Share with you non-Catholic Christian brothers and sisters in Christ.
When Jesus died and rose, He left no written book. He left His Church. For nearly four centuries before the canon of Scripture was formally recognized, the Church was already alive, growing, and carrying the Gospel to the ends of the earth.
Many forget—or never knew—this truth: Christianity was not born from the Bible; the Bible was born from Christianity. From the very first century it was the Catholic, universal Church with Christians in it, living the faith Christ entrusted to the Apostles.
The First Generation: Witnesses and Martyrs
The Apostles did not act on their own—they moved with the authority of Christ Himself: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Go, therefore…” (Matthew 28:18–20).
With this divine mandate, they went out preaching with fire, healing the sick, casting out demons, and baptizing in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. They taught not from scrolls, but from living memory of the Master who had walked with them, died before them, and risen in glory.
They handed on the Eucharist—Holy Communion—as the heart of Christian life. They appointed bishops to shepherd the flocks, laid hands on deacons to serve, and planted the seeds of the Church in every city and land they entered.
This was the Church in her infancy: not weak but burning with Spirit and truth.
The Second and Third Generations: Fathers and Doctrine
By the second century, bishops like Ignatius of Antioch, Clement of Rome, and Polycarp—disciples of the Apostles themselves—were writing letters exhorting Christians to unity, the Eucharist, and obedience to bishops.
Justin Martyr described the Sunday liturgy in detail around A.D. 150, centuries before the Bible was formally canonized. Irenaeus of Lyon (c. 180) refuted heresies not with “Scripture alone,” but with the authority of apostolic succession: “Where the Church is, there is the Spirit of God.”
The Church was already teaching the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, baptismal regeneration, and the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Councils were held, creeds were confessed, and heresies condemned. The Deposit of Faith was alive, guarded, and handed down.
The Bible Emerges Within the Church
Letters and Gospels circulated widely, but so did forgeries. The Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, discerned which writings were truly apostolic and inspired for the salvation of our souls—those very writings you read today.
For centuries, Christians read from both Old Testament scrolls and apostolic writings in the liturgy, side by side with oral preaching. The Scriptures were proclaimed in worship, but their boundaries were not yet fixed—not yet compiled into the Bible as we know it today.
It was not until the late fourth century, at councils in Rome (382), Hippo (393), and Carthage (397), that the Catholic Church declared the canon we still hold today: 46 books of the Old Testament, 27 books of the New.
The same Catholic Church that lived and taught for centuries before the canon existed is the Church that gave the world the Bible. And the Mass—the breaking of the bread, in remembrance of Him—bringing Christianity into the here and now.
The Key Truth We Forget
From Calvary to canonization, the Church was never idle. She was praying, suffering, baptizing, evangelizing, handing down the faith, celebrating the Eucharist—the breaking of the bread, Holy Communion—and defending truth against error.
The Bible came forth from the Catholic Church—not the other way around.
When someone says, “The Bible alone,” they are skipping over 350 years of Christian history where the Church, without a fixed canon, was already worshiping the same Christ, offering the same Sacrifice, and confessing the same creed.
Now I must ask—what do you think of all this? This reality is glorious, epiphany-filled, and free
“My brother, sister, and I learned suffering early when we lost our beautiful mother to suicide. That wound shaped me in ways I cannot count. Yet I have learned that God always takes what is painful and, in His time, turns it into joy. Pain into joy — that is the mystery of the Cross, and the promise of Christ.”
A heartfelt reflection on why Catholics keep the Crucifix — not an empty cross — at the center of faith. Far from a symbol of defeat, the Crucifix reveals the meaning of suffering, the depth of God’s love, and the courage to face death with hope.
Dear Friend,
Most of the world runs from suffering. We medicate it, disguise it, or pretend it doesn’t exist. And when death comes near, many are terrified — as if it’s the ultimate defeat. But in the Catholic faith, suffering is not a dead end. It is a doorway.
Why the Crucifix Must Remain Before Us
The Resurrection is victory, yes. But the Crucifix is indispensable.
We need to see Christ on the Cross because it reveals what we too easily forget: suffering has meaning.
Step into a Catholic hospital chapel and what do you find? A quiet light, a kneeler, and a Crucifix. That Crucifix is the heartbeat of the place. It tells every patient, every nurse, every family member in silence: You are not alone in your pain. He has been here first. He is with you now.
An empty cross leaves us gazing into mystery. But the Crucifix shows us the cost of love — and the courage to embrace suffering rather than flee from it.
Why Suffering Matters for the Soul
It unites us to Christ. St. Paul wrote: “I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of His body, the Church” (Col. 1:24). Christ’s Cross is perfect. Yet our sufferings, offered with His, become part of His redeeming work.
It strips away illusions. Ease and comfort make us forget our fragility. Pain burns away pride and illusions of control. It returns life into God’s hands.
It teaches love. Real love always suffers. Parents lose sleep for their children. Spouses endure hardship together. Friends sacrifice for one another. The Crucifix is love to the very end — love that bleeds and never turns away.
It redeems death. Without Christ, death is darkness. With Him, death is transformed — no longer an enemy, but a passage into life. Even suffering before death becomes a preparation, a final offering of ourselves to God.
For Those Who Fear Pain or Death
It is natural to fear. But fear loses its grip when you realize the Cross is not tragedy, but triumph.
Every thorn, every nail, every wound was chosen out of love for you.
Keeping the Crucifix before our eyes is not dwelling in sorrow — it is remembering that God has already entered the worst of human suffering and filled it with Himself. This is why even in cancer, grief, or our final breath, peace is possible.
The Crucifix as Our Companion
Think again of that hospital chapel.
A patient shuffling in with an IV pole. A family member with tear-stained eyes. A nurse pausing between shifts.
Each looks at the Crucifix and sees the same truth: This is not meaningless. This is not wasted. He is with you.
The Crucifix is not a decoration. It is a mirror. It shows us what love looks like, and it teaches our souls that suffering embraced in love leads to resurrection.
For those who fear suffering: you do not carry it alone. Christ has already carried it to the end.
For those who fear dying: He has gone before you, and He has promised, “I go to prepare a place for you” (John 14:2).
So keep the Crucifix before your eyes. It is not just wood and metal. It is the heartbeat of our faith, the key to our courage, and the assurance that love is stronger than death.
I once knew a woman facing life-threatening surgery. She had seen my crucifixes — I carved the wood, and the Sisters of the Holy Cross painted the body of Christ by hand. She asked for one to hang on her recovery wall.
“I want it to be the first thing I see if I wake again,” she told me.
That is the power of the Cross of Christ. The most cherished of all Christian symbols.
If you have passed it by, take another look. It is not defeat. It is love stretched to the very end — and the door through which eternal life has already been won.
In the early 3rd century, the Church in Rome was shaken by deep theological disputes. Hippolytus, a brilliant priest and theologian, accused the popes of being too lenient toward Christians who had lapsed under persecution. He especially opposed Pope Callixtus I and his successors, eventually setting himself up as what history calls the first antipope—leading a rival Christian community in Rome.
Hippolytus’s opposition was not a matter of personal ambition alone; he was zealous for purity in the Church. Yet, in that zeal, he allowed division to grow. Pope Pontian, elected in A.D. 230, inherited this rift. He was a humble, steady leader who sought to guide the Church through ongoing persecution by the Roman Empire, especially under Emperor Maximinus Thrax.
Exiled Together
In A.D. 235, both Pope Pontian and Hippolytus were arrested in a wave of persecution and exiled to the mines of Sardinia—infamous for their brutal conditions. The emperor may have thought this would silence them; instead, it became the setting for one of the most beautiful reconciliations in Church history.
In the harsh labor and suffering of the mines, Pontian and Hippolytus—once enemies—found themselves side by side. Faced with the nearness of death, their theological quarrels lost their sting. They began to speak, to pray, and to forgive. Tradition tells us that Hippolytus renounced his schism and was reconciled to the Catholic Church under Pontian’s authority.
A Shepherd’s Last Act
Knowing he would never return to Rome, Pontian did something extraordinary for the good of the Church: he resigned as pope in September 235—the first pope in history to step down voluntarily. This act ensured the faithful in Rome could elect a new shepherd while he and Hippolytus faced martyrdom in exile.
Both men died in the mines from the brutality and harsh conditions—martyrs not only for Christ but for unity in His Church.
One Tomb, One Witness
Their bodies were later brought back to Rome and buried with honor. The once-bitter rivals now rest as reconciled brothers, their lives a powerful testimony that in Christ, no division is beyond the reach of grace.
Legacy
Pope Pontian and St. Hippolytus remind us that:
Truth matters, but charity must never be abandoned.
Division wounds the Body of Christ, but reconciliation glorifies God.
Suffering can break pride and heal the deepest rifts.
Their joint feast day is celebrated on August 13—a date when the Church rejoices not in their disagreements, but in their unity at the end.
At eight years old, I stood in a small, dimly lit room with my father and grandfather. A soft yellow light shone over my mother, who had just taken her own life. That room has never left me—it lives deep within my soul.
My father was only twenty-eight. He had made a grave mitake. Eight years later, what became my mother’s final, tragic act was also, perhaps, her inability to forgive him. That final lack of forgiveness cost us our mother.
My heart goes out to all the beautiful souls in this world who, despite their failures, find the strength to get back up, face the pain they’ve caused, and ask to be forgiven. And to those who have been hurt by others but still choose to forgive—I see you. I pray for you. I walk beside you.
To my mother and father, to my family and friends, to those I have let down—I carry a room for each of you in my heart. Even for those who can’t ask for forgiveness—or can’t give it—there is a place. A sacred space where the cold clarity of this world begins to thaw in the presence of Christ.
Because above all, there is God. Through Jesus, we are shown a whole new way to live—with each other, for each other—if we first live in Him. Peace and victory in Jesus are near to every soul. No one should ever give up on life, or on one another, no matter how heavy the burden may feel.
Getting to know the Gospel—getting to know Jesus—opens a colossal door for those in deepest need. If only they’d give Him a chance. If only they’d open that door.
Just as the planets revolve around the sun in perfect harmony, so too can we, as God’s children, learn to live in the light—rotating around Jesus, the true Son, the radiant ray of God.
A Garden, a Grandpa, and Grace
One beautiful spring Sunday morning in rural Sacramento, I was heading to the Mormon Church with my grandmother and brother. I went to find my grandpa—my anchor—to ask him why he wasn’t coming with us.
He was important to me. Not just because he spoke to me when others didn’t, or shared peanuts with me while staring at the stars, but because he and I stood in that room. I remember him putting his arm around me and telling me it was okay to cry. He was crying. My father didn’t say much—what could he say? But even in silence, he was there. And he was welcome.
Sometime after my mother’s death, I found my grandfather in his garden and asked why he didn’t go to church. He replied, “I’m just not good enough, Richy.”
I was stunned. If he wasn’t good enough, then neither was I. So I stopped going. That garden became my church. And my father’s love—shining down from heaven—reached me through that man’s tender presence.
When I was sixteen, my grandfather had a stroke. A week later, he asked me to help him into the garden. He pulled just one weed. Then we staggered back to the house. The next day, he was gone.
The Room, the Cross, and Coming Home
Thirty-two years and many struggles later, my new Catholic faith brought me back to that same room where my mother had laid. Over the years, I’ve come to understand: we won’t find a home, a church, or a place on this earth that protects us from sin. The Church is not a sanctuary from imperfection—it is a battlefield. At its core stands the Great Physician. At its heart is forgiveness.
In that room with the soft yellow light—where pain seemed to swallow peace—I’ve come to know true peace.
Because from that room, there is a hallway. It leads to the heart of every home, to the soul of every person. And in that room stands a cross. Our Savior.
At the foot of that cross, you want to bring everyone you’ve ever loved—or hated. Everyone you’ve hurt, and who has hurt you. You want to gather them all at the feet of Jesus and take a long, honest look at what He has done—and is still doing—for each of us.
The cross divides heaven and earth. On one side, a crucified Savior pierced by a beam of soft yellow light—a path of hope for the lost. On the other side, the brilliant light of God, exposing the pit from which we are saved.
Original Sin, Original Blessing Reflection by Fr. Henri J.M. Nouwen
Somehow, original sin—that deep inner anguish and brokenness even beyond our own doing—can become the very place where we encounter our original blessing.
Somehow, our broken father, our limited mother, our neurotic brother, our confused sister, and our own inner struggles give birth to a hunger for something beyond the pain. “My soul is restless,” St. Augustine writes, “until it rests in You, O Lord.”
When we begin to know God’s intimacy, and to accept others—and ourselves—as we are, we begin to speak of “happy guilt” or “happy brokenness.” Our struggles become the very path to truth, to light, to life.
How could we ever become children of God—embraced by the love of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—if God had not shown us compassion in our very brokenness?
It is through Jesus’ incarnation that we learn of God’s inner life. And it is in our fragile, mortal flesh that God’s original blessing is revealed.
There’s a moment when it hits—when someone, maybe for the first time, realizes that God loves them. That He’s real. That He sees them. It’s overwhelming, emotional, and often life changing. In many evangelical circles, this moment is called being “born again.” It comes with a surge of spiritual adrenaline, the feeling that everything will now fall into place. The marriage will heal. The addiction will vanish. The finances will improve. The depression will lift. God is here now, and so everything will get better.
It’s not so different from the first exposure to a multi-level marketing (MLM) pitch. The atmosphere is electric. The stories are moving. The promise is clear: your life can change. You can be free. You can be rich. Just sign up, believe, and share the message.
In both, there’s a shared thread: euphoria.
But euphoria is not the same as truth. And feelings are not the same as foundation.
When the Storm Comes
What happens when the prayer goes unanswered? When the child we love isn’t healed? When the job disappears, the cancer spreads, or the one we couldn’t imagine life without is suddenly gone? The emotional high of being “saved” begins to fade. Reality hits hard. And like those who walk away from a collapsed MLM dream, many leave their faith behind—disillusioned, heartbroken, whispering, “This isn’t what I signed up for.”
But maybe the real tragedy is this: they didn’t really meet the fullness of Christianity at all.
They met a feeling. They met an expectation. But they didn’t meet the Cross.
The Missing Piece: The Suffering Christ
If only they had found the Catholic Church—not the cultural caricature of it, but the real, bleeding, ancient Church, still standing, still weeping with Christ on the Cross. In her, there is no false promise of worldly success. There is no easy road, no prosperity gospel. There is only truth, and the truth is love that suffers.
The Cross is not a footnote to the Christian life. It is the center. Christ did not come to give us a better version of the American dream. He came to die. And to rise. And to offer us a way—not around suffering, but through it. The saints knew this. The martyrs knew this. And the Church still knows this.
Where else but the Catholic Church do we kneel before a crucifix and see, day after day, what love really looks like?
Not a motivational speech. Not a financial breakthrough.
Not a genie in a bottle But a bruised, beaten God hanging between heaven and earth, whispering, “Follow Me.”
From Shallow Promises to Deep Roots
There’s a reason the early Christians didn’t sell faith like a business opportunity. There’s a reason the apostles didn’t promise wealth or ease. They promised truth. And they lived it—most of them to the point of death. Because real Christianity isn’t an emotional transaction. It’s a death and resurrection. It’s Eucharist. It’s Confession. It’s the long, steady grind of grace forming us through joy and pain.
And unlike the fleeting thrill of a new business venture or an emotional altar call, this faith doesn’t slip through your fingers. It roots you. Anchors you. Even in tears. Even in the cancer ward. Even at the grave.
Because it’s not about what you can get from God. It’s about who God is—and what He gave.
The Invitation
So to the one who feels like faith failed you… maybe what failed you wasn’t faith, but the version of it you were sold.
Come home. Come to the Church that doesn’t promise success but offers sacrificial love. Come meet Christ—not the one who fixes all your problems, but the one who walks with you through the storms.
The one who carried a Cross. And who still carries you.
By Richard Rohr, O.F.M. Condensed from the Catholic Digest To order the Digest, you can call 1-800-312-0411
“Try looking at pain as something that transforms. Once you learn to hold opposites together, you can find happiness.”
Julian of Norwich asked Jesus why there was so much suffering in the world and why God allowed it. “I allowed the worst thing possible to happen,” Jesus told her. “I let humanity kill God—and I made it the best thing… There isn’t anything that I cannot transform into good.”
That explains the old axiom, crux probat—the Cross proves everything. That is, the Cross (pain, suffering) is what transforms us. And yet, most people do not know how to handle pain. Fear, anxiety, and negativity bang around inside them until they can’t stand it, and so they look for ways to eliminate it. One quick way to diminish pain is to seek blame: “Whose fault is it?” That’s when the process of scapegoating begins—as evidenced, in our secular culture, by the high number of lawsuits. Where you do not have healthy spirituality, pain is always someone else’s fault.
The roots of this unhealthy thinking go deep, to the age-old notions of good and bad, worthy and unworthy. In such thinking, God and salvation are always found only in the pure, only in the good, only in the worthy. In such a dualistic world, there are always bad people to blame.
The revelation of Jesus, though, is that God is found in both the so-called good and the so-called bad. Most Christians worldwide haven’t gotten this message yet. It is too shocking. It is too disappointing. In the Incarnation—in the entering of human flesh—Jesus reveals that God is found in the actual, not in the idealized, the “pure, good, worthy.”
Pretend for a moment that all the good people are in your Church, and all the bad people are “out there.” Your Church is saved, and theirs is lost. How nice for you. How very convenient.
Everybody—all Churches—think this way, because it’s easy. It demands no transformation. You are saved because someone else is going to hell; you are smart because someone else is stupid.
Well, here’s another shocking truth: Jesus is not upset at sinners. The tax collectors and the prostitutes are getting into the kingdom of God before you (Mt 21:31), and Jesus said so to the people in the synagogue. Isn’t it obvious now why they killed Him? He broke down the distinctions that made their lives so clear and clean and nice.
The fact is, Jesus is only upset at people who do not think they are sinners. If I were to say that in half the churches in this country, I would have things thrown at me. And it is a disappointing statement. It says: No one else is your problem—not abortionists, or homosexuals, or your wife, or the pope.You are your own problem. So many of us put all our energy into changing others—making them into Catholics, for example—but true spirituality is about keeping your feet to the fire. So you grow up. You become changed.
A large percentage of Christians, as I know them, don’t understand the distinction between theism and Christianity. A theist is one who asks, “Is there a God?” Of course, the answer is yes. Everybody wants a God, and in most of Western culture, the available god figure has been Jesus. In theism, God exists to solve problems, and if you are good and you honor God, God will oblige.
Christianity has a very different message. It says God does not really solve our problems. God reveals them, leads us to the solution, leads us through the solution, and—here is the mystery of the Body of Christ—includes us in the solution. And so we are transformed. In Christianity, sin and salvation are two sides of the same mystery. Salvation is sin overcome and used for better purposes. The question becomes: How do we use evil for good?
Mary offers an example at Calvary. She does not try to pull Jesus off the Cross or try to sue somebody, saying, “This should not happen! This is unjust!” Of course it is unjust. But what does it mean? What is the message of the Crucifixion? Christ offers a similar example. He hangs on the horns of the human dilemma and does not eliminate it. He just hangs there, in a reality of pain and contradictions.
That is how transformation happens: by holding the tension instead of expelling it—holding it until it changes us.
Through the Cross, Jesus says you can love it all—even the enemy. There is no scapegoating. Everything, everyone belongs. There is only the broken and suffering Body of Christ—eternally crucified, eternally resurrected: the human eternally crucified, eternally resurrected. What faith and surrender and courage it takes to hold the Cross and the Resurrection simultaneously—to let both simultaneously be true in you, in your body, in your marriage, in your children, in your neighborhood, in the Church.
Stop looking for some perfect institution or perfect religion. Stop looking for the perfect friend or partner, because you will be disappointed. He is not Mr. Universe. She is not Miss America. He or she is an ordinary person with faults and wonderful gifts at the same time. It is so hard—but so rewarding—to hold the gifts and the faults together!
There are those who insist that reality be consistent and logical, and those who insist that life is only chaos. Those are the two poles—perfect consistency or chaos. In fact, what Jesus did in the revelation of the Cross was tell us that life is neither of those poles. The pattern of reality is neither perfectly consistent nor perfectly chaos—it is cruciform. There is order and structure, but it is filled with contradictions. Once you learn to hold opposites together, you can find happiness. You hang in the middle with Christ, on the Cross, which bears the mystery of reality—at once fully human and fully divine.
Meister Eckhart, the wonderful Dominican mystic, said that however great one’s suffering, God has suffered from it first. There is only one Cross, one Resurrection, captured in that microcosmic moment and person we call Jesus. We see it there; we understand it there. All the wars, the struggles, all resurrection and rebirth—is about God. We are merely fragments in this huge flame of divine action.
Mystics and sinners understand this because, unlike the rest of us, they are not trying to create a universe they can understand and explain. They’ve let go—surrendered to a new identity.
Basically, there are two patterns of transformation into the mystery of God—the pattern of pain and the pattern of prayer. However, because most people do not surrender to real prayer until they suffer pain, you can say there is only one pattern. The fact is, normally we aren’t willing to give up ego control until we must—until pain forces us to do so. Nobody walks gracefully into the mystery of Crucifixion.
That is why the mystery of suffering is so central to transformation. The mystic lets go of the need to prove anything, protect anything, defend anything, be superior to anything, be anything. I am who I am who I am. I am who God is in me.
At that point in spiritual development, you are so grounded that you do not have to worry about your reputation anymore—you don’t have to worry about seeking blame or using other people to make yourself feel good, or competing or winning. You are basically invulnerable.
The Franciscan word for this is poverty. The Carmelites call it nothingness; the Buddhists, emptiness. It says: I am naked underneath my clothes.
This experience feels like dying. If you do not have good spiritual wisdom while it’s happening, you will do everything you can to get back up. Yet, transformation is all about going down—into the pain, into the ordinary, into the physical, into the bloody, into the concrete. It’s about descent, not ascent—not heightened states of consciousness. In other words, until we can see God where we did not want to see God, the world remains a secular, dualistic world.
After we are transformed, we can look back and see that we were guided through this process by Another who is choosing us, desiring us, and is infinitely wise and compassionate. That means you do not have to figure out all the patterns ahead of time. You do not have to be that smart, that good. You just have to surrender. Good spirituality is not about being good. It is about God being good. When you keep your eyes on the reality of God’s goodness, then God rubs off into you. You start being good almost in spite of yourself, but you don’t even care about it anymore. You are not checking whether you are better than the next person. You’ve got something so much more wonderful to be excited about.
This is a difficult concept and a long process. Most people do not get to this understanding until their 60s and 70s. I meet a lot of old nuns in motherhouses and infirmaries. All they keep saying—over and over—is:
A quiet reflection on grief, memory, and the moment I knew I was home. After losing my grandfather at sixteen, I carried the weight of silence and sorrow for years—until one day, decades later, I stepped into a Catholic chapel. This is the story of a garden, the Crucifix, and the quiet voice that called me home.
When my young life seemed to be on life support, my hope came from my Grandpa and Grandma. If you had the great ones in your life, you know exactly what I mean. They saved us from the chaos— parents fighting, parents divorcing… and the tragic end to my mother’s life by suicide when I was eight years old.
So, when I lost my grandfather at sixteen, the blow was crushing.
He’d had a stroke, and a few days later he was able to come home. I was living with my grandparents at the time. When he got back from the hospital, he asked me to help him get to his garden.
He always had a big garden—one I didn’t always appreciate. When I was little, I refused to help pull weeds. He once chased me through it, weaving in and out of the corn stalks. But this time was different.
That walk—his last—must have been the hardest one he ever took. It wasn’t doctor-recommended. Might’ve even been what did him in. But I helped him get there.
And when we arrived, he had me lower him down to the earth. Not just dirt… this was sacred ground. On his knees, shaking a bit, he slowly reached out and picked one weed. That was it. One weed. Then he said, “Take me to the house, Richy.”
The next day, he was gone.
A couple days later, I found myself alone with him in the mortuary. I was sixteen and had just gotten my driver’s license. I drove my grandfather’s car to go be with him. Only he and I knew. It wasn’t time for the viewing—still eight hours away—but I wasn’t about to wait. I talked my way in. I would have broken glass to get in. I stayed with him all day. Just me and Grandpa. Open casket. Silence.
But the story doesn’t end there. It moves forward—23 years later, to Logan, Utah.
One day, I was moved—called—to walk into a Catholic chapel on the campus of Utah State. “Richy, come on in.”
The door was not locked. I listened. I walked in.
The chapel was empty—and it was beautiful. No music. No sermon. No crowds. Just sacred, candle-lit silence.
I walked slowly between the pews… Maybe ten feet from the altar… Twenty-five feet from the life-size Crucifix above.
There was a familiarity to this space. I went from sixteen years old to forty. I knew this place. I had been here before. I didn’t yet understand the Crucifix, but I was glad it was there.
I didn’t need words. Didn’t need to understand everything. I just needed to be there. I was prompted to be there. To be still. To spend the rest of the day with God.
Oh yes, I knew this place.
That’s the beauty of a silent Catholic chapel. Go there to simply be. Sit. Be quiet. Let the stillness speak.
Because the One who loves you most is there—waiting. Just like He was for me.
As someone who helped with church tours on the first Tuesday of each month, I thought it would be good to share a few stories. One that stands out is when an LDS youth group came through a few years back. I can’t remember all the details, but I’ll never forget the story told by the man who accompanied them—an LDS Army chaplain.
We had just finished speaking about Juan Diego and the Communion of Saints at the foot of Our Lady of Guadalupe when he asked if he could share something with the group. We didn’t know what he was going to say, but we replied, “Yes, of course.”
He reminded them that he had served as a chaplain in Iraq. While there, a Catholic friend invited him to attend Midnight Mass on base for Christmas. He accepted—and it was his first time attending a Catholic Mass. He told the youth how beautiful it was, and that he genuinely felt the Spirit of God.
Then he told them this:
“After the Mass ended, I decided to stay a while longer and pray. I was scared—not for myself, but for my wife and children back home in Logan. I had this deep feeling that something was going to happen to me, that I might not make it back. I was worried about what would become of them if I died there in Iraq.
While I was praying, the priest came in from the back and asked if everything was okay. I told him what was on my mind. We spoke for a few minutes, and then he asked me to hold out my hand. I did.
He took my hand, opened it, placed something inside, and then closed it gently and said, ‘You hold on to that. Everything will be okay.’
When I opened my hand, I saw a small cross.
It was the best gift I could have received at that moment.”
Needless to say, not knowing what he was going to share with the group, we sighed in relief—and were deeply moved. It was good to be there that night. Knowing how the LDS faith often distances itself from the symbol of the cross and the suffering Christ, the moment was… curious, to say the least.
Another moment I’ll never forget happened after the tour had ended. An LDS man I knew came up to me and said:
“Please don’t take offense at what I’m about to ask you. I ask with sincerity.”
I responded, “I won’t take offense. Ask anything you like.”
He said:
“It seems that Catholics focus more on the Crucifixion—the death of our Savior—rather than on the Resurrection. Is that true?”
As someone who had been Catholic for twelve years and had helped with RCIA for just as long since my own baptism, I was prepared for that question. But still, a certain sadness came over me. I knew I couldn’t explain the fullness of our faith in just a few sentences. But I had to try.
“I spent the first 39 years of my life attending Easter with my LDS family. We had wonderful dinners and great Easter egg hunts—so many fond memories and cherished pictures.
But when I was baptized Catholic, after the incense and the Easter Vigil candles were put out, I realized that I was actually celebrating Easter for the first time.
Twelve Easter seasons later… how do you explain the joy that the risen Jesus has brought into your life?
