclusion” became a mainstay in our national conversations, Carl modeled an attitude of welcoming to others who were different from him throughout his childhood, as a teammate of Jackie Robinson, and as the father of a child with Down syndrome. His story is now being told in the Christopher Award-winning documentary “The Best We’ve Got: The Carl Erskine Story.” Filmmaker Ted Green joined me recently on “Christopher Closeup” to talk about Erskine’s remarkable life.
Carl’s earliest memory was visiting the site of a lynching. He was four years old in 1930 when his father took him to Marion, Indiana, to see the aftermath of what had happened the day before. The elder Erskine’s goal was to demonstrate to his son that this was “hate at its worst.” Thankfully, Carl’s parents lived their Christian faith in a way that was courageously enlightened for the times. They taught him to love God and love his neighbor—and they included people of all colors in their definition of “neighbor.”
A defining incident occurred when Carl was 10 years old. He was playing buckets one day in an alley in his neighborhood when Johnny Wilson, a nine-year-old African American child, saw him and watched shyly from the side. Carl walked up to Johnny, held his ball out, and asked, “Do you want to play?” Ted observed, “It seems like the simplest thing in the world,” but it flew in the face of the prevailing worldview that white and black kids should stay apart. Carl and Johnny went on to become great friends, and Johnny was welcomed into the Erskine’s home many times.
Fast forward to 1948. Carl became a pitcher with the Brooklyn Dodgers and a teammate of Jackie Robinson, who had broken Major League Baseball’s color barrier just one year earlier. Robinson faced racism from many people, but he and Carl became fast friends. In fact, Jackie was amazed at how naturally Carl accepted him and his family. For instance, on a day when he wasn’t pitching, Carl walked over to a section of Ebbets Field that was fenced off for the players’ families. Fans were nearby too, reaching through the fence to get autographs.
“Carl steps out there, and he notices an [African American] woman and her young son standing all by themselves and nobody is talking to them,” said Ted. “Carl walks up, starts a conversation with Rachel Robinson, roughs up Jackie Robinson, Jr’s hair. The next day, Jackie made a point to approach him and say, ‘Carl, I just wanna thank you for what you did yesterday…You went out of your way to make Rachel and Jackie Jr. feel accepted in front of all those people. That means a lot.’ And Carl is befuddled. [He said], ‘That’s the most natural thing in the world.’”
Ted added, “Carl shows how easy it can be if you put decency first, if you put others before you. In fact…I believe that Carl is the perfect embodiment of what’s etched onto Jackie Robinson’s tombstone: a life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.”
In my next column, we’ll look at how Carl Erskine created a more welcoming country for children with Down syndrome.
For free copies of the Christopher News Note WALKING IN SOMEONE ELSE’S SHOES, write: The Christophers, 5 Hanover Square, New York, NY 10004; or e-mail: mail@christophers.org
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God and the Padres Bring Light to Reporter’s Life
May 21
Two things were staples in Marie Coronel’s home when she was growing up: Catholicism and rooting for the San Diego Padres. You could make the argument that one is an extension of the other, but regardless, they both remain integral parts of her life. Admittedly, though, the practice of faith took precedence, guiding Marie as she pursued a career as a broadcast journalist. More importantly, it served as her foundation through her father’s diagnosis with a rare progressive neurological disorder, as well as her own medical crisis. Marie joined me recently on “Christopher Closeup” to discuss her life and faith.
As the daughter of Filipino Americans, Marie grew up in a home where the Catholic faith was as integral to life as eating and drinking. Her father was an usher at their church and a member of the Knights of Columbus and Holy Name Society. He always made sure the family got to Mass on time, and he encouraged his shy daughter to be a lector at her Catholic school’s Masses. In addition, San Diego Padres games, either on TV or the radio, served as the soundtrack in their home. Father and daughter would always enjoy them together.
When Marie left home to attend college, it was the first time she was truly on her own with the freedom to make her own decisions. She recalled, “It was up to me to decide, ‘Hey, are you gonna get up early Sunday morning and go to Mass? Are you gonna make sure you’re there for the holy day of obligation?’ And shockingly – I think it was just because I was raised in that – the choice was pretty easy. I knew I had to go. I credit my parents because if they didn’t instill that foundation in me, I don’t know if I would’ve been, as a college kid, 18 years old, spending [my] Sundays at church…And being Filipino has helped in terms of keeping my faith alive.”
Marie’s early days in broadcast news took her far from San Diego, so she followed Padres games from afar to give her a taste of home. After several years, she was grateful to land a job at ABC 10 News back in her hometown. Life continued on the upswing when Marie met the man she would marry. But her joy came to be intermingled with sorrow when her father was diagnosed with progressive supranuclear palsy, a neurological disorder that “affects body movements, walking and balance, and eye movement.”
Doctors didn’t think Marie’s father would live to see her wedding, which was just two months away. Mr. Coronel, however, had other plans. She said, “My dad…was a fighter, and there was nothing that was going to stop him from being there for his daughter’s wedding. But a big part of that, again, he relied on his faith…Then, after that, they didn’t know if he was going to meet his first grandchild. Eventually at the end of this, he met all three of his grandsons.”
During this time, Marie juggled her career and her own growing family, with being a caregiver for her father. She admitted it was a lot to deal with physically, mentally, and emotionally. But again, she turned to the lessons she had learned in childhood and relied on her faith for strength.
What she had endured so far, however, was nothing compared to what was to come when a tree fell on her and broke her neck. That part of the story in my next column.
A Light on an Angel Wing
April 30
When she needed it the most, Sister Ave Clark believes that a stranger brought the light of an angel into her life. It happened nearly 20 years ago, when she survived a debilitating accident in which a runaway train hit the car she was driving in Queens, New York. After a year of hospitalization and rehab, Sister Ave was finally able to return to her work giving talks and retreats as the founder of Heart to Heart Ministry, which offers hope and help to suffering people. One day, she was giving a talk in a parish when a man approached her and said he was glad she was doing well. She didn’t recognize him, so he revealed that he was a volunteer ambulance worker who was on the scene of her accident. The paramedics told him that she was in shock and her blood pressure kept dropping, so he needed to talk with her to keep her spirit going so she could fight for her life. He kept telling Sister Ave, “I’m with you. You’re not alone. You are going to be alright.”
Sister Ave believes that message registered in her subconscious because she survived the experience. She now sees that man as having been “a light on an angel wing,” which is also the title of a book of reflections that she’s co-authored with Paula Santoro. It’s a phrase she coined to reflect the people who bring “hope, comfort, and encouragement” into our lives.
Another term for these types of people are “peace givers,” whom Sister Ave and Joe and Peggy Clark write about in another book titled “Peace and Compassion…Holy Threads.” During a “Christopher Closeup” interview, Sister Ave told me, “Peace, to me, is [experiencing] God’s love no matter what you’re going through. Peace is an extension of God saying, ‘Love one another into life.’ Does that mean we’re going to disagree [sometimes]? We can, but I think we need to disagree in a much better way without this harshness, cruelty, putting people down…The whole idea of peace and compassion, you can’t have one without the other, because when you’re compassionate, you either give or receive peace…That doesn’t mean all your problems or worries are gone. Maybe we learn to carry them better and be that little beam of light in the world that we can be.”
As an example of living that truth, Sister Ave points to a formerly homeless man named Albie. He lived in College Point, New York, and made sure that his homeless friends all had a bench to sleep on. If there were any homeless women around, he made sure they got “the safe bench” and that everyone looked out for them.
“One of my [fellow] Sisters helped Albie,” Sister Ave continued, “and he’s now in an apartment in Brooklyn. But Albie was just diagnosed with cancer. [The Sister] put him in New York-Presbyterian Hospital getting care. All the doctors there say, ‘This is an extraordinary man.’ Now who is Albie? He’s the man that was on the street that drank vodka a lot. But who is he? He’s a peace giver. See, sometimes we think you have to have it all together in your head, [but]…if you have it together in your head and it doesn’t move down to your heart, [that’s a problem]. I think you start with your heart first. That’s where compassion is born, because then, not only do we transform the world, we’re transformed too. We get better and better.”
Sometimes Mercy Precedes Repentance
April 16
On the weekend that the Church celebrates Divine Mercy Sunday, I couldn’t help but think of the Gospel story of the woman caught in adultery from John 8:3-11. We’ve all heard this reading at Mass over the years, but I recently noticed an aspect of the story that had never caught my attention before.
As John recounts, the scribes and Pharisees caught a woman committing adultery and brought her before Jesus to see if He would endorse stoning her, as the law of Moses commanded. They were really hoping to catch Jesus contradicting the religious law so they would have a reason to persecute him, but He was too shrewd for them. Instead of saying anything, Jesus started writing on the ground with His finger. When they asked Him again, Jesus responded, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”
That answer sure turned the tables on the scribes and Pharisees! They all left, leaving Jesus alone with the woman. He asked her, “Has no one condemned you?” She responded, “No one, sir.” Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”
A lot is made of Jesus telling the woman, “Do not sin again,” but what occurred to me is that we never hear the woman acknowledge doing anything wrong or asking for mercy. We can safely presume she doesn’t want to be stoned to death, but we don’t know if she was sorry for what she did or just sorry she got caught. Regardless, perhaps Jesus granted her mercy without her asking for it in the hopes that mercy would lead her to repentance.
It reminds me of the scene in the book/play/movie “Les Miserables,” in which the character Jean Valjean, who has just been released from 19 years in prison for stealing bread to support his family, finds food and shelter with a kindly bishop. The next morning, the destitute Valjean steals some silverware from the bishop’s home, but is soon apprehended by the police, who return him to the bishop for identification. Instead of condemning Valjean for his theft, however, the bishop tells the police he had freely given Valjean the silverware so he could get money to build his new life. And the bishop even gives him a couple of extra silver candlesticks!
Again, we have a situation where someone is guilty, but receives mercy rather than condemnation, even though he did not specifically ask for forgiveness. The bishop is insightful enough to know that the crime committed against Valjean by the government was far more egregious than the theft of the silverware. And so, the bishop prays that his mercy to Valjean will lead him to a new life—and the story proves out that it does.
The ideal situation, of course, is that when we commit a wrong, we acknowledge it, then ask for forgiveness. But we don’t live in a perfect world, and everybody’s story and psyche are different. For the woman caught in adultery and for Jean Valjean, maybe they have so little experience being on the receiving end of goodness and kindness that they need to experience it before they can find their way to the light. In these cases, mercy can precede repentance—be the motivator for repentance. And practicing that kind of mercy is certainly divine.
‘Compassion Walks the Road to Calvary’
April 2
“Compassion walks the road to Calvary.” It’s a timely observation as we enter Holy Week, and it’s one that Sister Ave Clark has personally experienced. As the founder of Heart to Heart Ministry, Sister Ave holds retreats and personally counsels those enduring dark times, including domestic abuse, the death of a loved one, PTSD, disability, and more. As she recalled during a “Christopher Closeup” interview about her books “Peace and Compassion…Holy Threads” and “A Light on an Angel Wing,” her experience with these types of situations goes back many years, to a time when she was a second-grade teacher. One of her students, Elizabeth, was diagnosed with cancer and wouldn’t be able to make her First Communion with the class.
Elizabeth’s parents asked if she could receive her First Communion in the hospital, so Sister Ave arranged for a priest to come and hold a small service there. Unfortunately, Elizabeth’s health continued to go downhill, so Sister Ave brought her a little angel doll to hold on to for comfort.
Some time later, Elizabeth’s parents called Sister Ave to say the end was near and asked if she could come with them to the hospital. Despite feeling emotionally devastated herself by this news, Sister Ave mustered up the emotional and spiritual strength to accompany them because she realized that “compassion walks the road to Calvary.” During the car ride over, Elizabeth’s mother quietly held Sister Ave’s hand. Upon entering Elizabeth’s room, they saw she was holding her angel doll. Her mother broke down in tears, so Elizabeth told her, “Mom, don’t cry. I’m going to go to heaven, and you said it’s the best home I could ever have.”
Elizabeth’s mother hugged her, and her father told her, “You’re our little angel,” then they both left the room in tears. Elizabeth turned to Sister Ave and said, “Sister, I don’t need the doll anymore because I’ll have all the angels in heaven. You take it, you give it to someone else.”
Sister Ave agreed. Elizabeth passed away an hour later. Sister Ave recalled, “I never forgot it, Tony…When they drove home, the mother said, ‘Sister, your being with us gave us peace.’ Did it take away their sorrow? No. But our presence can [bring] peace.”
Think about those words again: “Our presence can bring peace.” When we reflect on Good Friday, perhaps the presence of His mother Mary and the beloved apostle John brought Jesus some peace as He was dying on the cross. It must have been devastating for them to watch Him die, but their love and compassion led them to bear the suffering so they could be there with Him. Little did they know that three days later, their hearts would rejoice at the resurrection. But would knowing that have eased their pain at the time? Maybe not. The suffering was right in front of them, while the hope was only in the future.
The little girl Elizabeth’s parents were believers, who taught their daughter about Jesus and heaven. And Elizabeth obviously came to believe and passed into the next life with a strong faith. The parents’ faith, however, didn’t prevent them from feeling intense pain at the loss of their daughter. But it did give them the hope that they would someday be reunited with her again.
If your compassion leads you to walk the road to Calvary, pray for the strength to keep that same hope alive in your heart during the darkest times.
Encountering Jesus in the Confessional
March 19
After she began converting to Catholicism in 2010, Leticia Ochoa Adams engaged in a lot of hard work and therapy to deal with the aftereffects of being sexually abused as a child. At the time, she developed a rosy, victorious outlook on her suffering, believing, “Those were just the things I had to go through in order to be this awesome Catholic.” Leticia realizes now how prideful she was back then because when her son Anthony committed suicide in 2017, none of those beliefs made any sense.
During a “Christopher Closeup” interview about her memoir “Our Lady of Hot Messes: Getting Real with God in Dive Bars and Confessionals,” Leticia told me about this difficult period of her life and how she eventually moved toward healing.
Filled with anger at God for months after Anthony’s suicide, she went to Confession to Father Jonathan, the parish priest who had been a supportive friend to her family throughout their ordeal. Aware that the priest in that moment is standing “in persona Christi” (in the person of Christ), she unloaded her fury and pain and “let him have it.” At the end, Father Jonathan simply responded, “It broke my heart, too.”
Leticia observed, “I already knew Father Jonathan’s heart was broken, losing Anthony. So, the only reason he would say those words to me is because it was Christ talking to me, and it broke His heart, too…Of all the heartbreak I have, I don’t love my son the way God loves him because God made him. And I don’t grieve my son the way God grieves him because God was there and witnessed it from beginning to end and couldn’t stop it. That changed everything for me…I went on a mission to grow my relationship with [God], and not with this idea of Him that has to do with politics or this lifestyle or that lifestyle or this Mass or that Mass. It had everything to do with the God who made the heavens and earth.”
Leticia’s walk through suffering has changed her. She admits the mistakes she made raising her children, accepts responsibility for the harm some of her choices caused them, and is working toward repairing those things. She also realizes that just because you have faith in God doesn’t mean your heart will never be broken. Noting that Jesus Himself experienced grief and wept, she said, “We don’t have to mask these hard feelings by spiritually bypassing the suffering.”
As readers of “Our Lady of Hot Messes” will discover, Leticia’s view of God has also been changed by selling the house she and her husband used to live in and moving to the great outdoors. She said, “We moved to raw land about 17 months ago, which means there’s no electricity, no water. We’ve had to build from scratch, and my current understanding of God is so much bigger than a fairy in the sky who just makes your wishes come true. There’s no lights on our street, there’s no light pollution out here. So, when I look up at the sky and see the stars, I’m in awe. The sunset, the sunrise, the weather patterns. It’s so much different than living in a city…I can see the allness of God, and how much everything He creates is beautiful, and how much He delights in that beauty. And that includes us. So, the person I can’t stand, God finds delightful and gorgeous and beautiful. That’s really changed how I see Him now.”
A “Hot Mess” Finds Healing
March 12
Leticia Ochoa Adams’ life has not been an easy road. She endured repeated sexual abuse as a child—and she lost her son Anthony to suicide a few years ago. It took a long time for Leticia to acknowledge the traumas she had endured and the poor life choices she made as a result. But after becoming Catholic and slowly forging a healthier relationship with God, she has been able to move toward healing. Leticia shares her story in her raw, honest, sometimes funny memoir, “Our Lady of Hot Messes: Getting Real with God in Dive Bars and Confessionals.”
Though the designation “Our Lady of Hot Messes” may seem an unusual one for Mary, the mother of Jesus, it is grounded in the lifelong reverence Leticia holds for her and the belief that Mary was always loving and guiding her, even when her life was a hot mess. Growing up, Leticia’s aunts and mother all had pictures or statues of Our Lady of Guadalupe in their homes. And following Anthony’s suicide, Leticia always found herself sitting next to a painting of Our Lady of Guadalupe at Mass.
During a “Christopher Closeup” interview, she recalled, “At some point, I realized there was a shift in my idea of Mary, that I didn’t have to be perfect to come to her—and I never was. She’s always seen me exactly for who I was…So even in those moments where I’m the messiest, she’s there and patiently, lovingly praying for me. That’s where the title came from. [I’m] trying to convey the message that just because Mary was sinless doesn’t mean she expects us to be perfect…So, when we come to her in this idealistic version of ourselves that we [think we] need to present to her, we’re kind of lying, and we’re not trusting that she loves us as we are.”
In order to be honest with Mary, Leticia first had to be honest with herself. The sexual abuse she suffered from the ages of five to nine left her feeling “angry at the world,” yet wanting to be liked by everyone. As a protective mechanism, she rejected people before they could reject her, thereby projecting her own low self-esteem onto others’ views of her—and even onto God’s view of her. Leticia started attending a Baptist church when she was eight years old and interpreted all the sermons herself. “As a kid, all I heard was, if you’re not good enough, then God won’t live in your heart and your life won’t [have]…manifestations of material goodness, wealth, happiness, all these things,” she recalled. It wasn’t until she began converting to Catholicism that she came to see God in a different light, though even that took time, as well as therapy.
Leticia admits that facing her own demons involved hard work. She explained, “I think Catholics can tell the Protestant prosperity gospel, but sometimes we have a hard time seeing the Catholic prosperity gospel, where it’s like if you just pray the rosary, you don’t have to go to therapy…Sometimes we forget that healing also comes from doing the hard work of looking at ourselves, which is why Confession is a healing sacrament. But if you just go in there and list your sins without truly looking at yourself and why you’re making these choices to fail to love, which is what sin is, then we’re not getting the healing. We’re getting the absolution, but God can only give us what we ask for.”
The Way of the Wounded Healer
Feb 26, 2023
When actress Nikki DeLoach initially read the script for her Hallmark movie “The Gift of Peace,” she didn’t realize it would be the exact project she needed to help her deal with the recent painful loss of her father to dementia.
Nikki’s father died in July 2021 at age 66. During an interview, she told me, “We knew it was going to happen, but you’re just never prepared for the loss of someone you love so much. And much like Tracy, my [widowed] character in ‘The Gift of Peace,’ I was coming into this movie very stuck in my life. I was…getting everything done, but there was no joy. There was just a deep sadness and heartbreak that was layered over everything.”
In the movie, Nikki’s character Tracy resents God because she prayed for her husband’s healing and absolutely believed it was going to happen. But he died anyway. Hallmark movies don’t usually deal so overtly with matters of faith, but this production handled the matter honestly and well.
As a person of deep faith herself, Nikki was the perfect person to star in this movie. She noted, “One thing we touch upon in the movie is that commentary of, why did God do this to me? Why did God take him? [The truth is], God doesn’t take anyone or anything from us. That’s not how God works…But what God offers is a way to get back to the joy, the peace, the love, to hope. That is what God offers inside of the pain, inside of the grief.”
That’s exactly what happened to Nikki: “Life imitated art, and something opened up inside of me. I started to find the joy in my life again.”
In the movie, Tracy begins to find healing after she connects with a grief support group in her church. In essence, the members all help each other carry their pain, making it easier to bear because of the shared burden. This ties into one of Nikki’s core beliefs about how we can all be wounded healers.
Nikki also did her best to serve as a wounded healer on a personal level to her co-star Brennan Elliott, whose wife is enduring a difficult cancer battle. She noted that everyone’s heart has been broken at times—and if it hasn’t been yet, it will be someday. Though these cracks in our hearts can’t be fully healed, they can become stronger in the broken places.
“The transformation happens in allowing God to emanate through the cracks,” explained Nikki. “Because when that light comes through the cracks and all of the broken places, that’s where you’re able to begin to be a healer. I don’t mean that you will one day wake up and not feel the pain…What I mean by that is that you get to be there for other people. You [develop] empathy and compassion and a humanity that you never had before. It allows you to sit with other people and see them when they’re in pain. And it allows you to be merciful with your own pain and what you are going through. We’re all on the road to healing. We’re all trying to find a way to…get rid of [our pain]. But what we need to pivot to is to learn how to carry it. I think the road of the wounded healer helps you to understand that is a beautiful thing. That’s not a terrible thing. It’s a beautiful road to walk.”
“General Hospital” Star’s Reawakened Catholic Faith
Feb 12
Fans of ABC’s “General Hospital” have embraced actor John J. York for 32 years and counting, as he plays police detective and family man Mac Scorpio. In real life, the actor is devoted to his family, as well as the Catholic faith he had drifted away from many years. So, what led him back?
During a “Christopher Closeup” interview, John recalled growing up in Chicago, where his mom and dad made sure that he and his five siblings were grounded in the faith and received a Catholic education. After going to college, however, John’s faith became less important to him. He eventually left college to pursue an acting career in Hollywood and met people who guided him towards different opportunities that allowed him to fulfill his dreams. He also met and married his wife Vicki, with whom he had a daughter, Schyler.
Years later, after Schyler began attending Notre Dame High School, she asked John, “Dad, what do I have to do to receive Communion? We have Mass every day and everybody’s going to Communion, but I can’t go.” Though John was culturally Catholic enough to have had Schyler baptized, he never followed through on any of the other sacraments. He explained that she had to go through RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults) in order to officially join the Church, so that’s what she did.
John said, “We still [weren’t] going to church every Sunday. Then, she went to college in Boulder…I did say at one point, ‘You’re a Catholic now. Going to college, there are going to be a lot of parties…and things like that going on. But go find a church…and continue with your faith.’ She did that…She had an encounter, and she became deeply immersed in her love for Jesus Christ and the Catholic faith—and she brought me along with her. So, I was just following her, following Him.”
In finding a new passion for his faith, John looked back on his life and the people who helped him with a divine perspective. He said, “A series of hands [were] always reaching out for me…As I reflect back on it, it’s the hand of God, it’s the hand of Jesus that was…pulling me along.”
John has also been paying close attention to his prayer life in the years since then. He started by praying the rosary every morning, then discovered an old St. Jude prayer card in his drawer and began saying that as well. Over time, prayers to the Blessed Mother, St. Philomena, St. Therese, and many more have been added to his morning routine. He said, “It focuses me on trying to do good things…Start your day in a space of gratitude, a space of humility, being thankful for what’s around you.”
John’s journey of faith has also helped him see the image and likeness of God in the people he encounters every day, whether they share his beliefs or not. In fact, simply praying, “Help me to see the face of God in the people and experiences of my life,” allows him to stay focused. And while being a person of faith doesn’t prevent John from experiencing dark times, his perspective on dealing with them is different than it used to be. He concluded, “Even if I’m by myself, I’m not alone. For me, Jesus Christ is right there with me. The Holy Spirit is right there with me, and that’s who I talk to. That’s what gets me through…He’s the light in my life.”
Father Ed Dowling’s Ministry to Alcoholics
January 29, 2023
Many people know the story of Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill Wilson. Much less is known about Father Ed Dowling, the Catholic priest who served as his spiritual sponsor. In the early-to-mid 20th century, Father Ed embodied the love of Christ not only to alcoholics, but to anyone who was suffering or marginalized: from African Americans to those with mental health issues to married couples in need of counseling. Author Dawn Eden Goldstein has done a deep-dive into Father Ed’s life to explore the personal suffering which grew his compassion—and the deep faith that motivated his work. Her book is called “Father Ed: The Story of Bill W’s Spiritual Sponsor,” and we discussed it recently on “Christopher Closeup.”
When Father Ed was 19 years old, before he entered the Jesuit seminary, his younger brother James died because of the 1918 flu pandemic. To make things worse, Father Ed suspected he might have given the disease to his brother, with whom he shared an especially close bond. Dawn said, “When you have a wound like that—whether it’s grief or another kind of trauma, particularly trauma that hits you when you’re young—it can make you question, ‘Does God exist? Does God care about me?’”
As Father Ed’s faith grew deeper over the years through the practice of saying daily Mass and meditating in front of a crucifix, he believed that Jesus brought him a level of healing from his emotional wound. He also came to see the “suffering Christ in his suffering brothers and sisters” and made it a part of his mission to reach out to them. When Father Ed first encountered the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, he felt God’s hand at work. The 12 Steps were based on Bill Wilson’s achievement of sobriety after a spiritual experience. He devised the Steps so that alcoholics could recognize “that they’re powerless over alcohol and that only a higher power can relieve them of this great thirst for alcohol.”
“Then,” continued Dawn, “what Bill discovered—and what he passed on through the Steps—was that he could only maintain his sobriety through…helping other alcoholics. I think Father Dowling must have recognized that this is also a very Christian idea: that our salvation is not meant only for ourselves…Every Christian has a mission. This is part of the message of the Second Vatican Council. We have a mission to be Christ among others and to spread that fragrance of Christ wherever we go.”
As he got older, Father Ed experienced an ever-worsening arthritis that was turning his body to stone, as others described it. Getting around became quite painful, yet he always exuded joy amidst his suffering. Dawn interviewed several people who spent time with him and their recollections confirmed this point. She said, “What I picked up from them was that Father Ed…so loved people that he could not be unhappy when other people were around because he was interested in them. Even when they were going through difficult times and he was suffering with them, he felt honored that they were sharing their lives with him…Every person he encountered, whether it was the drunk just off the street or the high society person, they each felt that they were the most important person who Father Dowling saw that day.”
In closing, Dawn hopes that Father Ed comes alive for readers of her book, explaining, “If I could ensure that they encountered Father Ed, then…they would encounter Christ through him and Christ’s healing.”
Don’t Give Darkness Power Over Light
January 15, 2023
In my previous column, I shared parts of my interview with Joy Marie Clarkson, author of the book “Aggressively Happy: A Realist’s Guide to Believing in the Goodness of Life.” She revealed how a period of suffering led her closer to God and a greater appreciation for the joys we can experience if we open ourselves to them. But getting to that point was not a straight line for Joy, who admits she has struggled with doubt as well.
She doesn’t see doubt as a bad thing, though, noting that she feels a kinship to two characters in Dostoevsky’s novel “The Brothers Karamazov” because “it portrays someone who, with the best intentions of their heart, cannot believe in God—and someone who, with the best of intentions of their heart, chooses to [believe] anyway. I always have felt like I had both of those within me. A part of choosing to believe…is saying that my life is more sensible, more endurable in faith—and the consolation that comes with faith can’t come from the outside. I have to take the step into faith to be able to receive its consolations. Having that story in my mind has helped me know that God is faithful to me even when I waver in doubt.”
Among the consolations of looking at life through the eyes of faith is the belief “that at the heart of reality is goodness, is joy, and that in choosing to cultivate happiness, we are speaking to that reality.” Still, there are people who view the world through a darker lens, seeing only its hardships and sufferings. While acknowledging that we can’t be happy all the time, Joy believes that view gives the darkness too much power over the light.
She explained, “There’s a great quote by Jack Gilbert, the American poet, who says, ‘To only attend to evil would be to praise the devil.’ So, attend to what is good and beautiful and true, but not in a way that ignores all the difficult things of life…There can be this idea that if…someone in the world is suffering, you’re being selfish because you’re being happy…It’s like, ‘If I’m sitting around being cynical and unhappy, I’m more righteous than everybody else because I’m more knowing.’ When in fact, you’re probably making life for everyone around you more unpleasant. It’s not helping anyone on the other side of the world, it’s not helping anyone around you, and it’s not being attuned and thankful for what is in front of you.”
When Joy encounters problems nowadays, she tries to follow The Christophers’ approach of lighting a candle rather than cursing the darkness. She concluded, “I always start with the practical…What I try to do is I… eat something healthy, I’m going to sometimes literally light a candle. It’s amazing to me how much pleasure…lighting a candle can be. Then…I try to be intentional about reaching out to friends. Sometimes when I’m encountering difficulties, trying to give kindness to other people helps me feel better, because it also reminds me that I’m not just a victim to the rest of life. I can be an agent of positivity.
“Then, I [rest] in God. There are times for shaking one’s fist at God and doing all the Psalmist activities. But I think also [about] trusting in God’s love for me, no matter what happens. Sometimes that takes the form of prayers and listening to a beautiful song and knowing that God made beautiful things in the world.”
How to Cultivate Happiness
January 8, 2023
If you’d like to be happier in the new year, Joy Marie Clarkson has some insights to share from her own life. In fact, she considers herself “aggressively happy,” which is also the title of her book, because, “In this world that is so pervaded by cynicism…[and] difficult things…to have some kind of joy and happiness does take an act of at least assertiveness, if not aggression.”
At the same time, Joy is a realist who never descends into toxic positivity, which she describes as “an inability to deal with the actual griefs and heaviness of life.” In fact, she notes that her name, Joy Marie, means “joy in a sea of bitterness or sadness,” which, again, accurately reflects her personality.
During a “Christopher Closeup” interview, Joy explained, “I am a person of extremes to some extent. So I’ve always felt…a deep enjoyment of life…and I’ve also felt very keenly the heaviness of the world, whether it was my own struggles with mental illness, or the people that I loved [who were] suffering, or just looking at the vast fragility of the world…So happiness for me has been…a cultivated thing or a habit. It’s not that you can just make yourself be happy. It’s that you slowly but surely till the ground of your life. You pull up the weeds. You water thankfulness every day. So that was part of what the book is wrestling with and, hopefully, models a bit as well.”
Ironically, “Aggressively Happy” was inspired by an extended period of hardship for Joy, a period from which she emerged with wisdom and clarity about life and God. At the end of December one year, she had a mystical experience that told her the coming year would be one of suffering. Initially, she wrote it off as OCD or intrusive thoughts, but she soon learned this was a message meant to prepare her for what was to come.
“I feel like that period of my life was one of the first times I woke up to the fact that Jesus says, ‘In this life, you will have tribulation, but take heart for I have overcome the world.’” said Joy. “Having that sense of preparation made me feel like I wasn’t alone in it, that I was being guided through it. It helped me…get in touch with reality, which is that there will be difficult things. Then [it ushered] me into a posture towards life, which I have to learn again and again: to not be surprised by suffering and to know that it doesn’t undo the joy and beautiful things we experience. Also, to let it become something that softens you and makes you open to others and other people’s pain, and aware of God’s love in the midst of life.”
The comforting aspects of Joy’s faith did not just occur in the spiritual realm, but through tangible ways. It’s not just about sitting in church trying to make yourself “believe harder,” she said, but rather about a sacramental experience of God’s grace.
Joy continued, “We experience these specific graces in the Church, but also as Gerard Manley Hopkins says, ‘The world is charged with the grandeur of God.’ So from poetry to the beauty of nature to the comfort of the sacraments, those were all things that helped me know that God was with me, that I was never alone in suffering, and that the suffering was never the fundamental thing…It didn’t have the final word in my life.”