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In this recently released interview with Tammy Peterson, which has 22K views on YouTube in less than a week since it was posted, we move slowly through the seven stories (including hers) that are the heart of the book.

I love how the YouTube thumbnail Tammy put up simply states: “Mary is Real.”

I have to admit that I looked at the comments on YouTube with some trepidation, as I know this topic generates strong opinions. But to my delight, when people expressed the typical concerns about Marian beliefs and devotions, they were met by faithful Christians who quoted Scripture, the church fathers, and church teachings.

But what struck me was that the truth of those teachings resonated with many deep personal experiences people have had with Mary. Mary is a person we can relate to in a variety of ways, trusting in her not to lead us astray.

An important part of this project for me was understanding and defending the love of Mary using Scripture, the church fathers, church history, church teachings, liturgical prayers, hymns, and icons of Mary. I buried myself in the library, then agonized until I realized I didn’t need to write a book summarizing all the sources I'd read. I could, if I wanted to, answer every single concern or objection about Mary by drawing on Scripture and tradition. Anyone who wants to know more can jump to the appendix of my book to find great resources and start reading.

But I want people to read stories like Tammy’s so they can see Mary is really present today. When she was facing a life-threatening illness, a Catholic friend taught (then non-Christian) Tammy to pray the rosary, leading her through the Scripture verses that go with each decade of Our Fathers and Hail Marys. In my private conversations with Tammy Peterson, which are now published in my book, Tammy stated clearly, “Mary led me to Christ, and Christ led me to the Church.”

Tammy was seeking God fervently, but she needed to be formed so she could receive more light. Although the rosary certainly expresses love for Mary, the formative power of the rosary is that its prayers order our attention to the life of Christ in the Gospels from the Annunciation to his glorious resurrection. When documents like Pope Paul VI’s 1974 letter Marialis Cultus talk about devotion to Mary being subordinate to Christ, that does not mean love of Mary lessens our love for Christ, but rather, love of Mary is meant to bind us to Christ and his church, as it did for Tammy.

Perhaps we can think of the formative power of prayers like the rosary and other devotions to Mary like hiking up a mountain. Climbing a mountain to hear God speak has deep Biblical resonances. Moses heard God’s word on a mountaintop. Christ ascended a mountain at the Transfiguration, so filled with light that the disciples fell to the ground.

When I visited Tammy in Arizona, I followed her quick steps up Camelback Mountain. The view got wider, and my sense of anticipation for anything and everything was heightened. At the edge of earth and sky, creation seemed miraculous.

I’m keenly aware that the ability to achieve any athletic feat requires daily exercise. This is especially true for me since I was injured by being hit by a car when walking across the street nearly seven years ago; now I have to work out regularly just to avoid pain. Humans are a unity of body and soul, and our hearts and our intellects need to be formed as much as our bodies.

We are all fallen and in need of grace. Who among us does not need to be formed to see Christ as we should? Who has not struggled to join a church or stay in church? Who does not need guides so we continuously stick to the path we have called to follow?

As Tammy remarks in the foreword she wrote to my book When Mary Calls: “So many people in the world today are confused about what it means to be a person and to be a mother. Feminism, digital isolation, broken families, psychological pain, and fragmentation of all kinds have left many people cynical that life can be anything more than an endless competition or a series of pointless struggles…Each person’s story in this book reveals that wisdom [of Scripture] in powerful, personal ways. Most importantly, the Mother of our Lord, who is too often forgotten, is powerfully present in these pages. You will read about various ways Mary touches people, heals them, and carries them to God. This book will help you know that Mary is calling you, too.”

“Holy Mary, Mother of God…” Those powerful words from the second part of the Hail Mary are not word-for-word in Scripture. But they do point us back to the Incarnation of Christ through a human mother, and to Mary as the one whom all generations will call blessed (Luke 1:48). Such beautiful words are easy to repeat, easy to memorize, as Tammy did in the hospital years ago, freeing our hearts from fear, isolation, and doubt to ask for a clearer vision of how God’s plan for our lives.

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Knowing Mary better thus allows us to explore larger questions all Christians grapple with such as: how does God’s grace work? What did the Apostle Peter mean when he said all followers of Christ “may become participants of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4)?

Each chapter of my book presents people encountering Mary, herself a vessel of the Holy Spirit at the Incarnation, as, they, too, long to to have Pentecostal moments. Those moments where we feel upheld by God’s grace strengthen our faith that deification, or sanctification, becoming partakers in the divine nature, is a possibility for each and every person.

Acts 1:14 names Mary as being present in the upper room while the disciples awaited the coming of the Holy Spirit. Images such as this one by Jean Restout visually illustrate Mary’s central presence at the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles.

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A Student’s Reflections on Mary at Pentecost

The very first time I taught a course on Mary to my mostly Protestant students at Princeton Theological Seminary, a young man named Kyle Barton said he thought knowing more about Mary’s life of grace would help him understand in how the early church understood deification.

For one of his class assignments, Kyle studied Cardinal Rainero Cantalamessa’s Mary, Mirror of the Church. Born in Italy, and having studied theology in Fribourg, Switzerland, and classical literature in Milan, Italy, Cantalamessa served for 12 years as a member of the Catholic Commission for dialogue with the Pentecostal churches. He was appointed preacher to the Papal Household by Pope Saint John Paul II, a position he also held under Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis.

Cantalamessa: Mary is a Mirror of the Church

Kyle, who is now continuing his theological studies as a PhD student at Baylor University, wrote a fantastic introduction to Cantalamessa’s book, which I quote here:

“In Mary, Mirror of the Church Raniero Cardinal Cantalamessa presents a series of reflections on the scriptural witness to Mary as a path to practical holiness. As the title indicates, Cantalamessa views Mary as a mirror of the church. All Christians are to see an image of their own calling to faithful discipleship reflected in her experiences. Though her role in salvation history is unique—for no other human is elected to be Theotokos—her experiences, in principle, are not unrepeatable. She is a map that God gives us for our own pilgrimage to practical holiness, and if we know how to read her correctly, a clear path forward will open for the church.

While the New Testament mentions Mary only a few times, Cantalamessa believes these references are strategic and of great significance, containing clues to the crux of the Christian life. As Cantalamessa points out numerous times, only Mary was present at all three events that form the heart of the Christian mystery—the incarnation, the crucifixion, and Pentecost. Like a small glimmer of gold in a mine, these references, though scant, should signal to believers the riches available here if they just started digging. Contemplating Mary’s place in these mysteries elucidates the mysteries of our own pilgrimage of faith, for here a human vessel participates in the great events that comprise salvation—the union of divinity and humanity, the defeat of death and removal of sin, and the birth of the church through the reception of the Holy Spirit.

To be a Christian is to know these mysteries experientially, and thus to be a Christian is to follow in Mary’s footsteps no less than it is to follow in Abraham’s. Cantalamessa’s conviction is that God speaks to us through Mary’s life, and though the Scriptures do not present her as loquacious, she is in fact ‘pregnant with the Word,’ so that ‘the few words and verses referring to her in the Gospels are extraordinarily charged with meaning and resonance.’“

Reading Kyle’s full paper, linked to here with his gracious permission, will certainly delight you as much as it did me!

Barton Mary, Mirror Of The Church

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Cantalamessa writes and speaks about Mary, as do I, with the hope that, as she did at Pentecost, she will serve as a source of unity, helping Catholics and Protestants encounter the Scriptures anew.

Mary and the Gospel of Grace

The title of my book, When Mary Calls, attempts to capture the reality I encountered: many people from a variety of Christian backgrounds, or no particular religious background, are experiencing Mary’s presence in their lives, calling them to a life of holiness, of seeking to walk in God’s grace.

I wrote my book for seekers as well as those who already know Mary well, or only known a little. I’m inspired to do what Cantalamessa describes as presenting “the Christian life through preaching the gospel of grace…in a kerygmatic way [a passionate proclamation of the Gospel of our salvation[, certain that it has an intrinsic power.” I do not discard dogmas as somehow irrelevant, but I focus on the transformative life experiences which give those dogmas meaning.

As Cantalamessa writes, “When Scripture is the basis, the starting point is God’s Word, and in expounding its meaning, the dogma is reached as the true interpretation given by the Church. This is the way truth came down to us.”

Mary’s presence at Pentecost reminds us that we are not meant to journey towards God alone, but with the church. Cantalamessa writes, “Mary is a mirror of the Church in two ways: to reflect the light she herself receives as a mirror does with the light of the sun. And because she is such that the Church can and must mirror herself in Mary to make herself beautiful for her heavenly spouse.”

Yes, Mary was the First Pentecostal

After going through each chapter of the book, Kyle reaches a profound conclusion that can be drawn from meditating upon Mary’s presence at Pentecost. As he wrote in his essay for my class “Ecumencial Devotion to Mary”,

“Chapter 8 brings us directly to Pentecost, where Cantalamessa christens Mary ‘the first pentecostal’ in the church. A striking parallel is sketched between Mary’s experience in Luke 1 and the church’s experience in Acts 1. In both instances, the Spirit comes upon individuals who then proclaim the great things that God has done. Mary becomes a type of the church as ‘a living organism, irrigated and animated by the Holy Spirit’ through both sacraments and charisms. Most interesting here is how Mary becomes an example of ‘the free and unpredictable action of God’s Spirit,’ who works ‘outside the instituted channels’ of the church’s hierarchical structure. Mary’s experience teaches us to look to a God who ‘intervenes explosively… to renew a tradition and a cult that have become simple routine and formalism.’

Chapter 9 is on the Johannine Pentecost—’he bowed is head and give up his Spirit.’ While Luke emphasizes the Spirit’s power in the church’s mission, John emphasizes the Spirit’s presence in the church’s life. Mary teaches us that no matter how much God has used us in the past, we are always in need of ‘new and successive effusions of the Holy Spirit’ and that many times Pentecost ‘takes place beneath the cross.’

Cantalamessa has given us a rich meditation on Mary as an example of the path of discipleship. There is much here that Protestants can appreciate. Although Cantalamessa does not skirt the Marian dogmas, he goes out of his way to be conciliatory and to be sensitive to his Protestant siblings’ consternations and grievances. When he unavoidably must present Mary’s premier role and titles per Catholic teaching, he reasons at length to make them intelligible, admits that they have been sometimes taken to wrong extremes, and even a few times does not insist that all have to follow this path. After explaining how believers, like John, are to take Mary into their lives—one of the more devotionally radical teachings of the book—he then concedes that ‘this kind of life with Mary is not the only and necessary way to be imposed on everyone.’ He longs that Mary would become a source of unity in the church, not division.”

Part of the assignment for class was to imagine how a book about Mary would reach Protestants.

Kyle wrote: “Would this approach appeal to Protestants? I think so. It is a serious, engaging, and heartfelt plea to learn from Mary to whatever extent the Spirit calls one. There are resources in these pages that could spawn numerous Protestant Bible studies and sermons. Protestants do well to listen attentively and follow where they can.

Cantalamessa showcases the value of a devotional approach ‘from below,’ sourced in Scripture. I was truly surprised by the mileage he got out of this approach, especially when put into conversation with the whole canon of Scripture powered by a typologically rich hermeneutic. This is a book I will be returning to and recommending to my fellow Protestants who are looking to reflect more deeply on the lessons that Mary’s life can teach us. And for those Protestants who are not yet able to call Mary Mother, maybe they can start with Mirror.”

Cantalamessa’s book presents a challenge, or maybe better put, an adventure, that Kyle was willing to take up. After we consider something in Mary’s life, we must ask ourselves, what does this mean for us? We must not just be hearers of the Word, but doers, as Mary herself was.

Our Response to the Holy Spirit

As Cantalamessa puts it: “Mary teaches us to say yes to God with freedom, joy, and passion.” Mary calls us towards God, and, if we allow her, she will teach us to be good disciples, as she certainly did in the upper room at Pentecost and for the early Christian church.

Mary’s quiet presence at Pentecost, and her often silent presence at other places in Scripture, including the Nativity and the Cross, is pregnant with meaning. Perhaps, with Mary at our side, we can look anew at the Scriptures, opening ourselves to the power of the Holy Spirit to transform us from within, moving from silent prayer to willing obedience to God’s calls.

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All of us inevitably must confront death—our own and that of our loved ones. My book reflects on what Mary’s spiritual motherhood meant to me, a woman who did not marry until I was 48, when I lost a student who I loved like a spiritual son. John was born 33 years ago today, on April 23, 1993. Tragically, he died of cancer on May 3rd, 2019.

When I went with John to his last Mass on earth, he cried out, “Mary, help us all!” I believe Mary welcomed him home to God the Father, just as I believe she did for Eric Metaxas’s father, and so many others who have experienced mystical encounters with Mary.

To celebrate John’s amazing life, I wanted to share the eulogy to John I gave at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City at his funeral Mass held on May 7th, 2019. A few paragraphs of the eulogy I believe were divinely inspired—I woke up in the middle of the night with important words I needed to add to clarify that John faced his death with hope. I couldn’t sleep again, so I conversed with Mary and Jesus for hours, simply repeating the rosary prayers, until the sun came up.

Exhausted but convicted, I clutched a rosary as I walked up the steps to the alar at St. Patrick’s, pausing to bow before the tabernacle. I stood at the podium and spoke the most heart-wrenching, yet hopeful, words I’ve ever spoken in front of a packed cathedral of John’s mourning friends and family. On the way back to my seat, I laid my head and my rosary on John’s coffin and let the tears flow like a river.

Now, I share once again my final conversations with John, a bittersweet reminder that spiritual motherhood is a beautiful gift God gave a woman like me who longed for biological children but never received them. My personal life has shown me the many ways God makes that which appears barren to be fertile.

I hope you read this eulogy, and read When Mary Calls, and remember that Mary is your mother, too. I hope you allow Mary to walk with you, as John and I did, as you pass through the valley of tears in this life on your pilgrimage towards the New Jerusalem.

A Eulogy for John Aroutiounian

The last time I saw John Aroutiounian was Sunday, April 7^th. We met at Big Daddy’s, a 1950s diner on Broadway. John’s cancer was well advanced by that time, but he didn’t want to talk about his illness. So we talked about politics, we talked about our favorite music, and I unburdened on him some of my own personal concerns.

When the food came, John was so sick he could barely eat. I could see his energy disappearing fast. They brought the bill and John reached for his wallet. When I told him to put his wallet away, he got mad. He was a person for others. Generous to an heroic degree. The creditor in almost every relationship.

Easter was just a couple of weeks away, and John had told me not long before, with a sparkle in his eyes, that if he felt better, he was going to hop on a plane to the Holy Land—Jerusalem—for Easter. But as his suffering worsened rapidly, he looked at me that day and said, “Margarita, I’m not going to make it to Jerusalem for Easter. I may not make it to Easter at all.”

As I said goodbye to him that day, he was in terrible pain, but he called out to me, saying that he was so happy I had come over, and he thanked me for being there with him. As I walked out the door, he shouted three times that he loved me.

We pray that John has now finished the pilgrimage of life to the heavenly Jerusalem where he celebrates the fulfillment of all Jesus accomplished on Easter.

I have had the joy to write several letters of recommendation for John since I met him during my time on the faculty at Yale. He made it so easy to praise him to others. He had some huge accomplishments, like winning the tough but friendly competition to be speaker of the prestigious Yale Political Union. But his erudition and passion were surpassed by his compassion, serving as a suicide hotline counselor and as a freshmen counselor at Yale’s Jonathan Edwards College.

John and I worked together to organize a variety of student groups, first at Yale and then through a nonprofit I started called Scala, that focused on integrating intellectual and personal development. John keenly wanted to imbibe everything he did with a spirit of friendship and community. More than just a student of mine and a collaborator, I thought of John like a son, someone with whom I could share intellectual jousting but also the ups and downs, joys, and sorrows and big questions of life.

In God’s providential plan, I had scheduled to have dinner with John in New York in January 2018, on the day he received his cancer diagnosis. His body didn’t really show signs of illness until almost a year later. John chose to suffer quietly, without a lot of attention. John was a self-giver. He wanted to care for others. He didn’t want the spotlight on himself.

It was very hard, but also an honor, to watch him suffer so much. When I visited him in the hospital on March 24, we wept together over his pain and fears about his earthly end. When our tears dried, we talked about a subject he had broached several times since he received his diagnosis: that suffering can be redemptive. If somehow God was going to allow John to die so young, John believed firmly that his suffering would not be in vain. Jesus once said in the Gospel, “No one takes my life from me. I freely lay it down” (Jn 10:18). John likewise willingly offered his life, in the prime of his life, to God for the good of others.

I was blessed to one of the few people near John in his final weeks on earth. In one of my last emails to him, I told him that in seeing his so body sick, I simultaneously saw more clearly why so many people loved him: he had a soul and heart that desired truth, beauty, goodness and the infinite. As his sufferings grew, his faith grew, and therefore his natural ability to love others expanded as well.

John desired great things. When we were talking about some of them, I suggested to him that those desires were the sign of God’s image in him. We long for the transcendent, and that helps give unity and grandeur to the beautiful things of the world and lifts our human loves up to a sacred level. John smiled, because in some ways, I think, he recognized it to be autobiographical: John knew how to unite the human and the sacred, and he did that most powerfully through the way he embraced his own cross. It made him better, not bitter.

Suffering, he shared, doesn’t rob us of our grandeur; rather, when lived well, it prepares us for grandeur by breaking our sense of control and our self-centeredness. Suffering does this by turning our attention to our dependence on God, which rather than diminishing us, ennobles us.

Not long before he died, he told me how much he loved liturgy. To worship God, John said, was the most human thing we can do because to be in the presence of our Creator fulfills the deepest desires of our humanity. I went to Mass with John on March 31st. He was suffering so much that he could barely walk or stand. But he was there, worshipping God with all he could muster. It moved me to tears.

As he approached the end, I wrote in my journal that although I feared he was dying, his life would always bea sign to me of the dignity of every human person, and how his big dreams were a sign of the great things we are called to become even as and after our bodies waste away.

I finished the entry with a prayer expressing the hope that comes from the depth of the Christian faith we shared: “John, I will see you again in heaven and call you by name. And we shall worship together again at the throne of our Creator, Lord and Redeemer.”

In the last few months of his life, when his medical diagnosis was grim, when it appeared science couldn’t save him, I joined John and his loved ones in praying for a miracle down to the last moment of his life. I didn’t want John to die! John had so many things, so many people to live for! He loved so many people!

But, I believed that if God didn’t grant the miracle we were all asking for, John had accepted his innocent suffering as a kind of martyrdom, an offering of love, an act of obedience even. Through John’s love and obedience, the willing sacrifice of his life on earth, I firmly believe that God will work even greater miracles in this world.

And I hope that, when my earthly life comes to its end, I will imitate John’s courage and faith. Like he did on earth the last time I saw him, when it’s time to go home to the heavenly Jerusalem, I believe that John will call out, not just to me, but to all of us who loved him, telling us he loves us, and saying how happy and grateful he is that we have come to be with him.

Remembering John Aroutiounian

These remarks, and other conversations I had with John as he approached his death with grace and hope, will be shared in a future volume of writings from John’s friends being prepared by his family. Some of John’s writings on politics, faith and culture were published in the book Finding Gold in the Dark: Reflecting on Modern America, Virtue and Faith.

John was with me from the birth of Scala in 2016, helping me develop its vision and put together its first summer program. Here is John’s testimony from when he participated in (and helped to organize) Scala’s first summer seminar in 2017, held at Oxford University and Ampleforth Abbey, UK.

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In less than three weeks, on May 5, 2026, my book on Mary will be officially released! If you like, you can pre-order When Mary Calls: Surprising Encounters with the Mother of God now and be sure to have it before Mother’s Day.

I’ve been invited to share about the book in New York City on April 22, and in Washington DC on May 29 and 30 and then again in DC on June 10 (both in person and live streamed). See below for details on those events! And stay tuned for the release of already-recorded interviews about the book with my friends Tammy Peterson (who wrote a foreward to the book and is profiled in the book), Eric Metaxas (who endorsed the book and shared a surprising story about Mary in his life in our recent interview about the book for Socrates in the Studio).

After an introduction where I discuss the trends in faith and culture that led me to write this book, I share my reflections on relying on Mary to help me navigate dangerous trips to assist political and religious dissidents in Communist Cuba. Plough magazine published an excerpt from that piece, and you can come hear me discuss that experience on April 22, 2026, in New York.

I’m immensely grateful to the other six people whose memoirs are the backbone of an exploration of Mary’s spiritual presence in our troubled times, leading people from fear to hope, from confusion to light, from loneliness to the church. Jonathan Pageau, icon carver and host of the Symbolic World podcast wrote, “As the shadow of secularism passes over us, an increasing multitude of people wish to experience a deep connection with God and experience His presence in creation. hen Mary Calls will help us remember Mary as both the Mother of God and our own mother.”

For all of those I profile in the book, regardless of where they began their faith journeys—as a seeker, a Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox Mary’s motherhood is a real presence alongside them as they seek to understand suffering and live with compassion for others, aim to co-create beautiful music and art that expresses human dignity.

On May 29 and 30, 2026, at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, I’m honored to be leading morning devotions using the Book of Common Prayer and Marian hymns and antiphons as part of The Understory, a multi-day cultural festival organized by the leaders of Comment magazine. I hope to see you there!

On June 10, 2026, both in person and live-streamed, I’ll present on the book at the Catholic Information Center in Washington, DC. A long time browser and buyer of their books, I’m thrilled to be a speaker in their lovely facility just blocks from the White House! Click here to save your spot or watch this event online.

Is Mary new to you? Don’t worry—this book is for everyone, regardless of what they do or do not know about Mary. I just ask that you read the book with an open heart, that you be willing to know Mary as a subject, a person, not merely a point of division among some Christians. (If you want to clarify doctrinal issues right away, then turn first to the detailed annotated bibliography of the book and read for yourself Scripture scholars, church historians, and doctrinal works on Mary from Orthodox, Catholics, mainline Protestants and Evangelicals.)

I want this book to help people to know Mary and to revere her through the riches of the artistic and musical traditions of the church, traditions which are being enlivened today, which can be found in the great churches that have been built that can enrich our lives and extend open up our hearts to Scripture and allow us to know Mary as a person, to hear her in the Scriptures, to see her in art, and ultimately, like the people in my book to hear her in our hearts. We honor Mary when we see her Scripture, when we gaze upon her depicted in artistic presentations of Scripture, and when raise ours voice to hers, and with hers, in prayers of praise for God’s work through her.

One further endorsement of the book came Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P., who is the Global Promoter of the rosary for the Dominican Order wrote: “As someone who learned gradually to befriend and love the Blessed Mother, these stories resonated with my own experience. Mary is truly our patient mother. I once claimed I did not need Mary, but she still quietly revealed herself to me in providential and miraculous ways. This journey led me closer to Christ because Mary always leads us closer to Christ. May these stories deepen your appreciation for Our Lady’s maternal role in your life.”

Who would not want to know better the woman who raised Jesus, the woman whose total openness to the Holy Spirit makes her the New Eve, the woman who shows that in renouncing our self-will to do the Father’s will, we can be the most generative and creative beings, changing the world from the inside out?

I encourage you to order your copy today. My hope is this book will spark conversations about forgiveness, patience, sacred art, music, and the great mysteries of the faith. I want you, the readers of this post, to know Mary if you don’t already. If you already know her, I want you to know her better every day. If you open your heart to her, Mary will help you grow in faith in God in ways that will surprise you and delight you.

When my co-panelist grabbed the microphone, he said artists should be “transgressive”, by which he explained breaking with norms of how artistic forms existed in the past.

Before I summarize that panel, let me share that I’m writing to you today because a longer form of my answer to this debate was just published by the scholarly journal New Blackfriars. This article is open-access, which means you do not have a subscription to read the article online or download it as a PDF. Read the full article in New Blackfriars here, to learn why the Catholic convert, philosopher and friend of many artists, Jacques Maritain, feared that both surrealism and romanticism had corrupted the Christian view of the artist as divinely inspired.

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I’m publishing this reflection on my article today, March 25th, which is the feast of the Annunciation. When I spoke on the vocation of an artist to artists gathered for the Writing the Light iconography workshop in August 2025, I directed them to a painting of the Annunciation. Mary’s willing cooperation with God’s plans for her body to become the temple of the Holy Spirit is a icon of what an artist is called to do; human cooperation with grace opens artists to divine inspiration. I contrasted that image with the contemporary idea of an artist who is a Promethean figure who steals fire from the gods but then turns his back on the gods in defiance of them. At the end of that talk, I was greeted with hugs and sighs of relief from people who had fled “transgressive” artists’ circles and who sought to use their talents to make beautiful art.

Now, back to Washington, DC, and the David Network, where I eagerly shared Scala’s mission with the room packed with young people, hoping to inspire them with the great calling to be creative in a way that learns from tradition and makes all new things shine the brilliance of the past with the best of today. Boredom, I believe, is fundamentally not knowing how to direct your passions. We can be very, very busy but existentially bored. Knowing I was speaking to future lawyers, doctors, engineers, and CEOs, I challenged them, “Do you have one hour a week to dedicate to learning and practicing something beautiful like music, art, woodwork or gardening?” I know that won’t pay most people’s bills, but it will make us happier, and it will allow us to build a beautiful culture that attracts others to our way of living in harmony with nature and God.

But how many people who call themselves artists and read my co-panelist’s writings on conservatism would self-identify as “transgressive”? The artists I work with through Scala rarely, if ever, self-identify as transgressive. My music teacher told me he would never intentionally be transgressive, as that seems to call attention to his personality, not his music. But this young Catholic convert said, if his music is different, noticeable, and even challenging that’s okay—yet he still needs to know if it is beautiful. This young man left the (dare I say boring?) world of unbelieving music halls to make music that is meaningful and sacred. Perhaps, if he transgresses in his musical practice, it’s a step towards being corrected. Or maybe, just maybe, with a few more attempts, he will pass out of the (perhaps necessary?) adolescent transgressive stage and just be a master of his craft and melt into the shadows as others journey towards God.

The world-famous artists I know such as Jonathan Pageau, Sir James MacMillan and Aidan Hart are neither boring nor transgressive. Anna Bond is a designer and board member of Scala. She co-founded Rifle Paper Co. with her husband Nathan, who is a talented musician and businessman. All of those artists make products admired by millions and bought eagerly in the free market. No one needs to teach anyone why their products are beautiful, it is self-evidently so—the great consensus is that we all want their beautiful products in our homes and churches.

When my panel concluded at the David Network, one after another young person came up to me beaming. “I’m a pianist.” “I’m an actor.” “I paint.” None of them told me they were “transgressive”. They told me they loved the message that all humans are called to co-create beauty with God, and that their love of beauty can renew culture.

If I sound like my husband David in these words, I can’t lie: he has influenced me on this topic. Shamefully, I admit that I once had the same stereotypes of artists as my co-panelist: that artists are transgressive. Perhaps that’s the ethos I imbibed as an undergraduate at Yale from plenty of clove cigarette-smoking, black clad, sad, rebellious artists of all kinds who wanted attention and approval.

My mistaken belief that artists are transgressive was major reason I canceled my first date with David. I was SURE that a self-described artist whose only credentials were math and physics degrees from Oxford University would be awfully boring, snooty, and transgressive all wrapped up in one. Thankfully, he was kind and considerate enough to re-schedule that date when, well, I got bored and wanted to take the risk to meet him.

How wrong, how dreadfully wrong, I was about David. I agreed to a second date with David because I thought I enjoyed learning from him about beauty and art. David drew me back into my own desires to co-create with God, back to my love of music.

Back to the student’s question: why do young conservatives fear being labeled as “boring”? What can be done about it? Perhaps people who proclaim that traditions matter, that social norms around sex aren’t inherently oppressive, and that hope exists in God’s providence fear being marginalized in college dining halls. But if those same conservatives invited others to a beautiful concert, to a long hike, to take an art class from a master, or to sing together, I don’t think they’d be automatically called boring.

I’ve met plenty of college students who confess to me that they are looking for someone to save their young soul from yet another transgressive “bender” of drinking, or who know their happiness doesn’t lie in bed hooking up with a stranger. Too much entertainment is boring us to death, as Neal Postman famously described. Too few conservatives dedicate their talents to making beautiful things that draw others away from the abyss of despair and towards truth, goodness and beauty.

The article I just published is my attempt to ground my views of the vocation of an artist in the scholarly work of Jacques Maritain. In popular parlance, I wrote my article in New Blackfriars to say that I do not think artists are called to be transgressive, if by that we mean in popular parlance that to be a good artist is to “free oneself from tradition” or “reject norms” or “probe the deepest abyss so we can be dark and sad” or “make myself the center of attention while I persuade you that ugliness is as awesome as a sunset.”

My Thesis

I hope I’ve persuaded you to take a few minutes to read my thesis, and if you feel so called, to read the whole paper. I know not everyone agrees with me, and I also believe that, some people incorrectly interpret Maritain’s writings on art and creativity, under-valuing his clearly Thomistic views of humans as co-creating beauty with God.

Here’s my thesis:

“The thesis of this article is that the understanding of the vocation of an artist in the writings of Jacques Maritain emerges as to develop habitus (practical virtues of the intellect) in order to direct their inspirations in order to make beautiful things that convey the spiritual heritage of the nation and the civilization and inspire others to contemplate God. This vocation to be an associate of God in creating beautiful works is a powerful reminder of the close relationship between all personal vocations and the common good.

I also write:

“In order to build a civilization of love, not one of endless absurdities, the vocation of the artist for Maritain must encompass not only communicating their own creative intuitions but also forming the receptive intuition in the hearer or the seer…Maritain concludes Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry by calling on artists to embrace their creative intuition and make objects that assist others in properly ordering their loves.”

I end my paper what is at stake in this debate. We live in a troubled world, and are looking for beauty to lead them to the truth and a good life, not ugliness or mere emotional delight masquerading as an escape from reality. As I wrote in my article:

If the societal threats the Maritains faced, Nazism and communism, no longer threaten civilization as they once did, new forms of Gnosticism that deny the full meaning of the Incarnation – the fusion of the divine and the human – reappear in philosophical, artistic, and political movements and even in theology. As Jacques Maritain well knew and warned, the vocation of the artist understood as egocentric self-expression threatens to become a dark mysticism which misdirects our collective spirit away from a unity of truth, beauty, and goodness and towards nothing but power and domination of others.

Artists create objects that we delight in when we bring those objects into the rooms of our interior castle for contemplation, a contemplation that guides our quest for personal holiness and directs our efforts for the common good of the nation and civilization. The arts are a powerful manner in which God’s presence among us is experienced as a strangeness, like a wound that pierces our hearts and opens us to an intimate friendship with our creator and sustainer.”

I hope this publication is useful to those teaching about the arts in the modern world. Too few articles, in my view, link abstract ideas about art to the human vocation to co-create with God, a vocation which certainly applies to artists.

I encourage you to not only read my piece in New Blackfriars on the vocation of an artist, but to check out all the published papers from the incredible conference that the Scala Foundation co-hosted with Blackfriars Hall and the Margaret Beaufort Institute in July 2025. I don’t recall the words “transgressive” nor “conservative” nor “progressive” every coming up in our wide-ranging discussion of theology and the arts. I’m delighted to share with you our life-giving conversations which should be intelligible to all whose eyes, ears and hearts long for beauty.

Scala was pleased to partner with the Catholic Sacred Music Project for the musical components of this event, which included choral mid-day prayer and a beautiful choral mass. Below is a recording of a choir singing Sir James MacMillan’s motet “Benedicimus tibi” at Blackfriars Hall, during Mass where Sir James was present.

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Never could I have imagined that, the very same week when I finally released publicly some writing about my undercover mission trips to Cuba, the island nation would be undergoing perhaps its most fragile moments since the Communist Revolution that began in 1959.

A few days ago, on March 18th, 2026, Plough magazine published the online version of my memoir of how Mary helped me have the courage to resist the Communist regime when I was searched at the border and then later followed by secret police on the streets of Cuba.

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I am the protagonist, the main character, in the story, but the heroes are the Cuban people who kept the faith alive amidst persecution.

A longer memoir about my experiences with Mary in Cuba will be released on May 5, 2026, by Odysseus, a new imprint of Skyhorse Publishing. The book can be pre-ordered now and will be shipped as soon as it is ready—in time for Mother’s Day 2026!

In this precarious moment in world history, Mary is appearing in unexpected places. My heart sinks every time I read the bad news coming from Cuba. Earlier this week I wrote to my friend, a sacred artist in Havana named Jose, and told him I’d be praying this prayer for him… “Santa Maria…” (Holy Mary….) I couldn’t finish my sentence. No words seemed adequate to express my concerns, but I put my trust in my mother, Mary, to finish my prayer.

I’m convinced that we do not walk alone through the valley of darkness. Nearly seven decades of communist rule in Cuba has not extinguished the faith. The worldly power that claims in public slogans “patria o muerte” (fatherland or death) had not crushed the desire for God in Cuba. I recall watching Pope Benedict XVI’s 2012 trip to Cuba. Preaching to thousands gathered in public places covered with images of el Che and Fidel Castro, the pope proclaimed emphatically, “No hay patria sin virtud!!” (There is no fatherland without virtue.)

Here are some selections from my piece in Plough, which in turn is a selection from the full piece in my forthcoming book:

“After landing in Havana, my mother and I drove through the beautiful countryside, searching for El Dolores, a sugar mill her family had operated in a village…After the Cuban Revolution, the church had been converted to a movie theater. Now the building stood vacant; its windows’ empty frames covered with wooden panels. Inside, wild grass grew on the dirt floor.

We were taken to the house of one of the lay Catholics who had not abandoned his faith. Like many in Cuba, his backyard was filled with various knickknacks and random pieces of equipment…

“Las vitrinas!” my mother exclaimed as a tarp was pulled back, revealing two stained glass windows from the church. We admired one window framed by roses. In the artwork, Mary held Jesus on her lap, surrounded by angels and shepherds who were worshiping him…

The second stained glass window spared from the iconoclasm of the Communist revolution depicted Mary standing at the foot of the cross, her hands crossed, her eyes distressed, her heart wrenched with grief…

The salty air and high winds eroded the triumphant faces of the then-still-living Fidel Castro and the long-dead Ernesto “Che” Guevara on walls and billboards across Cuba. Meanwhile, in private homes, I saw no images of Communist heroes. No one spoke of Castro or Guevara as if they were friends. Instead, Mary – depicted as Cuba’s patroness and protectress, Our Lady of Charity – reigned inside Cuban homes. Time and again, people referred to Mary as someone close to them in their struggles.”

Margarita Mooney Clayton, PhD

Founder and Executive Director, The Scala Foundation

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Scala Foundation is a non-profit public charity under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code of the United States. All donations to the Scala Foundation are tax-deductible.

As Scala approaches its tenth anniversary in the summer of 2026, my husband David and I have worked hard to re-design Scala’s website. We are grateful for the artistic and technical assistance Carolyn McKinney, who leads Perceptions Studio. Carolyn also improved the look of this online magazine The Graced Imagination, as well as David’s Substack The Way of Beauty.

Since David and I married nearly four years ago, Scala’s mission has developed a unique approach to revitalizing the culture, especially in education and the arts. We will continue to host summer programs, organize public events, produce videos, conferences, books, and interviews, and conduct speaking tours.

In David’s expanded role at Scala as not only our Artist-In-Residence but also our Director of Strategic Partnerships, we are work intensively with students and families in our local community of Princeton to transform their lives through the Way of Beauty and become culture creators, entrepreneurs and leaders. Through partnerships with organizations across the United States and in the United Kingdom, we are sharing the resources we have created to expand our impact through collaborations with key partners.

Would you take a few moments to read our revised mission statement and testimonials of our impact from students, artists, educators and clergy? Please support our mission with a donation today!

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Our Vision

Culture is the DNA that informs every aspect of life through which we find meaning and direction. An ugly culture breeds discontent, uncertainty, and vice. To ensure the youngest generations don’t keep getting drawn into ideological movements, we need to rebuild a beautiful culture.

Winning political arguments and passing legislation cannot replace misery with deep, abiding joy. Political advocacy — though vital — won’t provide the substance needed to live with courage, creativity, integrity, and hope.By reestablishing the architecture of traditional spiritual formation, we can transform hearts and offer hope, joy, and creativity to the world — a creativity that can inform every human activity, from the fine arts to the natural sciences. By pioneering the Way of Beauty process of formation, we have developed a model that transforms lives by cultivating habits for a lifelong practice of joy and creativity in all that we do.

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Our Unique Approach

We face an epidemic of despair—the natural consequence of this widespread alienation from traditional education for divine beauty. Generations of those who have the potential to be inspired doers, thinkers, and creators of a noble culture can neither envision a future where their lives have enduring meaning nor where their work effects lasting good, leaving them vulnerable to manipulation.

The formation we provide does more than change opinions; it changes how people see themselves, empowering them to find joy, meaning, and fulfillment. We inspire people to contribute to the common good through creativity in study and work in the arts and sciences. Through this, people discover joy in the everyday labors of a family and a career.

Transforming Culture through Beauty, Creativity and Joy

Scala exists to challenge a cycle of meaninglessness. By creating paths to an encounter with true beauty – and connecting beauty to personal vocation and the common good – we are reversing the damage done to our culture by an ideology of misery, despair, and anger.

Once, all were formed to love the beautiful order which underlies all classical literature, music, the arts, and the natural sciences. But now, too many are squeezed through soulless technical training programs, pushed into embracing violent political ideologies, and abandoned to a culture of hedonism.

The Way of Beauty Formation Process

The Way of Beauty approach builds upon David’s published books, The Vision for You and The Way of Beauty, and decades of insights from mentorship and small-group fellowships. The weekly fellowship is modeled on John Wesley’s Class Meetings and other Christian fellowships. Our unique approach combines forming habits of faith, prayer, and service with commitment to creating something beautiful each week.

The Way of Beauty is the name given to a process by which we, who have been through it, discovered our true calling in life—what we call our ‘personal vocation’ and through which we discovered the Great Fact—that we have a choice in life. With God’s help, we can choose to be happy or to be miserable.

Our goal is to be happy and to become, more and more, the people God intends us to be. To this end, we aim to lead a joyful, creative, and beautiful life as we progress along the Way of Beauty.”

This is the “Way of Beauty preamble” – a statement read out at the beginning of every Way of Beauty fellowship meeting.

Through this process of spiritual formation, service, and the learning of practical skills in the pursuit of beauty, we discover our personal creative calling and contribute to society beautifully, gracefully, and joyfully, in service of God and neighbour, and for the good of all. The outcome of the Way of Beauty process of formation is to establish new habits that sustain lives of faith, carry them into any field of study or profession, and fuel inspiration and creativity, thereby promoting the common good through beauty. All of this is ordered to a life of faith and joy.

Informing and guiding all human activity, giving it purpose, meaning, and beauty, The Way of Beauty is a process of formation for people of all backgrounds, with any (or no) artistic ability. It is a Christian formation based on what was given to the great artists of the past.

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Cultural Entrepreneurs and Educators

“Thanks to Scala’s programs and Margarita’s personal mentorship, I have found ways to integrate my intellectual work on John Henry Newman and my creative work in film-making and journalism. Scala helped me to build a community of creatives and intellectuals in both the UK and the US.” Dr. Lauren Spohn, graduate of Harvard University, Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, and Assistant Professor of Intellectual History at the University of Texas in Austin’s School of Civic Leadership.

“In my early attempts at being an icon carver, David Clayton was the first writer to see my potential and promote my work. His articles for the New Liturgical Movement and his blog The Way of Beauty (now on Substack), have been instrumental in rekindling liturgical art in the West. When we launched the Orthodox Arts Journal in 2012, David’s writing on The Way of Beauty and The New Liturgical Movement’s approach were our model and inspiration. His desire to present beauty, proportion, and the creative retrieval and participation in tradition as the true root of art will remain a touchstone in the cultural return to sacred art and the evangelization of the wider culture.” Jonathan Pageau, liturgical artist (see pageaucarvings.com), public speaker, and YouTuber, and noted commentator on contemporary culture; founder of The Orthodox Arts Journal and The Symbolic World podcast, magazine and online learning community.

We Are at a Crossroads

Today’s cultural entrepreneurs are fleeing the mainstream institutions in droves, but they don’t know how to use their talents for the common good. Like the Medicis, patrons of great artists of the Renaissance, with your support, we can build a network of creative leaders in many professions whose work will outlast any election cycle.

Your donation to Scala will empower people to find meaning, and fulfillment and to contribute to the common good through creativity in study and work in the arts and sciences.

The question is not whether you can afford to support Scala. The question is whether you can afford not to. Making your annual or monthly donation to Scala today will catalyze our efforts at cultural renewal.

Margarita Mooney Clayton, PhD

Founder and Executive Director, The Scala Foundation

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Scala Foundation is a non-profit public charity under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code of the United States. All donations to the Scala Foundation are tax-deductible.

As we begin Lent, I wanted to share the words of my meditation to a group of students from Princeton Theological Seminary (PTS) about the importance of slowing down our minds to recall we are always in God’s presence. On Monday, February 9th, 2026, at the PTS chapel, we gathered for prayer, and I offered these words, borrowed from a book of meditations I use often, Divine Intimacy.

“Grant me, O Lord, to understand the joy and the responsibility You have given me, in communicating Your life to me: that I may die to self and live solely for Thee.”

We listened to the story of when Jesus Visits Martha and Mary, from Luke 10: 38-42.

³⁸ Now as they went on their way, he entered a village; and a woman named Martha received him into her house. ³⁹ And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. ⁴⁰ But Martha was distracted with much serving; and she went to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” ⁴¹ But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; ⁴² one thing is needful. Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her.”

Here is my reflection on this Gospel passage that I shared.

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When listening to these words from scripture, they can seem a bit troubling. But what appears to be the obvious message may not be the message we’re intended to receive. I’m not sure it’s so obvious that this scripture passage is meant simply to somehow help us weigh up how hard one person is working or another, or how we’re supposed to speak to others about what we think they should be doing.

When a scripture passage troubles us or seems unusual, it begs the question: what do we need to think is true about Jesus in this passage in order to make sense of what’s going on?

One of the things that this passage is inviting us to remember and, in fact, to contemplate, is that Jesus was fully human and also fully divine. We know from the Gospels that Jesus had friendships. It’s kind of incredible that God would have close friendships! Jesus’s words are not a harsh rebuke of his friend Martha. His words are more of an invitation to remember that although Christ is intimate to us and close to us, He also divine.

If Christ is divine, and He enters our midst and comes so close to us. But we’re distracted by many things—distracted to the point of calling out other people for not doing what they should be doing. Christ is saying, “What is the one thing necessary?”

We should ponder the words of a contemplative mystic, St. Teresa of Avila, whose works on mysticism and the contemplative life have inspired many saints and many writers and artists. But St. Teresa of Avila was also an incredibly active woman. She entered the Carmelite convent in Spain in 1535, during a time of crisis. Convents were falling under corruption; their life of and their rule of life wasn’t being respected. St. Teresa went on to reform existing convents, and she founded no less than seventeen religious communities. Seventeen communities!

What can take away from this passage that will help us as we begin to enter the time of Lent? If we remember that Christ is divine but has lowered himself to come as intimate to us as entering our own living rooms, one of the things we can take away from this passage is simply the realization that we often don’t see the gifts of Christ right in front of us. We are rightly worried about affairs in our home, affairs in the world, affairs being a student. But the presence of Christ amidst us, this gift, is also a calling to recognize our dignity of being sharers in the divine nature.

I brought a painting with me today, this painting over here by an artist in Havana named Jose Cortes, to remind us of the three-in-one nature of the Trinity. This image is inspired by the hospitality of Abraham. You see Sarah and Abraham who welcomed three strangers into their midst. A famous iconographer named Andre Rublev painted an icon upon which this one is based; this depiction is often thought of as portraying the Trinity, three persons in one.

This image reminds us that we are called to be hospitable, but business and distraction don’t build unity. People long for a hearth, a home, a place of sharing. In this painting, the three figures of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are gathered around a table, which symbolizes an altar. There’s a chalice on the altar, which is symbolic of the Eucharist.

When we think about this passage from scripture that we just heard, do we realize that we are called to partake of the divine life of the Trinity? And is that the one thing that is most important to us?

Jesus appreciates our work. He was a carpenter for 30. But he’s telling us that without taking that time to contemplate the divine in the world, the work that we do in the world won’t always be rooted in Christ.

St. Teresa reflected on how little we profit from the blessings God has granted us. This Scripture passage reminds us how rarely we sit at the feet of Christ to profit from the great blessing of partaking in the divine nature of Christ. Unpracticed at contemplation, our thoughts pursue their habitual paths, and quickly cease pondering the great mysteries of God’s infinite love.

“How can one be free,” St. Teresa of Avila said, “who is separated from the Most High? What harder or more miserable captivity is there than for the soul to have escaped from the hand of its Creator? Happy are those who find themselves laden with strong fetters and chains of the gifts of God’s mercy, so that they are unable to gain the power to set themselves free. O free will, thou art the slave of thine own freedom, unless thou be pierced through with fear and love for Him who created thee.”

A week and a half from now, we begin the liturgical season of Lent. Can we put aside five minutes every day for contemplative prayer? What about 15 minutes? Maybe 30 minutes?

Why is it easy to avoid the silence of contemplative prayer? It could be because, in the silence, it’s difficult to avoid thoughts about the self. St. Teresa counsels us that contemplative prayer must be a habit, a virtue, a discipline.

It’s not easy to contemplate God because the self gets in the way. We get distracted. And rather than worshiping and entering the divine life, our prayers become a list of demands to Christ: “Hey, do this. Tell someone else to do that.”

Jesus cares about our daily needs and worries, but we have forgotten the beauty of the contemplative prayer, of sitting being a partaker in this divine feast, and letting ourselves be changed by the reality that the divine has come into the world.

Ultimately, it’s the intimate encounter with God’s love that gives us the strength and the courage to keep going back out and pursuing our ideals, founding communities, and bringing others together, as St. Teresa of Avila did.

As we concluded the service, we sang together (in Spanish) these words of St. Teresa of Avila:

“Let nothing trouble you; let nothing frighten you. All things are passing; God never changes. Patience obtains all things. Whoever has God lacks nothing: God alone suffices.”

I concluded the service with these words from St. Teresa of Avila:

“May this self of mine die, and may Another, greater than myself and better for me than myself, live in me, so that I may serve Him.”

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I’m going to Miami for a family reunion of my crazy Cuban family in a week. I love Miami because no one asks me if I’m named after a drink. Everyone knows how to spell and pronounce my name. Margarita, like my mom, my dearly departed abuelita, or my first girlfriend, they might say. Or they might lengthen my name to Maria Margarita. Or Margarita Ana (which happens to be correct). Or they might shorten my name to Maggy, which I love. If they are from Nicaragua, they will certainly recite the first line of Rubén Darío’s poem that starts: Margarita, está linda la mar.

Strangers don’t bother with my name. They just use one of the many generic but affectionate Spanish words for girl, like mama, mami, mamita, reina, princesa, preciosa, muñeca, linda, flaca, guapa, mi amor, mi corazon or mi vida.

Strangers don’t bother with my name. They just use one of the many generic but affectionate Spanish words for girl, like mama, mami, mamita, reina, princesa, preciosa, muñeca, linda, flaca, guapa, mi amor, mi corazon or mi vida.

When I’m around my huge extended family, I’m just la hija de Lala. Why bother with first names at all when, just like in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s epic family tale 100 Years of Solitude, names repeat across generations and branches of the family? There will be at least 5 Margaritas running around my gigantic family reunion at Miami Beach. Not to mention 8 Cristinas, 10 Teresas, 14 Anas, 25 Marias, 5 Javiers, 6 Patricios, 7 Antonios, 9 Manuels, and 12 Carloses.

I vacillate between amusement and pity for the in-laws meeting the crazy Gaston clan for the first time. It’s just like a scene from My Big Fat Greek wedding: ladies with big hair and nails standing around a roasted pig telling you: This is my cousin Carlos, my other cousin Carlos, and my nephew Carlitos. Let’s go sit with Mimi, Bibi, Gigi and Titi. Have you seen Ani, Anita, Ana Maria or Ana Cecilia? Where are Manuel, Manolo, Manolito and Manny? Have you met Beba and Bebo? Have you met Juanito’s wife Juanita?

Then my mom will walk up and say: Hi, I’m Lala. It’s easy to pronounce. Like a song. Lalalalalala. If you compliment her singing voice, she’ll pull out her guitar and sing you Guantamera, Jalisco, or Cielito Lindo. If you are really lucky, she will belt out Cucurrucucu Paloma!!! Lalalalala will hit the high notes on Ay yay yay yay yay so high your ears might pop and you might get kicked out of the hotel lobby. If you join in the ay yay yay yay yay, you have officially joined the clan.

My mom’s real name is Eulalia Maria Suarez Gaston, but I bet her relatives couldn’t tell you her full name. Practically no one in the extended family has a clue about anyone’s real name. No one goes by their real name and on one cares.

American in-laws look puzzled when people introduce themselves saying: My name is Jose but call me Pepito. Or: I’m Kiko, which is short for Francisco. The in-laws then give up trying to make sense of it all when the next person says: I’m Paco, which is also short for Francisco.

This is not magical realism. This is my real crazy Cuban-American family that I love so much gathering a city that makes me come alive like no other.

Epilogue: For a few years, I used Margarita Mooney Suarez as my professional name, but then, after marrying David Clayton in 2022, I dropped Suarez and added Clayton as my new last name. But I don’t expect anyone in my family to bother using such a long name. I hope they just call me guapa, mi amor, mamita, or just “la hija de Lala.”

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On Valentine’s Day in 2021, I sat on stage to discuss suicide with an existentialist philosopher, Mary Townsend, and we were joined online by a psychiatrist, Aaron Kheriaty, and a comedian, Jeremy McLlelan.

What on earth was I doing? Is that a joke? No, it’s not. I gobbled down seven heart-shaped chocolates, three double espressos, and walked out on stage.

This event was part of the annual New York Encounter, a weekend long series of talks, performances and exhibits which aim to re-direct all of human desire towards God. I’m heading up to Manhattan in a few days for this event, and hope to see some of you there. Check out the program—it’s free to everyone, and many sessions are livestreamed.

As we are yet to come out of the epidemic of despair, I thought I’d share the somber yet hopeful reflections that I published following the panel discussion on suicide. My thoughts were originally published in The National Catholic Register on February 18, 2021.

In this clip, McLlelan, a convert to Catholicism who has struggled with depression, compares therapy and confession in this clip, emphasizing that the goal of confession is to name our faults and receive God’s grace. Even the best therapy, he said, can’t replace receiving God’s merciful grace as we struggle with our responsibility for our failings, regardless of the mental illness struggles we have.

Growing up, I witnessed close family members struggle with mental illness. As a professor, the worst moment ever was when a student I tried to help took her own life. Despite the dark reality of suicide, I share my insights on how to hold on to hope, to pray for the dead, and love those who are left grieving in our epidemic of meaninglessness. See my 2021 reflection on this panel below.

I wish you all a blessed and hopeful start to Lent, and I hope to see some of you in NYC at the NY Encounter 2026!

Why on Earth? A Psychiatrist, Philosopher, Comedian and Theologian Discuss Darkness, Suicide and Hope

By Margarita Mooney Clayton. Originally Published in The National Catholic Register, February 21, 2026.

All of human experience — including its most tragic elements — needs to be brought into the light so we can better understand that we are created in love, fallen in sin, and redeemed by an all-loving God.

Why on earth would anyone agree to spend Valentine’s Day chatting with a psychiatrist, and existentialist philosopher, and a comedian about suicide?

Suicide rates in the United States have been going up at least since 1999. I was heartbroken when a student I mentored at Yale took her own life. The social isolation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has only made a bad situation worse. I was speechless when one of my best friends lost her husband to suicide in 2020.

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When the organizers of the New York Encounter, an annual meeting sponsored by Communion and Liberation, the ecclesial movement started by the Italian priest, Father Luigi Giussani, asked me to moderate a panel on suicide, I agreed. The three panelists with whom I met on Feb. 14 were Aaron Kheriaty, professor of psychiatry at the University of California at Irvine School of Medicine, Mary Townsend, assistant professor of philosophy at St. John’s University in Queens, New York, and Jeremy McClellan, an international stand-up comedian and recent convert to Catholicism.

I’ve written several scholarly papers focusing on moral agency of the mentally ill, the importance of narratives to heal from trauma, the reasons people give for turning to illegal drugs or alcohol to cope with mental illness, and how prayer and meditation can relieve some symptoms of mental illness. Like my own work that aims to integrate philosophy and theology with social sciences, each of the panelists brought his personal faith and theological insights to the discussion.

Before taking the stage at New York University’s Sheen Center, I knelt down before the tabernacle in the chapel and asked God to guide me. Still nervous, I gulped down too many pieces of Valentine’s Day chocolate and drank nearly double my normal daily caffeine load.

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Then I grabbed the microphone and stepped out on stage wearing black pants, a white shirt and pointy red high heels. Staring into the stage lights, trusting there was a camera streaming my words, I welcomed the thousands of virtual participants to a painful yet crucial discussion on suicide.

Some of the questions we addressed included: How do we understand the interplay of various factors that cause mental illness? When and how can medicine and therapy help mental illness, and how can prayer and confession help us grow in the virtues that strengthen our will?

Can discussing the reality of rising rates of suicide with our friends, students and loved ones open up a basic existential question: Why did we come into being in the first place? If my life is imperfect, is there a perfect being out there? How can people of faith communicate hope to people plunged in darkness?

In many of our universities, even Christian ones, when a student commits suicide, there is virtually no forum to take seriously the very question: Why is it good that I exist as opposed to not existing? Pondering this question can be the beginning of a deep philosophical inquiry that can lead to hope in a perfect being who fulfills our deepest desires.

From a Catholic perspective, mental illness can never be purely understood as simply biological, nor as simply a spiritual struggle. We are a unity of mind, body and soul. As more people seek out psychiatric medications or therapy to help with mental illness, it’s important to remember that Christian hope doesn’t come in the form of a pill. Nor can a therapist heal our wounds from sin. Together, medicine, therapy and the sacraments can help us grow in the human and theological virtues we need to experience lasting happiness.

[Kheriaty discusses his work as a psychiatrist that avoids a reduction of the human person to simply a body.]

Suicide is not new to the human condition. But given its rise in the last two decades in the United States, it is almost inevitable that each of us will know someone who takes their life. One thing we all shared is that when say when someone you love loses someone to suicide, the most important thing is to be present. Death is not a problem to be analyzed and fixed.

The longer I live, the more I realize that loving and suffering, living and dying, are two sides of the same coin of being human. All of human experience — including its most tragic elements — needs to be brought into the light so we can better understand that we are created in love, fallen in sin, and redeemed by an all-loving God.

Talking about suicide makes me nervous, perhaps because there is no perfect answer to tragedy. But I can’t use scholarly description, the eschaton or salvation as an excuse not to look at the darkness that penetrating so many hearts. For some people, our human brokenness is a sign that reality is ultimately chaotic. As a Catholic, I can share with anyone of any faith background, or no faith at all, my hope that despite human fallenness, the basis of all reality is God’s merciful love.

[Here Mary Townsend talks about teaching during suicide clusters at two different universities.]

The season of Lent, with its penitential practices of almsgiving, prayer and fasting, is a time of entering into the darkness so that the light of Christ can shine on those we encounter. We never know what darkness someone may be fighting, but we do know that we are called to share the hope we have that comes from certainty in the resurrection on Easter Sunday.

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Following my lecture on January 29, 2026, to about 30 PhD and Master’s students at Columbia Teachers’ College in Manhattan, one audience member, who is also a young Catholic priest doing a PhD at Columbia in Education and Psychology said to me with his eyes wide open:

“You just jumped into the lion’s den!! You critiqued John Dewey at Columbia!!!??”

Dewey taught education and philosophy at Columbia for 25 years, and to this day, its school of education thinks of Dewey as its most influential figure—past and present. Perhaps no one more than Dewey has had an impact on American education, especially public K-12 education.

As I entered ‘the lion’s den’, I posed for this picture at Dewey’s bust. Why am I frowning? I admit—I was fearful I’d be ridiculed or mocked for my talk, which explicitly contrasted Dewey with Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain.

But I was also frowning because I care about happiness. The reason I began reading educational philosophy about 15 years ago is because too many students are NOT happy.

In the questions after my talk, I kept coming back to the heart of the Maritain’s concerns about Dewey. John Dewey’s philosophy purportedly contains all we need to understand all of reality, and he proscribes a path of life-long inquiry into truth that he thinks will leads to personal happiness. But I agree with Maritain that any philosophy of the human person that overlooks that we are fallen and in need of God’s grace does not produce joy.

The progressive fallacy—that we need not worry about our sins—which arises from Dewey’s pragmatism replaces dependence on God with dependence on ourselves. Dewey places faith in human cooperation; but without God’s grace can we truly love our neighbors as they are, which is far from perfect?

An hour before my talk, I had warmed up my soul by going to Corpus Christi Catholic Church just one block away. I sat in silence in this stunningly beautiful church where many Columbia converts have worshipped, including monk and author Thomas Merton. I contemplated Christ on the cross, Christ in the Eucharist, Christ in Mary’s womb. I prayed the rosary. I asked the Holy Spirit for the words to say and the demeanor to say them with love.

Why was I at Columbia? I had been cordially invited by the professor who leads Columbia’s program in educational and philosophy. He’s keenly interested in the vocation to teach, and what it means to be present with students. When we spoke to plan my visit, knowing I’m Catholic, he encouraged me to be explicitly theological in my engagement with Dewey.

If I live by grace, can I be honest by that from the podium at Columbia? Or should I hide it? I accepted the invitation to be authentic.

My talk focused on one of my favorite conversation partners, Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain, whom few students in the room would have heard of. I spent the first half an hour of my talk going through Maritain’s biography. Maritain wasn’t always Catholic—he tried on just about any and every form of secular philosophy looking for a total explanation of reality. When his search turned up empty, he contemplated suicide. He was drawn to the Catholic faith at first through the arts—poetry, art and music. It was a combination of deep prayer and deep reading of Thomas Aquinas that solidified his conversion to the Catholic faith.

Like Dewey, Maritain was a man of the world, a public philosopher, and committing to dialogue with those who were different from him. Speaking at Yale in the mid-1940s, Maritain critiqued Dewey because, as good as his educational methods were, they were limited because he neglected the spiritual side of the student, at least as Maritain understands the term spirituality.

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One major critique of Dewey which I pointed out is that in Dewey’s book A Common Faith, he aims to separate religious values from “encumbrances” like religious creeds or rituals. The creation story in Genesis says humans are made in the image of God but fallen in sin. Should we now just dis-regard religious revelation, creeds and rituals because we have scientific truth reached by the scientific method, as Dewey says? Why would any religious values survive at all in what Maritain saw in Dewey: a stony, positivist (ie., materialistic, de-sacralized) vision of the person?

Are we creatures in need of God’s grace for our personal growth, as Maritain says, and as most people throughout history would have agreed?

The majority of students in the room seemed to sincerely believe that spiritually without any creed is more conducive to human flourishing than one with a creed or revelation from God of any kind—not just for themselves but for students in our schools.

I see Dewey’s self as an endless “doing”, never resting, never contemplating anything so real, so intimate to us, but yet also mysterious. If there is any God in Dewey’s system, it’s not one we can relate to personally, much less one who seeks us out in loving mercy.

If we remove from society and education the idea that God is a real being, not just a psychological fiction the self uses to rely more on itself, do we not take away the joy that comes from being loved as we are—sinners in need of mercy?

When I asked, "Honestly, how well is that really working for our students?” the room burst into laughter.

I think Maritain was right when he said that humans are created for great things. But the principle of growth in the good is not the self itself, but rather the self encountering God’s grace. That loving encounter allows the student to overcome vices of laziness and selfishness and grow virtue, which is the only sure path to happiness.

It is not more reasonable to think that something outside us, bigger than us but capable of loving us, can make us feel whole and lead us towards our purpose?

I enjoyed the presentation and conversation immensely. as I believe everyone in the room was sincerely seeking truth through open conversation. Dewey, like many others I may disagree with, would have welcomed such open, constructive dialogue across differences. So would have Jacques Maritain. Numerous people of religious creeds, including Catholics, are graduates of Columbia Teacher’s College. The openness to the Catholic faith by those outside the church was in fact very heartening to me, a sign that Catholic voices can be heard and taken seriously in the academy.

I noted that the poster advertising my talk said Princeton University, not Princeton Theological Seminary. And the title I gave for the talk emphasized story and the importance of the humanities. The term ‘graced imagination’ could be used to describe a non-personal, non-Trinitarian God. But that’s not what I mean by that term. Like Maritain, I worry that without God’s grace the deepest recess of our souls can be dark, not light. We need God’s beauty to shine light into the world and in our hearts.

After the talk, one student wrote to me, asking for more resources on my comment that beauty is God’s splendor radiating into the world. “I am so grateful that you spoke at Columbia, as it has openego the door to all of these avenues of thought development, which I find really exciting,” she said.

I have no doubt that most students in the Ivy League are seeking the truth, as only the truth can make us free and happy. But many students in the Ivy League read progressive philosophers and few encounter theological philosophy.

Perhaps the tide is turning. For all those who attended my talk last week, thank you for your honest seeking to understand my theological perspective. I chatted with numerous students at the reception, and have heard from many of them over email, seeking to understand more of what I said.

There’s enough to write about Dewey and Maritain on education, the human person and beauty to fill one more books.if you want my book recommendations, you can start with my books The Love of Learning and The Wounds of Beauty, which themselves contain extensive references for further reading. See also below for some of my videos where I discuss Maritain and Dewey.

For those of you who want to be happy, I encourage you to learn more about you can connect to the Scala Foundation’s Way of Beauty fellowship, mentorship and curriculum which we describe on Scala’s website.

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See This video where I discuss Maritain’s ideas about virtue in education.

And this video where I discuss Dewey’s pragmatism that leads to a materialist view of the person.

For the past four years, Sarah Scudder, the wife of Bethel’s senior pastor Derick Scudder, has partnered with Nyansa Classical Community to provide after-school instruction to children from their neighborhood. In January 2025, I made my first visit to Bethel and Nyansa with a group of students from Princeton Theological Seminary. Rayne was immediately enthralled by the infectious joy of one of my students named Blessing.

“Is that a baby in your belly?” Rayne asked Blessing, who was about a month shy of giving birth to her second child.

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We worked through readings from the classic curriculum like the Odyssey, as well as art and music with a lively group of mostly public-school children. Blessing first taught passionately and then sat patiently with each student for a few minutes, encouraging them.

Although Blessing hadn’t been able to come back this year, I knew she’d love it if Rayne wrote her a note. Rayne grabbed her notebook and pens and drew a picture for Blessing. Then she wrote in big letters, “I MISS YOU BLESSING!”

When I shared this story with Blessing over email, I could picture her smiling from ear to ear.

“I’m so glad Rayne remembers me. It’s amazing what a short encounter can mean in one’s life,” Blessing wrote.

As Dr. Adams Parham described in her book co-authored with Dr. Anika Prather, The Black Intellectual Tradition: Reading Freedom in Classical Literature, the classical tradition shaped African American intellectuals and educators, who in turn made their own contributions to those great traditions.

Even though Nyansa’s classical education program in Philadelphia, as in other locations, primarily reaches students of minority ethnicities, they are not apologetic about the Western classical tradition. Rather, their curriculum masterfully exposes students in their after-school programs to classical literature, art and music from the broader Western tradition but also from African American intellectuals like Phillis Wheatley and Frederick Douglass who found great inspiration in the classics as they sought to build free communities of African Americans through education.

One student in my class shared how Nyansa overturns the stereotype of classical education as elitist and classical schools as expensive. Through Nyansa, Angel has devised a low-cost way to bring the classical tradition into communities that may lack financial resources but have hearts longing for beauty, truth and goodness. Sarah, who coordinates the Nyansa after-school program for Bethel Chapel Church, has studied classical education.

But the program mostly relies on volunteer teachers. We studied their teacher’s guide, read the week’s lesson plans, and showed up ready to teach a group of children. No one in our group had ever formally studied Latin so we approached that lesson with trepidation.

An older student in my class who is a Coptic Orthodox bishop and monk with extensive experience in education and church ministry led the Latin lesson. “I was shocked that the kids were enjoying their Latin lesson!” he remarked afterwards.

One of my students remarked how she learned that we should not assume to know what kids might be interested in. Because of the personal connection between students and volunteer teachers, the kids we met we far from disengaged when we read the Odyssey and connected the story to the virtue of kindness and vice of harshness.

Making the classics accessible to them by using drawings, art, and the love of storytelling about good and bad characters, we saw how that children who may attend under-performing public schools are not incapable of engaging with classical texts.

After studying math in Nigeria, Blessing taught young girls. She quickly learned that they need a teacher who could care for their soul as well as their mind. Like too many teachers, she faced burnout.

The connection Rayne felt with Blessing illustrated the principle that a teacher who knows how to make a student loved can make challenge material exciting to learn. Teaching can never be just a role or a job.

“Nyansa has got something great going on,” Blessing wrote. “Your course that exposed me to Nyansa was life transforming for me. It helped me reflect on my goal in life and the reason why I came to graduate school in the first place.”

As Sarah told my class, she hopes that when students like Rayne look back at their time with Nyansa, they remember “something that enticed them, that was beautiful, or that whetted their appetite to go back to something that they’ve learned. We aim to give them a life-long desire to learn.”

Some students who come to Nyansa are facing great challenges in reading, sometimes being several years behind. Such deficits would take more than an after-school program to overcome. At Nyansa, their programs start with Scripture and with love. Nyansa provides time for homework support in math and basic reading lessons. Then they cover supplemental subjects like art, music and great books.

Each week, the Bible stories, literature, and Latin all focus on similar themes like love and hate, honesty and dishonesty, fortitude and courage. The content students learn aims to enlightens them about universal truths and spark conversations about virtues. The classical approach includes learning vocabulary and math skills, but also logic and reasoning, which helps the students better understand the Bible the Christian faith.

When we helped teach in January 2026, one of my students, an experienced classical educator, brought his guitar and showed them a song he had written about the Odyssey that mimicked the structure of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. Despite some initial resistance, every student at the table wrote their own lyrics and sang their songs. One young girl aged nine even wrote her own guitar chords!

Nyansa Classical Community offers classical educational resources to communities, churches and families regardless of their economic status. As of early 2026, around fifteen groups were using Nyansa’s curriculum, and they hope that expands each year.

As Sarah explained, “The money is not what is driving this. We do our little piece, and we try to bring Christ to that. Therefore, we don’t have to do everything, because the ultimate gift is God’s grace. We trust in that.”

I hugged Rayne goodbye after our January 2026 visit. Then I pondered how even a few hours with something beautiful and sharing in that beauty with others journeying towards God who is all good, can be life transforming for both students and teachers.

Thanks to my class readings and our experience like Nyansa, I’ve seen students like Blessing embrace their vocation to teach and students like Rayne break stereotypes, fall in love with learning, and create beauty to share with others. The communities which have grown around Nyansa’s unique approach to classical education show how moments of grace, of true communion with others become lasting memories which become wellsprings of purpose and motivation to share our loves and our knowledge with others.

I encourage you to read more about Nyansa, support their programs, and, if you are a classical educator or church leader, you can buy their curricula and even consider partnering with them!

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Tomorrow, Saturday December 13th, 2025, on BBC Radio 3 at 8 am ET (1 pm UK) you can hear me on the third of a unique six-part series on faith and music. I was invited to be a part of this program by Sir James MacMillan, who in turn, was invited by the BBC to share his insights on Biblical themes that resonate in the works of his favorite composers past and present. The others who engage in conversation on this series include Dr. Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Sarah Moerman of the University of St. Andrew’s, and a young Scottish composer named Jay Capperauld.

The genesis of this incredible opportunity to reflect about God’s creation and human co-creation with God through music was produced by Freya Hellier for BBC Radio 3, a channel dedicated to great music. The six days of creation in the Book of Genesis set the theme for the six sessions which are named: Darkness and Light, Sky and Air, The Green Planet, The Cosmos, The Sea and the Living Planet.

How does one prepare for a conversation with one of the most celebrated living composers and a man of deep faith? Riding up on the train from Oxford to Glasgow, I poured over my academic writings and my spiritual journals, creating pages of notes on faith and creativity, the mysterious nature of inspiration, and the call to create something beautiful for others to enjoy.

I had never been inside such a large recording studio, so I was graciously given a tour. Inside one studio, I decided to pretend I was recording the news. As with singing, before I speak publicly, I warm up my voice so I can get the right tone and speed. Next thing I knew, I was creating this ‘fake news’ clip that some people saw on Instagram and thought was real!

The conversations are beautifully presented as introducing great works of music, ranging from Haydn, Beethoven, and Hildegard Von Bingen. It makes me smile to hear James’s introduce my remarks—the way he pronounces my name in his Scottish accent is music to my ears!

While listening to the digital radio live this past Saturday, I walked over to the Princeton University Chapel, where I sing every Sunday in a choir for the Aquinas Institute. I marveled at how this neo-Gothic church, modeled on a 14th century English Cathedral, imitates God’s creation: beautiful windows celebrate our salvation through Biblical stories; wood carvings remind us that God invites us to participate in his ongoing governance over all creation.

Singing James’s “O Radiant Dawn” the following day during Sunday Mass, again at the Princeton University Chapel, I pondered how the vaulted ceilings are reminiscent of the sky. Human creation, as beautiful as it is, lifts us up to the infinite, the abyss, on the other side of which we intuit an eternal present touching us now.

Anyone can listen to the digital radio live, but, unfortunately, recordings of past sessions are only available to BBC subscribers. So, tune in live this Saturday, December 13th, at 8 am ET, and again at the same time December 20th, December 28th and January 3rd.

I’m eager to hear the remaining four episodes, and hope you enjoy the music and the inspiration during this time of Advent and Christmas.

Sincerely,

Margarita Mooney Clayton, PhD

Founder, the Scala Foundation

On November 22, 2025, David and I were honored to host Cardinal Robert Sarah in our home for dinner with about 12 guests. Earlier that afternoon, he reminded a packed auditorium at Princeton University of the meaning of the Incarnation: the divine has entered human history in the person of Jesus Christ. Because of the mediation of Christ, we are capable of a great intimacy with God. But, too often, we fail to appreciate this mystery, much less participate in it with reverence at the sacred liturgy.

Here I am, holding his book “God or Nothing” and standing in front of our home icon corner. As David explains to all our guests, the images of the Trinity, the Crucifixion, the Face of Christ, Mary, the Mother of God, the saints and prophets are the sacred center of our home. But, notice the plans. And the family photos. The faith shines out into the world, pulling all of God’s creation back towards its destiny. Cardinal Sarah kindly blessed gallon of water so that we have holy water for anyone who enters our home.

Sitting at our dinner table, the Cardinal spoke about the Gospel with the zeal of a new convert and the wisdom of a monk whose zeal has been fine-tuned in silence, patience and humility. How many people’s lives are too distracted to be aware of just how incredible something like the Incarnation really is? I, for one, was feeling convicted all week as the Martha, the ever-busy anxious and serious hostess, inside me tried to drown out Mary, the joyful, simple hostess.

I mean, it’s not everyday I set the table like this. But when I do, I’m grateful to have my great-grandmother’s linens and my grandmother’s silverware. The china we received as a wedding gift dresses up the table. Is this extravagance? I think it’s elegance, a beauty that is simple and inviting, special but not ostentatious.

Once I sat down at the table, all the hard work of many hands flowed together to make a perfectly relaxed and enjoyable evening. Was it flawless? No. For one thing, my first pot of coffee was so weak it went down the drain. A guest took over, making it much stronger.

The next day, the choir rehearsal for the Eucharistic liturgy celebrated by Cardinal Sarah started in chaos. A choir from a prior event ion Princeton’s grand chapel (which really looks like a 14th century English Cathedral) was busily taking down microphones, music stands, and video cords while two choirs joined to sing together for the first time: the choir of the Aquinas Institute at Princeton and St. John’s Catholic Church in Allentown, NJ. Peter Carter is the music director of both, and he worked with the Cardinal on his latest book on sacred music, even persuading him to do a book launch right here in Princeton. I was so overwhelmed by the new voices that it took me half the rehearsal to find my place with so many beautiful new voices.

My voice teacher Max commented the following day that the liturgy we celebrated with the Cardinal felt like many hands making light work. “Every week we practice for an event like that, each person in the liturgy doing a particular part, over and over again,” he said. Not to downplay the average Sunday Eucharistic celebration, but to note that every once in a while, Sunday Mass does feel like what the Cardinal said it is: a foretaste of heaven. Processions with altar boys and clergy, chanted prayers by priests, beautiful songs by a choir, and participants kneeling, bowing and receiving the waters of grace.

But can we see the grace that comes to us from the cross? The Eucharistic liturgy is not a festival like a giant concert at Wembley Stadium. In his homily, Cardinal Sarah reflected on the meaning of Christ the King through the Gospel of the two criminals crucified alongside Jesus. While Christ hung on the cross, one criminal mocked him, prodding him to save himself if he was truly God. The other criminal acknowledged that his sins led his condemnation, but he had faith in Jesus’s power to redeem him, saying,

“Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingly power.”And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” (Luke 23: 42)

Do we believe that Christ’s kingdom is available to us always ? Even in our dark moments when injustice strikes us? Even when we suffer due to our own sins?

At the conclusion of the Eucharistic celebration, the choir processed down the center aisle of Princeton’s chapel chanting that Christ has won the victory for us, his kingdom is here, now. Reaching the side chapel where we all knelt in Eucharistic adoration, an interior silence took hold of me, and I pondered the nearly 800 people kneeling with me at that moment.

I’m the first one to admit that worldly activity distracts me from spiritual realities. The cross is a scandal, a stumbling block, to me. But at the weekly liturgy, I can practice the humility I need through my bodily actions, like kneeling. I can receive grace, and ask for peace, trusting that, as little as I am, as unworthy as I am of my own merit, I’m meant to shine with joy and peace, not wallow in self-pity.

The Incarnation happened more than 2,000 years ago, and, as the Cardinal said, recognizing that fact changes how we see history. It changes how see others. It changes how se see ourselves.

I’m grateful to Peter Carter of The Catholic Sacred Music Project, The Aquinas Institute and St. John’s in Allentown, NJ for making many hands come together for this unforgettable visit.

The Advent season is a time of many meals with loved ones and many special liturgies. May Mary, not Martha, rule in our homes. May we approach the Eucharist good criminal, with humility about ourselves and confidence in the power of the divine to triumph over the darkness.

Thank you Cardinal Sarah for reminding me that Jesus spent 30 years in ordinary family life, working, and sharing meals. Thank you for reminding me that his public ministry ended in the crucifixion. Thank you for reminding me that his resurrected body is alive today in our homes and in our divine liturgy, if only we could allow our vision to be transformed to see it.

Sincerely,

Margarita Mooney Clayton

Executive Director, The Scala Foundation

In less than two weeks, Cardinal Robert Sarah will wrap up his visit to Princeton with a dinner at my home. I am honored to host Cardinal Sarah, whose writings on music, silence and the human heart’s need for God remind me of another African of long ago: St. Augustine.

Cardinal Sarah, who served his flock in his native Guinea before moving to Rome, is the Prefect Emeritus of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.

How does sacred music touch the restless hearts of so many today? Why is traditional sacred music becoming so popular again among young people and seekers? What makes for an exciting experience of worship, one that reflects the sober inebriation with the spirit on the move in the world today, not merely an emotionally charged worship service?

I hope that in his public event at Princeton on Saturday, November 22, 2025, Cardinal Sarah will address those questions and many more.

[To register for in-person or online attendance of this event, visit the event page].

Cardinal Sarah is a strong supporter of and collaborator with Peter Carter, who is the music director at Princeton’s Aquinas Institute and founded The Catholic Sacred Music Project. Peter’s friendship with Cardinal Sarah led to a new book based on their conversations, “The Song of the Lamb: Sacred Music and the Heavenly Liturgy.” I was privileged to read the book and share my thoughts on it with Peter as he revised it for publication with Ignatius Press (it is now available from the publisher and on Amazon!).

Here are a couple of quotes from an article by Cardinal Sarah that I teach in my class on beauty in Christian education and worship.

Too many find their educational experiences, either explicitly or explicitly leave them with spiritual problems, describing their lives with terms such as:

Banal. Bored. Blame. Being Miserable.

When reality is banal, people are bored; it’s then easy to blame other for our misery.

A sacred presence in worship and in life preserves mystery—each human person has a unique dignity. Wonder in education is fuel for innovation. Without innovation generosity to others, including the poor, is drastically limited to redistributing what others have produced with their talents.

In the same article, Cardinal Sarah wisely commented that being filled with God’s presence we can enter into communion with others, not try to possess one another or strive merely for material goods and achievements:

“The big difference between God and man hinges on the problem of possession….Man allows himself be caught in the nets of his lowest instincts to possess. He wants to accumulate material goods in order to satisfy himself and enjoy them. But these superfluous goods obstruct the eyes, shut the heart, and sap our spiritual energy." However, there are also many rich people who live an exceptional spiritual life with God and show immense generosity to the poor.”

As one student in my class wrote in response to Sarah:

“Have not many of our God-given tools for instinctual learning been buried in our childhood sandboxes by the twenty-first century “soul-draining” bullies of achievement, pragmatism?”

As my husband David has written about on his Way of Beauty Substack, each week we meet with students and community members in Princeton for chanting of the psalms, sharing our dreams and obstacles, and renewing our commitments to prayer, service and the pursuit of a beautiful activity. Such face-to-face meetings, called “little platoons” by Burke, long formed the backbone of American civil society and churches.

Way of Beauty Substack

Meeting Peter Carter has ignited my own love of great sacred music. Not only do I sing with the Aquinas choir, led by Peter, each week, but Peter has also introduced me to Sir James MacMillan, the Scottish Catholic composer and conductor. In the summer of 2023, Sir James visited Princeton to assist in training new composers and conductors, demonstrating that tradition is a fountain of creativity. Those compositions and our conversations are available on Scala’s YouTube channel.

Scala is honored to support Peter’s vital work to revive congregational singing of great sacred music. David and I are delighted to help catalyze the hard work of a young and innovative cultural entrepreneur like Peter, whose friendship with Cardinal Sarah is a great testimony to how the universal love of music can bring people together.

Saint Augustine’s work on music, though perhaps not as widely read as his memoir Confessions, shaped his theology and pastoral work in myriad ways. It’s now hard for me to think theologically or pastorally without music!

We hope to see you in person at this great event on November 22, 2025, in Princeton, or at another event promoting cultural renewal sometime soon.

Regards,

Margarita Mooney Clayton, Ph.D.

Founder, The Scala Foundation

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When I checked in at the Orthodox Academy of Crete for an iconography workshop in August 2025, I couldn’t believe my eyes. The previous guest, who had checked in, an art student, had listed an address in Havana, Cuba, blocks from where my mother’s family lived.

Few people on that trip—especially those who were born after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991—could imagine what a momentous thing it is for a Cuban artist to travel freely and make religious art in Cuba. “Patria o muerte,” so goes the Communist slogan painted all over Havana, does not include supporting Cuba’s Christian patrimony.

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Who could this artist be? How was he able to get to Crete and attend this iconography workshop? What led him to become Catholic?

Before I tell you José’s incredible story, let me tell you what a joy it is to announce that next week, on October 18, 2025, José’s art will be exhibited at Havana’s former Catholic seminary, which is now a center for lay formation named for Félix Varela, a Cuban priest and national hero. Our icon teacher in Crete, George Kordis, called José the best living iconographer in Latin America.

Our home in Princeton features a piece of his art: the Hospitality of Abraham, which José made under the direction of George Kordis.

Born in 1997, well after both the 1959 Revolution and the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, the good old days of American tourists in Havana in the 1950s are as foreign to José as the dark days (in my opinion) of Russian military advisors and engineers.

Growing up in the 21st century, José shared that he experienced a total life crisis when he was 16: no purpose, no direction, nothing to dream of. One day when he was 16, he walked into San Juan de Letrán (Saint John Lateran), a Catholic Church run by Dominican Friars in Havana’s central neighborhood called El Vedado. His atheist parents did not stop his ever-greater immersion in Catholicism because they could see he was a changed man.

“I knew nothing about Catholicism, but I knew that I, alone, could never make myself happy. I had a hunger for God I just can’t explain,” he told me. “What I found in the church has fulfilled me beyond what I could have dreamt at the time.”

With support from the Community of Sant’Egidio, he made his first trip to Rome in 2016 to study art. Since then, he has studied art in Athens, Barcelona and Crete, where I met him. His work has been exhibited in Belgrade, Serbia. His works are also featured in esteemed collections, including the Apostolic Nunciature of Cuba, the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, as well as various churches and private collections across Cuba, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Peru, Spain and the United States (including my home in Princeton!)

“I dream about reaching young people in Cuba about the faith through art,” he told me as we sipped Greek coffee on the balcony overlooking the Aegean Sea. “So many young people have stopped dreaming. They need community. They need inspiration. They need God.”

José grew up with artists in his family and always loved drawing. He studied Management and Preservation of Cultural Heritage at the University of Havana, where some of his favorite courses included art history and restoration.

“I love learning the great traditions of Orthodox iconography, as well as Italo-Byzantine style, and Spanish Romanesque,” he told me.

José’s joy, zeal for the faith and beautiful art have given me more hope for the future of Cuba than anything I’ve encountered in decades. Cuba’s rich Catholic history came to a halt with the Communist Constitution that effectively made it illegal (if not extremely difficult) to practice the faith. For more than four decades, the Catholic Church struggled to survive in Cuba. Some openings have occurred since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and Pope John Paul II’s historic visit to the island in 1998.

During my seven trips to Cuba between 1994 and 2007, I met with heroic Catholic lay people and clergy who labored to keep the light of faith alive in Cuba with few resources and senseless restrictions on worship, Catholic education and social services.

In this image of Our Lady of Charity, Cuba’s patroness, José has painted Mary in a traditional iconographic style. He replaced the three fishermen with four Cuban heroes: José Martí, the Venerable Padre Félix Varela, Mariana Grajales, and Carlos Manuel dé Céspedes.

For his certificate from the Writing the Light Iconography program, José completed this painting of the Early Life of the Theotokos, Mary.

If you or anyone you know is planning to visit Cuba soon, José would love to meet you, show you his art, and take you around his hometown of Havana. I am certain that with time his work will continue to grace homes and churches in Cuba and beyond.

Sincerely,

Margarita Mooney Clayton, PhD

Executive Director, The Scala Foundation

I’m delighted to share with you the full playlist of 12 videos now on Scala’s YouTube channel, where we share scholarly talks, poetry, and great sacred music from our July 2025 symposium on Thomism, Creativity and the Arts, hosted by Blackfriars Hall, Oxford University and co-hosted by the Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology. The papers will all be published in the spring of 2026 as a special edition of New Blackfriars.

Inspired by Jacques Maritain’s belief in the artist’s mission to ‘shelter the prayer, instruct the intelligence, and rejoice the eyes and the soul,’ the conference gathered a rich and diverse range of presenters from across the UK and the US. In addition to my talk on the vocation of an artist, Scala’s vision of cultural renewal through co-creating with God was emphasized by a presentation from Scala’s newest board member, Fr. Brad Elliott, OP, who spoke on art and the imitation of nature.

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The day’s first plenary address was from the distinguished professor of philosophy, Alice Ramos, whose brilliance as a scholar of Thomas Aquinas allows her to weave together Maritain’s writings on the artist’s vision in light of his Thomist principles.

Our second plenary speaker, James Matthew Wilson, not only discussed the need for poetry, but also graced us with a poetry reading from his own work

Our final plenary speaker of the day, composer and conductor Sir James MacMillan, reflected on composing music for the church.

At the Mass celebrated at the end of the conference by the Dominicans at Blackfriars in Oxford, we were graced by choral music composed by Sir James and sung by the Schola Albion, conducted by Peter Carter, the founder of the Catholic Sacred Music Project.

The hospitality of our Dominican friends in Oxford, where I’m a research fellow supporting their new initiative in theology and the arts, made this event a fantastic new beginning to many friendships and collaborations.

The Scala Foundation would like to thank these generous donors for their generous support of this event: The Institute for Human Ecology at the Catholic University of America, Mr. Richard Tucker, The Apgar Foundation, Mr. John Hern, Mr. Duncan Sahner, The Thomistic Institute, The Bruderhof Communities, Mr. Brian Mgock, and the Jacques Maritain Center at the University of Notre Dame.

I’ve resumed teaching in Princeton to enthusiastic students in my classes on beauty, Christian education, and ecumenical devotion to Mary. With David’s leadership, we have launched our first local Way of Beauty fellowship group, sharing prayers, accountability in resisting fear and resentments, and committing to creative engagement. I’ve also resumed voice lessons, and I find that the focus on breathing helps me be more in tune with my body throughout the day, whether I’m swimming or writing. I completed the 10-day iconography course on the Greek island of Crete, where Master Iconographer George Kordis presented me with the award for the student who worked the hardest, to which I added, “And I made the least progress!”

Stay tuned for more updates on the Way of Beauty, which we hope will sweep across many campuses in the coming months and years!

Regards,

Margarita Mooney Clayton, Ph.D.

Founder and Executive Director, The Scala Foundation

“That’s SO satisfying,” my 11-year-old niece cried out as she stood enraptured as my husband, David, painted in his home art studio. “He paints right up to the line but does not go over!”

David began that particular piece of art with a carefully drawn black-and-white sketch of the Miracle at the Wedding of Cana. He then picked up very fine brushes, mixed pigment with acrylic ink to his own invented tempera paint formula, and filled in between the lines, being sure not to go over.

A few minutes later, the Master and young apprentice sat together with identical black and white sketches of a bird. The young art student beamed as she picked up her brush, mixed her colors, and painted. Her proud mother took her art home to hang up on the wall.

Since marrying David just three years ago, I’ve noticed that people who visit our home are as interested in the process of creating art as in viewing the final product. Some of the questions he often gets are: Where do you get your pigments? How do you know what colors to choose? What do you use the ruler, compass and magnifying glass for? How long does it take you to finish a painting?

I mostly lecture about the virtues of art, but consider myself downright remedial when it comes to making art. I just can’t seem to imitate or reproduce anything, much less imagine for myself what to put into a piece of art. At best, I can do a few squares with arrows; perhaps I can draw some letters with a touch of calligraphy. But I do love interior design—picking small objects to light up a room, setting the table for various seasons and special feasts, and adding colorful cushions to sofas and beds.

But it was the zeal of a child, willing to try new things just because they are fun and beautiful, who inspired me to pick up a brush this summer.

Thanks to the vision of iconographer George Kordis, founder of Writing the Light, a school of iconography, I’ll have the chance to unlearn the skills that hold me back from making art when I attend his summer icon school in Crete in August 2025.

George’s vision is to bring iconographic practice not only to professionals like David (who first studied portraiture, landscape, and iconography) but also to anyone who commits to learning from a Master artist and teacher such as himself, regardless of their artistic skill. The workshop welcomes anyone from any faith tradition (or none) and of any skill level (or, in my case, no skill). George and his assistant, Keri, kindly invited both David and me to give talks to the art students.

Building on my talk at the conference with Blackfriars Hall, Oxford University, last week, I will share with the art students about The Vocation of an Artist. I’ll examine the artist's role as co-creator with God, contrasting this view with the notion of the artist as a demi-god who expresses not only himself but the collective conscience of society. Building on Pope John Paul II’s 1999 letter to artists, I will highlight the dynamic relationship between artists and the Church, as well as the connections between sacred art and secular art.

In a second talk, I will share thoughts on Why Everyone Should Study the Practice of Art. I will explain why and how to integrate artistic traditions throughout education, not just in dedicated art classes, but as a fundamental form of learning and communication in the sciences and humanities. I will share practical ways to incorporate artistic practice into daily life and how the process of making art can build friendships and community.

David will speak about The Re-Establishment of Iconographic Tradition in the 20th Century, exploring the fascinating story of how, after centuries of decline, iconography was revived as an artistic tradition in the Byzantine churches. Through our work at Scala, we are hard at work drawing lessons from this revival that can guide us in re-establishing a broader culture of beauty today, with applications extending beyond iconography to other fine arts such as music, architecture and film.

David will also share his insights on Balancing Naturalism and Idealism in Christian Art. Using iconography as a prime example, David will demonstrate how all Christian representational art forms successfully balance naturalism (reproducing what we see) and idealism (perceiving order and harmony in form). The talk will show how other artistic traditions have achieved this balance and explain why studying iconography benefits artists working in any medium.

You don’t need to go to Crete to learn from George Kordis. Writing the Light offers online classes and residential programs in the US and other locations in Europe as well.

If you write a line, pick up a brush, and color it in, you just might have that feeling of satisfaction my niece enjoyed. Co-creating with God is profoundly satisfying in a way no form of being entertained could ever compete with. Every day I see new resources emerging for homes, schools, churches to gather people into community, learn from a Master about the best traditions in fine arts, and bring light to the world.

Regards,

Margarita Mooney Clayton, Ph.D.

Founder and Executive Director, The Scala Foundationwritingthelight.com

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I’m grateful to three Dominicans (the Order of Preachers) for their unique contributions to last week’s symposium at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford University, on theology and the arts.

World-renowned composer and conductor Sir James MacMillan, a third-order Dominican (a layperson), was a keynote speaker, sharing how as mostly a secular composer for symphonies and choirs, he also delves into music for the Mass. The music above is from MacMillan’s motet “Mitte manum tuam” performed by the Schola Albion, at the liturgy for the conference, and directed by Peter Carter of the Catholic Sacred Music Project.

Fr. Dominic White, OP, is a composer, organist, scholar and the prior of Blackfriars Oxford. Not only did he work tirelessly to make the entire event run smoothly, at our closing Mass he both played the organ and delivered the homily!

Thanks to the vision of the Dominicans, in which the intellectual life, the spiritual life and the artistic life are all united, our event was graced with beautiful music by living composers in the audience—Sir James and Fr. Dominic.

Under the visionary leadership of Fr. Dominic White, Scala hopes to continue partnering with our Dominican friends at Blackfriars Oxford to bring together intellectual reflection, embodied experiences of beauty, and support a new generation of creators of various forms of art for the church, concert halls, schools and homes.

At the closing Mass, we were inspired to contemplate God’s mercy and infinite love through James’s communion motet “Benedicimus tibi.”

As soon as the video lectures are ready, I will post them to Scala’s YouTube channel. The thesis of my presentation was that the vocation of an artist is to develop habitus (practical virtues of the intellect) in order to direct their inspirations in order to make beautiful things that convey the spiritual heritage of the nation and the civilization, and inspire others to contemplate God. All edited papers will be published by New Blackfriars journal in the spring of 2026.

This incredible event would not have been possible without Blackfriars Oxford, The Margaret Beaufort Institute, the Catholic Sacred Music Project and the support of the many donors to Scala. I’d like to thank in particular: The Institute for Human Ecology at the Catholic University of America, Mr. Richard Tucker, Apgar Foundation, Mr. John Hern, Mr. Duncan Sahner, The Thomistic Institute The Bruderhof Communities, Mr. Brian Mgock, and the Jacques Maritain Center at the University of Notre Dame.

Would you support Scala today with a monthly recurring gift to make these events possible in the future?

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I mentioned in my presentation that many students I teach have never heard about the incredible artistic traditions that shaped our culture. We are all called to co-create with God through our work, and artistic co-creation should form a part of everyday life. Scala hopes to bring our message to more people that our intellectual gifts and artistic talents complement one another, promote happiness, and contribute to the common good.

Regards,

Margarita Mooney Clayton

Founder and Executive Director, The Scala Foundation

Last week I had lunch with a Chinese student named Yiran studying at Oxford who, after hearing a talk I gave on Jacques Maritain’s philosophy of education, joined me and others on a half-day Marian pilgrimage I organized in Oxford in December 2023. That pilgrimage was her first experience of Christian prayer. Moved by her experience, Yiran started going to Bible study and Christian worship at a St. Aldate’s Anglican Church in Oxford.

I pondered Yiran’s description of how that pilgrimage affected her during my trip a few days later to Santiago de Compostela, the famous pilgrimage site in northwest Spain. While I was in Santiago, my 19-year-old niece Cami was on pilgrimage in Fatima. Cami and I reunited after our pilgrimages to celebrate my cousin’s wedding in Galicia, where I was unexpectedly asked to simultaneously translate the homily from Spanish to English, prompting further reflections on the symbolism of marriage as mutual self-gift.

When I arrived in Santiago, I honestly had no idea what to expect. I was preoccupied not so much with spiritual matters but with family matters, greatly anticipating seeing my relatives at the wedding that took place about an hour south of Santiago. My camino (path) to Santiago took place not by foot but by plane. Whereas others walked and fasted for days to reach Santiago, I went in a Tesla taxi from the airport to my comfortable hotel bed. When I awoke, I ate a 7-course breakfast, and walked 400 yards from my hotel to the cathedral.

Having survived being hit by a car while walking across the street in Princeton in 2019, I am grateful I can walk at all. During my last pilgrimage, which was to Fatima 6 years ago, I was in horrible pain, whether sitting or standing. Surgery, medicine, physical therapy, and personal training to build strength all helped me to feel (nearly) pain free when I arrived at Santiago. Walking into the plaza, I was astounded at the jubilant crowds of young people around Cami’s age who had come in large groups from far away by foot. People older than me also had arrived by foot and eagerly took selfies in front of the magnificent facade and towers.

I entered the Cathedral through the now tightly restricted Portal of Glory. Struck by the grandeur of the Romanesque carvings, dating to the 12th century, I gazed up at them and was overwhelmed by the sense of my littleness. Christ in his glory faced me directly, as if asking me: do you wish to enter into this glory?

The prophets and saints surrounding Christ proclaimed to me what I had told Yiran: the glory of God is the human person fully alive. The carved animals—both real and mythical—symbolize that all of creation is from God, yet God’s glory is so magnificent we need mythical figures to remind us that we are called to a mystery that goes beyond our senses. Twenty-four angels, each carved holding a different musical instrument, filled the space with the silent signs of heavenly jubilee.

When I saw a sign proclaiming this great Cathedral as one of the 2025 Jubilee sites, where pilgrims are invited to receive a special grace of the remission of the punishment of sins, I lamented how unprepared I was for such a great gift. Surrounded by sweaty and sunburned pilgrims from around the world, I marveled that every seat and every aisle was jam-packed with people awaiting the worship of the Mass.

In my morning prayer, I had recited Psalm 202, “My days are gone like a shadow; I am withered like the grass. But thou, O Lord, shalt endure forever and they remembrance throughout all generations.” When, during the homily at Santiago, the presiding bishop said, “A pilgrimage is a metaphor for life,” I pondered how—feeble as I am physically and spiritually—I am nonetheless lifted up by a cloud of witnesses who have gone before me in faith.

Kneeling in the confessional moments after receiving communion (yes, the order was backwards, but once I was there, I was diving into whatever came to me in whatever order), I was reminded that no matter how hard I repent from my sins I can’t heal myself. To be a Christian is not to reach human perfection; to be a Christian is to accept to turn back to God every time we sin, knowing our Father loves us and is waiting for us.

Grateful for the sacrament of confession and the priests wisdom, I was surprised that he poked his head around the confessional to urge me to go see the botifumero—the incense burner that is the size of a small dormitory refrigerator—being swung on a pulley.

As I was singing the closing hymn, a Spanish woman complimented me on my beautiful voice and told me to keep on singing (thank you Max—my voice teacher). Quickly after Mass, I followed young pilgrims in pink t-shirts to the tomb of Saint James, then up to his statute where we were invited to give him an ‘abrazo’—a hug.

During my seven-course buffet breakfast (with no less than 3 espresso drinks) earlier that day, I had read philosopher Alisdair MacIntyre’s words that the death of Christianity in Europe and of Marxism as an ideology had left triumphant individualism reigning. He wrote that essay in the 1970s, more than a decade before he became Catholic. What would MacIntyre, who died in his 90s earlier in 2025, have seen in those pilgrims? Certainly triumph, but not one of individualism or rationalism, but the triumph of faith.

What I saw were people from every continent sharing their faith in living communal practices that ties people to not only those walking next to them today, but to a past that is also alive in its rituals and in its saints in heaven. To stare at a statue of Christ is not to worship the statue—it is to come as close as we can to meeting our savior eye-to-eye. With the light of Christ shining, I turn away from my selfishness, my pride, my clinging to autonomy, embrace everyone around me as a fellow pilgrim, and walk towards the heavenly jubilee.

A day later, being asked impromptu just before my cousin’s wedding to translate the homily from Spanish to English gave me a few clues about we gain when we die to pride, autonomy and selfishness

They key theme of the wedding homily was that, in marriage, you give yourself to another who gives himself to you and in doing so you will find happiness. Whereas in English we often embellish words by using adjectives, in Spanish, words and grammar are often already embellished.

“Entregarse uno al otro y serás bieanventurado” is shorter and more fun to say. Referring to the Beatitudes we heard at Mass, the priest repeated the word “bienaventurado” in Spanish, which we translate in English to blessed or just happy. But the root word “adventure” gets lost in that translation—the faith is a great adventure, a great invitation to a life fully lived. To say yes to the invitation of faith is renounce any desire to dominate an pledge our desire to unite.

The reflexive tense in Spanish emphasizes the mutuality of the self-gift of Christian marriage—a total, complete, giving (entregarse). The reflexive verb further indicates a repetition of that gift, which is a sign of abundant love, a love that approaches us continuously like a new adventure. Bienaventurado can be also said as “afortunado” in Spanish, which in English means fortunate. Perhaps, if we keep in mind the root word “fortune” we can begin to grasp the limitless joy that comes from renouncing autonomy and freely giving oneself to one’s spouse.

As the priest reminded the bride and groom, being married in the church means they are making their vows before God, asking God to walk with them on this pilgrimage of life together. The community that gathered for the wedding was invited by the priest to pledge their love and support to the bride and groom. “We are witnesses to your self-give of love,” he said. Having picked the longest day of the year—June 21—to marry, the priest reminded the couple to be light to each other when darkness comes. Pray together before bed. Forgive one another. Be meek.

I looked up at a statue of Mary holding an anchor in this 1,000-year-old church in a seafaring town in Galicia. The final hymn that refers to Mary as the star of the sea and a phoenix of beauty. We are heading to the glory I experienced in the Portal at Santiago, but we will endure many deaths to self, as well as many moments of jubilant return to God’s mercy. Mary reflects the light of Christ; she has journeyed before us in faith and anchors us to the community of faith.

Lighting candles for my prayer intentions at Fatima last week, my niece Cami texted me a picture that all the candles suddenly melted together and created one giant fire. “I think it was the Holy Spirit!” she texted. The fire that burned all those candles together is a dim yet powerful metaphor for our unity in love.

In just one week, the experiences of three pilgrimages—Oxford, Fatima, and Santiago—reminded me that I long to be “bienaventurado” every day—blessed by giving of myself to others and receiving God’s abundant spiritual and material gifts. I felt the fire of the Holy Spirit guiding each step, each word in my translation, knowing that my feeble efforts are met by glory beyond measure.

The three-day wedding feast that followed my brief pilgrimage to Santiago reminded me that Christ, too, rejoiced at a wedding feast. As I told Yiran, Christianity teaches that the glory of God is is magnified by human happiness. I gave her my book The Wounds of Beauty, and encouraged her to keep up her artistic practices and to find a community of Christians to pray with when she returns to China this summer.

Christ is reaching out to us with his invitation to the adventure of a life freely given. As I intuited as I stood gazing at the Portal of Glory, his capacity to give back is greater than our wildest imaginations.

How do you feel called to embrace life as an adventure? Where can you give of yourself more to community and open yourself to the light of Christ shining through that unity with others? Do you have any pilgrims’ notes you’d like to share with me or others?

Regards,

Margarita Mooney Clayton, Ph.D.

Executive Director, The Scala Foundation