After my Christmas sermon, a few people reached out to me. They were kind, but they suggested that perhaps I was exaggerating. They felt I was being a bit too anxious. “Bishop,” they implied, “it isn’t going to happen. Nobody is going to create a list. We are a civilized nation.”

On Christmas day, I shared how “It always starts with a list.” How King Herod began his work by making a list. That list ended in the mass murder of innocents. It is a sobering realization that Jesus began his life in the shadow of trauma caused by an evil thug, a leader who became so consumed by his own insecurity that he used administrative tools to facilitate slaughter.

History tells us that when the Nazi leadership began their work, the lists were often framed with the best of intentions—for administrative order, for census, for “organization.” Then, this past Wednesday, the news broke. The administration has directed the University of Pennsylvania to submit a list of Jewish students and faculty. The stated reason? To “protect” them.

I read those words and the hair on my arms stood up. This is exactly, word for word, the logic used to round up people in 1930s Germany.

As the lawyers for the American Association of University Professors and the American Academy of Jewish Research wrote in their response: “Compiling and turning over to the government ‘lists of Jews’ conjures a terrifying history.”

I am not here to interpret anyone’s private intentions. I do not know what is in the hearts of those making these demands. But I do know how evil works. Every great evil in history presents itself first as a great good. If it were ugly and obvious, we would run from it. But evil is clever; it dresses in noble clothing. It presents itself as desirable, as protective, as the only way to lead a “lawful” and “dignified” life.

People often ask me, “Bishop, does the Devil exist?”

I have no clearer answer than the words of Jesus. If I were to paraphrase the scriptures, I would say: The deceiver is a liar. The deceiver is the one who misleads us so that we no longer see humanity—the image of God—in the “other.” The deceiver makes us believe that a list is a shield, when history proves it is usually a target.

I want to be clear: the notes I have been posting these days are not intended to add to our collective anxiety. My goal is not to stir up fear for fear’s sake. Rather, I share these thoughts to keep us awake to the reality unfolding around us. We cannot afford to be sleeping through these moments as many did in Germany, simply because the reality was couched in the language of law, order, and national security. When injustice is dressed in the suit of a gentleman, it is easy to nod off. But we must stay awake.

I am reminded of the words of the German theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who watched his own church fall silent as the lists were being made:

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

The scriptures warn us to be “wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16). Wisdom requires us to look past the “protection” and see the precedent.

I leave you with these reflective questions:

* How do I see evil when it wears the mask of safety? Am I able to look past the “noble” intention to see the destructive power hiding beneath the surface?

* How do I see suffering in my neighbor? Do I recognize their pain as my own, or does a government label make it easier for me to look away from their individual face?

* How do I see disrespect when it is coded as “policy”? Do I notice when a human being is reduced to a data point, and does that loss of dignity bother my soul?

Martin Niemöller, a prominent German anti-Nazi theologian and Lutheran pastor who famously confessed his own initial complicity in the rise of the regime, famously wrote about the creeping silence of the “normal” class:

“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist... Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

I pray that I am wrong. I pray that my anxiety is misplaced. But I see the ledger being opened, and I hear the scratching of the pen. I cannot be silent. We must see the image of God in every person, not as a name on a government list, but as a beloved child of God.

The Ledger of Good Intentions: A Warning.

How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith Bishop of Washington, Mariann Edgar Budde

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I am often asked, “Bishop, what is prayer?”

It is a question that follows me, and no matter how I answer it for others, I always end the day asking it of myself. Did I pray today? What did I ask for? Did God listen to my woes, or was I simply talking to myself? When someone asks me to pray for them, I always say yes. And I do. But how I pray for them has changed deeply over the years.

I have learned that prayer is not an attempt to change the heart of God, but to change mine. It is not a tool to alter my circumstances, but a grace to help me accept them. It is not a bargain I strike with the Divine, but a conversation I have with myself about my next action, realizing my God is with me through it all. In a strange way, prayer has become more about me than it is about God—because God is already there.

The more I ask for something, the less interested I become in the specific outcome. It’s a paradox: the less I am attached to the “result” of my prayer, the better my attitude becomes. Prayer has become a daily walk, much like Enoch, who “walked faithfully with God” (Genesis 5:24). It has become the wonderment of Noah and Abraham, who questioned God, struggled with God, and eventually came to accept the reality of the path set before them. My Franciscan brother, Richard Rohr, often reminds me that prayer is not a way to get God to do what we want, but a way to become the person God wants us to be. It is that movement from my small, ego-centered world into a much larger, Christ-centered one.

For me, prayer is now the intentional choice to sit in a place where I can simply relax and be at peace. It is the practice of becoming fully aware that God is walking with me through the good and the bad times—not just the crises, and not just the celebrations, but the messy middle of life. I find myself leaning on the wisdom of Cynthia Bourgeault, who teaches that this kind of centering is a discipline of intentionality; I am not trying to make my mind go blank, I am simply practicing the art of letting go.

I am learning not to put pressure on what I ask for. Instead, I put the pressure on my own discipline. Am I faithful enough to give my time to the One I love? As I often say: Time is Love. Love is Prayer. Prayer is Commitment. That is the beginning and the end of it. Even Saint Francis of Assisi understood that the goal was never the words themselves, but the transformation of the heart. He knew that the greatest gift Christ gives us is the grace of overcoming the self.

I am learning to stop worrying about whether I am “doing it right.” I am choosing to stop worrying if my list of requests is long enough or holy enough. I want to simply offer my presence to the Presence. I am making a commitment to myself to stay on the walk, even when I amn’t sure where the path is leading. I am searching for the peace that comes when I stop bargaining and start simply being.

I hope I can walk with God and be enough. What else is there to pray for than being with God in all things in life?

Yes, there are plenty of things to worry about and pray for. I realize. In the end, crying through what I can’t deal with, laughing through what I rejoice in, and finding the center through it all is prayer, and the whole process, when I am aware that I am not alone. He is walking with me, holding me on his shoulders, as the classic Jesus walk on the beach! I learned that prayer is simply letting God shoulder me!

Realizing God is shouldering me along with the weight of my burdens is plenty of prayer. What a relief!

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a man whose pastoral identity was inseparable from his theology. For him, the Gospel was not a static doctrine to be admired, but a command to be obeyed. His life serves as a haunting mirror for modern Christians, particularly those in the West who find themselves tempted by the same political adulation that once paralyzed the German church. Bonhoeffer’s journey reminds us that when a nation begins to look toward a political figure for “salvation,” the Church has reached its “eleventh hour.”

The transformation of Bonhoeffer from an academic theologian to a radical disciple was forged in the United States. In the early 1930s, Bonhoeffer encountered the reality of American racism. Immersing himself in the Black church in Harlem, he witnessed a faith that was vibrantly alive because it was rooted in the experience of the oppressed. When his friends in that community pleaded, “Make our sufferings known to the people in Germany,” they were handing him a mandate.

He realized then that a faith which does not concern itself with the suffering of the “least of these” is a hollow shell. He saw a shallow faith in America—one that lacked a fundamental understanding of the source of salvation—and he recognized that same shallowness in Germany upon his return.

By 1933, the German public held an expectation that the salvation of the people would come from Adolf Hitler. The greeting “Heil Hitler” was not a benign social convention; in its linguistic and theological context, it was an act of worship. “Heil” carries the weight of “Salvation.”

Bonhoeffer saw the danger of this political messianism immediately. He insisted that “Salvation comes from only Jesus Christ.” He understood that the moment the Church begins to equate a political leader with a savior, it has abandoned the Cross. We see glimpses of this same shallowness today, where political adulation mimics religious fervor. But as Scripture reminds us in Acts 4:12: “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.”

Bonhoeffer’s most famous critique was directed at “cheap grace”—the idea that one can claim the benefits of the Gospel without the burden of the Cross. He wrote:

“Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession... Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”

In contrast, he championed Costly Grace. It is costly because it calls us to follow; it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it may cost a man his life; it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. This theology was not merely preached; it was lived. Bonhoeffer’s involvement in the resistance against Hitler was an act of obedience to the God who died for him—a God whose power is made perfect in weakness, not in the conquering might of a political system.

Bonhoeffer paid for his resistance with his life, executed at Flossenbürg concentration camp in 1945. He understood Matthew 16:24: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” His legacy is a powerful charge to all who follow Jesus: do not be deceived by the trumpets of the world. A fanfare of trumpets is no comfort to a dying man, nor can a political system save a soul. We must seek the silent companion, the Mother of Sorrows who stood at the foot of the Cross, and the Savior who occupied it. True discipleship demands moral courage—even unto death.

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The power of God’s call is not a reward for the perfect, but a summons for the willing.

The first truth we must grasp is that God does not show partiality.

No matter who you are, or where you have been, you are the beloved of God.

When we look at the stories of the Bible, we see a gallery of the “unqualified” according to world standards.

God chose them, prepared them, and then sent them out into the harvest.

Their backgrounds were messy, their status was low, and their standing was often compromised.

Think of the tax collectors like Matthew, the prostitutes like Rahab, the murderers like Moses, and the doubters like Thomas.

The list goes on: sinners, saints, kings, and outcasts.

They were all chosen, and they were all prepared for a specific purpose.

There is a divine reason why God chooses the broken and the overlooked.

It is because they can understand others better; they have walked the dusty roads of failure and know the scent of shame.

Because they have been mended, they know how to handle the shattered pieces of another person’s soul.

This unique preparation leads to a specific charge, which we hear in the soaring words of the prophet Isaiah.

“Thus says God, the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it...”

“...who gives breath to the people upon it and spirit to those who walk in it.”

The One who holds the cosmos also holds your specific, fragile life.

“I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand and kept you.”

“I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations.”

This is not a call to sit in a comfortable pew, but a call to be a “covenant” for others.

God’s chosen ones are sent “to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.”

As the poet Mary Oliver once asked, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

God answers that question by pointing us toward those who sit in darkness.

We see this most clearly in the baptism of Jesus, where the heavens open and a voice declares, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17).

Jesus did not wait until he had performed miracles to be called beloved; he was beloved before he ever started his ministry.

You, too, are chosen and beloved before you “do” anything for the kingdom.

The late Henri Nouwen wrote, “Being the beloved expresses the core truth of our existence.”

If we don’t believe we are beloved, we will try to use our call to prove our worth.

But when we know we are chosen, we can give our glory back to the One who called us.

As Isaiah reminds us, “I am the Lord, that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to idols.”

God is doing a new thing in you, even if you feel like you are still standing in the old wreckage.

“See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them.”

You are called to be a light to the nations precisely because you know what it feels like to be in the dark.

Your scars are your credentials.

Your past is the soil in which God is planting a new future.

The world may see a sinner or a failure, but God sees a light-bearer.

Do not be afraid of your brokenness, for it is the crack where the light gets in.

Walk out into the world knowing you are taken by the hand by the Creator of the heavens.

Open the eyes of the blind with your kindness.

Bring out the prisoners with your compassion.

Be the beloved community that God intended from the beginning.

Amen.

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When Christmas approaches, my family and friends often ask the same question: “Jos, what do you want this year?”

They know me well. They know I have no use for trinkets or things that gather dust. I am a man of utility and simple rhythms. So, I tell them the truth. Give me a box of tea candles. Give me some snacks from the Indian grocery store—maybe some spicy murukku or sweet ladoos. If you want to make them yourself, even better.

The snacks are for the body, but the tea candles? They are for my soul.

Every morning, the rhythm is the same. I wake up. I brush my teeth. I wash the sleep from my face. My body starts its trek toward the kitchen, toward the coffee pot. It is the destination we all seek in the early gray of the morning.

But before I reach the coffee, I make a mandatory stop. On my wall, there is a small sacred space. It is a simple circle—an image of Our Lady of Lourdes. This is where the tea candle finds its purpose.

I strike a match. I watch the wick catch. I say nothing.

Most days, it is just a ritual of centering. I stand there in the silence before the world starts screaming for my attention. I look at her, and I find my core. Occasionally, I speak the names of my children. I don’t get to see them daily, but in that flickering light, they are right there with me. I pray for my wife. I pray for my family. I name the people in my church and those who have sent me frantic texts asking for a “word with God.”

But then, I do something that has become the most important part of my day. I say the names of those I have hurt.

I never wake up with the intention to cause pain. I want to be the best version of myself for this world. I want to build, to care, to love. But I am human. I fail. Sometimes I say things without thinking them through. I get caught up in the momentum of that moment, and I leave a sting behind. It is a sad. Really. But it is my reality.

So, I stand before the Blessed Mother, and I say, “I am sorry for the pain I caused.” I place that burden in the flame.

Then, I turn the coin. I say a word for those who hurt me.

I am learning something as I get older: they are just like me. They didn’t mean to hurt me, either. They got caught up in their own emotions. They were drowning in their own experiences, their own bad days, their own private storms. They acted out of their own “caught-up-ness.”

I choose to let it go.

I don’t do this for them. I do it for me. I do it because when I let go, my heart feels lighter. My mind becomes a clear pool instead of a muddy swamp. My spirit becomes... light.

Saint Francis de Sales once said:

“The person who possesses Christian liberty has no other property than the spirit of God. If we are truly free, we do not care if we are corrected or ignored, for we only seek to be right with the Divine.”

That is what that little tea candle represents for me—liberty. The freedom to not carry yesterday’s grudges or yesterday’s guilt into today’s coffee. I am reminded of a few lines from the poet Mary Oliver:

Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light. It was what I was born for — to look, to listen, ... to lose myself inside this soft world — to be empty and filled.

I found this morning ritual of candle lighting is nothing other than a way to slow me down a bit. I wonder sometimes where I am going with this practice. I wonder if there is anything truly profound in it, or if it is just the habit of an old man.

It doesn’t matter finally, I’ve realized. After all, the Blessed Mother of Lourdes didn’t count my actions or my rituals. She doesn’t need a perfect prayer. She just wants me to be there—faithfully and every day. I am at peace with that. I am empty, I am filled, and then, I go make the coffee.

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Last night, I returned to Elie Wiesel’s Night—that searing testament to the Holocaust, that chronicle of unspeakable suffering witnessed through the eyes of a boy who lost everything. Forty million souls caught in humanity’s darkest hour.

Among the book’s many haunting passages, one phrase pierces through: “Clench your teeth and wait.”

This advice came to young Elie when the anger, pain, and struggle of the Jews in Germany reached its crescendo. An inmate offered these words as counsel, as comfort, perhaps as the only wisdom left when the world has abandoned reason. Clench your teeth and wait. Endure. Survive. This too shall pass.

But I find myself asking: should we simply clench our teeth and wait?

There was a woman on the train to Auschwitz. She cried out all day, and the others grew irritated. They thought her mad, hallucinating. “I see fire! I see fire!” she screamed into the suffocating darkness of the cattle car.

Her fellow prisoners wanted her to stop, to be quiet, to not disturb what little peace they could manufacture in their terror. Then they arrived. The crematoriums blazed. Bodies burned. There was the fire she had foreseen—the fire no one else could see until it was too late.

I think of her often now. I see signs.

Not to the extent of Nazi Germany—not yet, perhaps never. But I see patterns, and they are deeply uncomfortable. I smell the fear of those forced to carry documents to prove their right to exist in places they’ve called home. I feel the anger and trauma of those afraid to speak against atrocities. I hear the silence of those who witness the unlawful treatment, the deportations, the deaths at sea. I see the loss of freedom to speak, the fear that keeps people inside their homes.

James Baldwin wrote, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” Yet I watch as we collectively refuse to face, what is unfolding before us. I see the struggle of good leaders, trying to become great leaders, their voices caught in their throats. Even presidents remain quiet. For a long time, I believed they knew better than I did—that their silence meant they understood something I couldn’t grasp. Now I realize they are as afraid as I am.

I see a judiciary that claims to correct past wrongs, while falling into the same patterns of lies and deceit that corrupted the courts of Nazi Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Maduro’s Venezuela. The list grows longer.

Margaret Atwood reminds us in The Handmaid’s Tale: “Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you’d be boiled to death before you knew it.” This is the truth I cannot escape. It happens slowly, then all at once. Overnight, people are rounded up. Citizens deported within twenty-four hours. Then the news cycle moves on, and we fall into complacency, because our memories are short, and our capacity for horror is limited.

It happened to the Jews this way—slowly, methodically, lawfully for those who didn’t fall into the targeted class. It didn’t affect them, so they couldn’t see. It was for those people. People without faces. People who weren’t friends. Someone convinced the “normal” class that nothing would happen to them—only to those who looked different, talked different, believed different, those who didn’t fall in line with what the leader demanded.

W.H. Auden, understood this pattern when he wrote in “September 1, 1939”:

“I and the public know

What all schoolchildren learn,

Those to whom evil is done

Do evil in return.”

Like the woman on that train to Auschwitz, I find myself crying out: “I see fire. I see fire.”

Even writing these words frightens me. I have no criminal record, no pattern of dangerous behavior. But when power consolidates, when truth becomes negotiable, these facts can be erased and rewritten. A man wrongly deported suddenly becomes a human trafficker in official records.

A young girl arrested becomes a national threat, because she wrote in a university journal her views about atrocities in Gaza. A child brought here as an infant becomes a criminal for lacking papers. The machinery of injustice works efficiently once it begins turning.

I could fill pages with examples, but today my intention is simpler: to say aloud what I see. To refuse the comfort of silence. To be the woman on the train, however unwelcome her message may be.

I pray that these are merely my own fevered imaginings. I pray that I am delusional, paranoid, wrong. I pray that the patterns I perceive will dissolve into nothing more than anxious speculation. But history teaches us that the woman who saw fire was not mad—she was prophetic.

So I keep trusting that God remains present in the midst of suffering, as He was for the Jews, the Arabs, the Mexicans, the poor around the world. I pray for goodness and mercy to prevail. I pray for kindness to resurface in hardened hearts. I pray we might yet become, as Dr. King envisioned, the Beloved Community.

But I will not clench my teeth and wait in silence.

I see fire.

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“I want Greenland. I want Venezuela.”

Whether it is a literal island, a neighbor’s oil, a distant water source, or the very autonomy of other human beings, the cry of the powerful remains the same across the centuries. We live in a world where we always seem to want more than we need. We have given it many names—colonialism, manifest destiny, national interest, economic security—but beneath the polished vocabulary of statecraft lies a very old and very simple sin: Greed.

Greed is the act of coveting what belongs to another. It is the restless energy that looks across a border or a fence and decides that “what is mine is not enough.” This human desire to possess what is not ours has existed since the beginning. It is why the Ten Commandments explicitly warn us: “Neither shall you covet your neighbor’s wife; and you shall not desire your neighbor’s house, his field, or his male servant, or his female servant, his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s” (Deuteronomy 5:21).

The rich and the powerful will always find a way to justify their hunger. They will wrap it in theology, dress it in economic necessity, or mask it behind financial projections. This is not a problem unique to one president or one nation. We see it in the halls of power in Washington, Moscow, Beijing, and New Delhi. The list goes on, but the story is always the same: the strong devouring the weak.

I am reminded of the story of King David and Naboth’s vineyard, or even more poignantly, the parable told to David by the Prophet Nathan after the King had taken what did not belong to him. Nathan spoke of a rich man with many flocks who took the single, beloved ewe lamb of a poor neighbor just to feed a traveler. When David grew angry at the injustice, Nathan leveled the finger of truth: “You are the man!” (2 Samuel 12:7).

Wars do not start for the well-being of others. Let no one fool us. When a nation is invaded, or a smaller people group is absorbed, it is not an act of charity; it is an act of theft. From the Old Testament stories of capturing tribal lands to the conquests of Alexander and Caesar, to the Popes and Kings of the Middle Ages who carved up the world in God’s name—it is all a fraud. We either stand with the fraudster or we stand with the Truth.

Why are we so greedy? Why are we not satisfied with the abundance within us—the unique, God-given soul that no one can ever steal? We are truly rich only when we care for those who need love. Material possessions are not transformational; they cannot change the rhythm of a heart.

The Bible is clear on the cruelty of this path: “He who oppresses the poor to increase his wealth and he who gives gifts to the rich—both come only to poverty” (Proverbs 22:16).

In the Middle Ages, the poet Dante Alighieri envisioned the greedy in the Divine Comedy, forced to push heavy weights against one another, forever trapped by the very things they sought to possess. St. Thomas Aquinas warned us that greed is a “sin against God, just as all mortal sins, in as much as man condemns things eternal for the sake of things temporal.”

I wonder, what if we stopped looking at “Greenland” and started looking at the person beside us? What if we realized that when we take what is not ours, we lose the only thing that actually matters—our own integrity?

I pray that we find the courage to be satisfied. I pray we find the strength to protect the “ewe lambs” of our neighbors. In the end, we take nothing with us but the love we gave away.

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The Day of Epiphany is often celebrated as a feast of pure radiance—the “Great Manifestation” of a star so bright it pulled men across deserts. We are taught that light makes life easy; it reveals the path, clarifies the destination, and fuels our imagination. But as I look at the stars in my own life, I’ve begun to realize that the light is only half the story. There is a profound, necessary imagination that can only be found in the darkness.

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I find myself wondering about the Magi. We focus on the star, but they spent the vast majority of their journey in the dark. They traveled by night, after all. The light was their guide, but the darkness was their container. It was in the cold, silent expanses of the desert night that their hope had to mature.

A good life, I’ve discovered, is not the absence of shadows, but a mixture of light and dark moments. It is the awareness that both are required to truly experience “seeing.” Without the velvet backdrop of the night, the star is invisible. Without the struggle of the journey, the arrival has no weight. The Magi didn’t just find light at the end of a tunnel; they found a way to let the light and the dark work together to bring them to the Divine.

It is easy to cast Herod as the personification of pure darkness, the villain of the Epiphany story. He was a man consumed by the fear of losing power, planning the unthinkable to protect his throne. Yet, as I reflect personally, I have to admit that Herod lives in me, too. We all struggle with moments of jealousy, possessiveness, and the urge to “kill” the things that threaten our ego or our comfort.

Does this mean I am devoid of light? I don’t think so. Even Herod was aware of the prophecy; he was aware of the “King of the Jews.” He saw the light of the Magi’s arrival, but he tried to weaponize it. My own struggle with the darkness within is not a sign of failure, but a sign of my humanity. The theologian Paul Tillich once wrote, “The light of the eternal shines through the darkness of the temporal, but the darkness does not comprehend it.” I feel this tension constantly—the eternal light of God shining through my very temporal, very flawed shadows.

I used to think that the goal of the spiritual life was to eliminate the dark, to reach a state of perpetual noon. But I now see that such a life would be blinding and flat. To enjoy the light, I must respect the dark. The darkness is where the seeds germinate; the light is what calls them toward the surface.

My personal wonderment today is that God chose to manifest in a world that was—and is—deeply dark. The Epiphany isn’t about the light winning a war against the night; it’s about the light being born into the night. It is about the courage to keep walking when the star is obscured by clouds, trusting that the “God within” is holding both the shadow and the flame. I am learning to stop fearing my own dark moments and instead see them as the very places where the imagination of God is most active, preparing me for the next dawn.

Love

Bishop Jos

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I was a child, maybe four or five years old, when I first met her. The Blessed Mother of Lourdes. I was a tiny member of the Sodality of Mary, wearing a ribbon that felt far too grand.

I didn’t know what that was for or why! Ha. But it was amazing. We stood before the grotto, a cool place of stone and shadow. We prayed like a bullet train—Hail Mary’s rushing past like heavy wind. The scent of beeswax and the blue of her sash were etched into my mind. A permanent, gentle mark. That smell and color, still create calmness.

I have never been a fanatic. Nothing in this world is so perfect that I can’t live without it. I have never sought the loud or the dramatic in my faith. But in times when the world feels sharp and loud, my feet find the old path. In moments of anxiety, I find myself back at the grotto. Wherever I am, I look for a candle. I strike a match, and the small flame dances. I stare at the candle. I say the Hail Mary, and the frantic speed of the world begins to slow. My heart finds its rhythm again. My spirit finds a soft place to land.

Now, years later, I am evaluating these quiet practices. I share them with folks who look to me for wisdom. I ask myself: Why do I do this? I don’t have a complex theological map. I don’t have a lecture prepared on the mechanics of intercession. The honest truth is much simpler: It calms my nerves. It gives me a center to hold on to. Life is chaotic most of the time, but with this moment at the inner grotto, I have learned to manage it.

Every morning, I have a ritual. A sacred spot with the image of the Mother of Lourdes on the wall at home—a tiny island of peace in a sea of emails and appointments, there I light a candle. I watch the smoke curl upward like a silent thought. I stand there for a few seconds. I ask for nothing. I don’t even “pray” in the way people expect a Bishop to pray. I just stare at the dancing candle. I stare at her gentle face, bathed in the glow. Occasionally, I whisper to the silence. “Blessed Mother, I am anxious.” “Mother, I am worried today.” “Blessed Mother, I simply don’t know what to do.”

Then I move on into the day. I pass that altar several times. Each time, I leave a few words behind like petals. “That was a stressful meeting.” “I don’t know why he said that.” “I don’t know why I feel this way.” I don’t dare to judge anyone, because I don’t know the secrets of their hearts. Heavens, I barely know the secrets of my own.

I have come to a place where I don’t want to analyze. I just want to acknowledge. The Blessed Mother is the perfect listener. She is like the moon—reflecting a greater light, steady and quiet. She doesn’t talk back. She doesn’t offer feedback or a list of things to fix. She simply lets me hear myself.

And most of the time? That is the greatest mercy. I need to hear my own words in the air. I need to feel how small a worry becomes when it is placed in her lap. In the stillness of her presence, my own noise turns into music.

My devotion from age four to now is a simple thread. I don’t always know what I am asking. But I know I am standing in her light. I know she is watching over me with a mother’s patient eye. What else does a child of God really need?

I think of St. Bernadette, who saw the Lady in the hollow of the rock. She was a child of simple grace, and she once said:

“I shall do everything for Heaven, my true home. There I shall find my Mother in all the splendor of her glory.”

I don’t need the splendor yet. I pray I never need it. I am happy with the candle-light. I am happy with the quiet corner. I choose to let my religion be a soft place to rest. A mother who listens while I find my way home.

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If someone came to me today with a claim as outrageous as the one Gabriel brought to Mary, I suspect my first instinct would be to check my pulse or look for the exit. To be told that the impossible is not only possible but is currently taking root inside of you—at a time when such a thing meant social exile or worse—is a terrifying proposition. Yet, as I sit with her story, I realize that Mary’s “yes” didn’t start with the angel. It started with a lifetime of listening to the silence within herself.

I often find myself caught in the struggle of trusting the “God within.” We are conditioned to look for the Divine in the spectacular, the external, or the historically sanctioned. We look for God in books, in cathedrals, or in the advice of others. But Mary’s motherhood demands a different kind of orientation. She had to trust her inner being first. She had to believe in the resonance of her own soul before she could believe the words of the messenger standing before her.

For me, this is the most daunting part of the spiritual journey: the call to self-awareness. To be truly aware of God within is to acknowledge a presence that is more intimate than my own breath, yet often more foreign than a stranger. It requires me to trust my own intuition—that deep, quiet hum of “this is true”—even when the logic of the world shouts that it is “outrageous.”

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I wonder at the weight of that internal alignment. Mary brought the Son of God into the world not because she was a passive recipient of a divine decree, but because she was an active participant who trusted her inner landscape. She owned her agency. She felt the stirrings of the Infinite in the center of her own humanity and decided that her internal reality was more authoritative than the external expectations of her culture.

The contemporary poet Denise Levertov captures this beautifully in her poem, The Annunciation:

“She was not chosenbecause she wasmore naive than the rest of us...

She was chosen becauseshe was able to sayYes.”

That “Yes” is what I am seeking in my own life. It is the power that comes when I stop outsourcing my faith and start inhabiting it. When I look at Mary, I see a woman who dared to believe that her inner self was a fit temple for the Creator.

There is a staggering power in that level of self-trust. When I finally stop doubting the “still small voice” and treat my inner stirrings as holy, I begin to realize that I, too, am called to bring something of the Divine into the world. It may not be the Savior of mankind, but it is a unique expression of Light that only I can carry. The struggle to trust God within is really the struggle to believe that I am worthy of such an indwelling. Mary’s life is the radical proof that we are.

I often ask myself, “do I trust my inner landscape?”

I often find myself wondering, “if I could say YES when asked.”

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bishopjos.substack.com