Pamela Brown, Author at Regnum Christi NA

Welcome Home

April 4, 2023

St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Fifth Avenue, New York. His Eminence Cardinal Dolan likes to refer to St. Patrick’s as “America’s Parish Church.” Last night, amidst the droves of New Yorkers, mixed in with tourists from all over the world, it truly seemed more like “the World’s Parish Church.” Our missionaries, sprinkled around the great cathedral, were handing out rosaries and spreading love to hundreds of souls, and many of them then headed into one of our seven confessionals for a hug from Jesus. Lines got so long by late afternoon that the good Cardinal himself headed into the confessionals to dispense the Lord’s mercy. What a night! I have so many stories I will just leave you with a sprinkling to leave a little glimmer of what this very joy-filled evening was like….

“A reason for everything”

Selena from Rhode Island approaches a missionary.

“May I have one of the rosaries, please?….

“… Let me ask you, am I Catholic? I was baptized but never received First Holy Communion or Confirmation….

“I have to tell you, I don’t know if I agree with all of the Church’s teachings…”

“Selena, I have a surprise for you. I don’t think I understood them fully either when I re-converted 25 years ago….

“You know, faith is a journey, not an endpoint. I’m still on that journey myself. And so are you. You will come to understand the wisdom of Chruch’s teachings over the course of that journey. All you have to do is take the first step….”

“Steve, I know everything happens for a reason. There’s a reason I found you here tonight. I’m going to put this together…”

“Keep the Faith”

Yvonne from Cork, Ireland, stops for a chat with her two teenage kids. This is their first visit to the great Cathedral, and they are in awe.

“Can I have the black one, please?…..”

”I’d like the red.”

“The purple for me.”

“Good to have you here, Yvonne. Many of our missionaries have a particularly fond place in our hearts for the Irish. In fact, most of us have a little Irish in us. And after all, the Irish saved the Faith many years ago….”

“I’m not sure of where I am, Steve. I lost my husband two years ago,” Yvonne finally blurts out, a bit bleary-eyed. “Honestly, I have kind of given up on God. I feel He let me down. I’m not over it.”

We hug. Yvonne is in tears. And she knows that God has not given up on her, and never will.

“Can we go to Mass here, really? 5:30?”

“Of course. Keep the Faith, Yvonne.”

“It’s all we really have, isn’t it?”

“You Broke Through”

A middle-aged man from India enters the Cathedral with his friend, Dan. Our joy-filled missionary there, who’s taken the long train ride up from the Jersey shore, greets them.

“Welcome to St. Patrick’s,” she beams. “Would you like a rosary to pray with?”

“Oh, thank you. Red, please,” Dan replies.

“So, what brings you to New York?….”

The two friends pause for a chat. Terry eventually brings up the difficult topic of confession. “Holy Week! St. Patrick’s! Could there be a better time?”

Charles’ son is actually studying to be a priest. He’s been after Dan for the last three years to come back to the sacrament of confession. No dice.

But somehow, Dan responds to Terry. After a long back and forth, he joins the line. An hour later, he emerges glowing, finds Terry, and gives her a big hug. And Charles does too.

“I can’t believe you got him to go,” he whispers. “My son is going to be so happy for Dan!

“This is the only place I trust”

Nancy is approached by one of our missionaries. He’s been watching her out of the corner of his eye, in between other conversations. She’s lingering near a side altar.

“Excuse me, miss, would you like a rosary?”

Nancy beams back, “Oh yes! Thank you!”

“How are you doing, Nancy? I feel like there’s something on your mind….”

The floodgates open. Breast cancer. Abusive boyfriend. Uncaring doctors.

“But here, in this place, I feel cared for. I feel loved. It’s the only place I trust.”

“A Chance Meeting”

A member of one of our NJ Regnum Christi teams from many years ago, since moving away to North Carolina, taps a missionary on the shoulder. It’s Alex! We embrace warmly.

Alex has been trying the last two Saturdays to get to confession at his parish’s Saturday evening confession window just before the Saturday night Mass. He and ten others had been left in the confession line, unattended, two weeks in a row; the priest ran out of time. Now, Alex is on a business trip to Manhattan and decides to head to the Cathedral to see if they have confessions….

The missionary is stationed near the confessional manned at that moment by His Eminence. Alex finally gets his Lenten confession, in a very special way. Then he picks up a bag of rosaries and joins us for the rest of the long evening, inviting others home.

A chance meeting. Really?

“Fr. Salvo Walks By”

A missionary is struggling in broken Spanish with a young woman from Madrid. She came to visit the Cathedral, but hasn’t been to confession in a while, it seems.

“Quieres confessor in Espanol?” the missionary stumbles. She gets it but can’t believe he has a priest who could confess her in Spanish.

“Teines un padre que hablas espanol?” she questions.

The missionary knows he has a Spanish-speaking legionary about 150 yards away, but that would be a long walk through the crowds, and she seems in a hurry. Just then, Fr. Salvo, the joyful Cathedral pastor, is scurrying by, looking for an open confessional.

“Hablo espanol, senorita!”, he tells her. Off they march.

A long while later, the young woman kneels in a pew near the missionary. She’s had her confession. And she gives the missionary a knowing, thankful glance. She’s home.

A Missionary

Young Adults See Time as a Gift from God

January 16, 2023

On Saturday, January 14, more than 20 young adults from the New York and Fairfield County areas gathered at the house of the Legionaries of Christ in Rye, NY. A morning retreat brought them together to reflect on two main topics. The first was a meditation on the importance of seeing time as a gift from God that should be used to become the best people we can be. Our time on earth is also meant for mission. The second meditation reflected on the fact that Christ is our only fulfillment. This meditation also delved into the four types of tendencies that the world is throwing at us: materialism, permissivism, hedonism, and relativism.

The group also had a chance to listen to an interview with Paul Posoli, who is a leader and an entrepreneur from Houston, Texas. He gave his personal account of how he made the transition “from business to service.” In his talk, he provided specific tools to motivate these young people to start where they are and not miss out on the fact that Jesus is working in our lives right here and right now.

The meditations and this gentleman’s testimony caused many of these young adults to consider what they could do to transform this world. They had the opportunity to discuss their thoughts and ideas with one another in small groups.

The young adults also had a chance to get to know each other on a more personal level, as they had time to introduce themselves and socialize.

In addition to prayer time with Our Lord exposed in the Blessed Sacrament, those who attended this morning of reflection also had the opportunity to go to Reconciliation and to worship together at Mass. One of the participants sent a note saying, “The talks were great, and I loved the time in front of the Blessed Sacrament. I also really appreciated all the details like the music, fireplace, good food, etc. It creates a great atmosphere.”

Three Legionaries of Christ Make First Profession of Vows

August 25, 2022

In a Mass at the Legionaries of Christ’s Novitiate and College of Humanities August 13th, 2022, presided by General Director Fr. John Connor, LC, three Legionaries made their first vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Get to know a bit about them and keep them in your prayers.

Ever since I was a young boy, I always dreamed about being a priest. I also dreamed about being a racecar driver, so my resolution was the following: I would become a priest, lead the prayer before the race, and then get into my car and start racing. However, God had a slightly different plan. When I was eleven, I went to a camp in Nebraska, which a Legionary helped run. This was the first time I began seriously to consider a possible vocation. This led me to visit the Sacred Heart Apostolic School in 2014 which I joined at age twelve that very same year. I graduated from Sacred Heart in 2020, and entered the novitiate after the summer candidacy program. Although I stopped pursuing my dream to be a racecar driver, the race of a lifetime – with the Legion – has only begun.

I grew up in the Church going to Mass every week and attending a youth group at my parish. I joined the military as a way to pay for college and found myself at Louisiana State University studying electrical engineering and getting involved with the Catholic Center on campus.

My whole life changed when I encountered Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. I no longer needed the party scene or a relationship. I grew in my faith and confidence in the Lord.

During my senior year, I became a missionary with FOCUS—and found myself completely abandoned to the Lord. I left the prospects of a high-paying job and a relationship behind to go on mission. During two years as a missionary, I discerned that the Lord was asking me to take a leap of faith. At the Novitiate in Cheshire, I found a young, vibrant community of religious, and was attracted to the Legionary charism because of the brotherhood, adventure and mission that I found.

My father was a Legionary brother for several years and both he and my mother are Regnum Christi members, so I’ve known the Legion since I was born! In 2018, as a sophomore in High School, I went to a “Test Your Call” retreat in Cheshire, Connecticut and my journey towards the priesthood began. It left a deep impression on me and I felt drawn to the Legionary lifestyle. I still remember speaking with Father John Curran LC after the retreat and knowing in my heart that I needed to take the next step. From that point on I felt like I had a treasure inside of me, but I didn’t know what to do with it. 2 years later, after I graduated high school, I couldn’t keep the treasure contained any longer. After receiving my father’s blessing and with the support of my family I began the path toward the priesthood in the Legion!

During the professions Mass these three second-year novices made their first vows, and the second-year humanists also renewed their vows before heading off to Rome to continue their studies in philosophy. You can watch the Mass here.

Pilgrimage to the Museum: Man’s Search for God through Art and Time

August 1, 2022

Stephen Auth has always had a deep interest in art and the search for beauty. While an undergraduate majoring in history and economics at Princeton, Steve jumped at the opportunity to take as many art history classes as the university had to offer. For the next forty years, Steve’s investment business took him all over the world, and on his travels, one of the first things he did in any city he landed was to visit the art museums. On occasional Friday nights, he and his wife, Evelyn, gave tours of the Metropolitan Museum of Art to friends who were visiting them in New York City.

In 2002, Steve experienced a serious health event, and received a visit from Fr. John Connor, LC. Upon receiving the Sacrament of the Sick and speaking with Fr. John, Steve resolved that if he survived, he would refocus the use of his talents for the glory of God. It was during one of his and Evelyn’s tours of the MET that Steve began to understand one of the ways in which God was calling him to redirect his talents toward the good of the Church. Standing before a painting by Rembrandt called “The Toilet of Bathsheba,” which Steve had seen many times before, he suddenly saw the piece with a new perspective, with the eyes of faith. For Steve, it was like a light came on, and he and Evelyn began to reapproach the art with which they had become so familiar over the years with this new spiritual perspective, one that posits that all artists, in striving for beauty, are, ultimately, seeking God.

In 2010, Steve and Evelyn reconfigured their MET tour, and enlisted Fr. Shawn Aaron, LC, to help. “When we redid the entire tour with the presumption that all of us are seeking God, a gripping narrative began to emerge over 5000 years, a salvation history,” says Steve. “The tour then became a pilgrimage, a journey of pursuing God through beauty, and in the moments where you begin to see the artist come close to finding God, and the moments when the artist loses him, you’re feeling your own self being pulled toward God.”

Soon, Steve and Evelyn were giving several MET tours a year, and the list of those wishing to join in was getting longer. Friends began urging the couple to convert their unique pilgrimage experience to the form of a book so that more people could take advantage of this tour through history and through art. When the pandemic provided Steve with unexpected free time in his social calendar, he did just that, and his book Pilgrimage Through the Museum: Man’s Search for God Through Art and Time has recently been published by Sophia Institute Press.

Pilgrimage Through the Museum is a spiritual tour through the MET, working from the presumption that all art is a search for the creator, who is beauty itself. The tour travels from Ancient Egypt, through Greece and Rome and Medieval Europe, to the rise of atheism in the early 1800s and beyond, exploring the common themes that start to emerge through 5000 years of history. Above all, the book is a story of humankind’s search for the creator of beauty, and what happens when we lose track of the very thing that we are seeking.

But for Steve, the MET tours, the book, and the art itself, provides more than a history or a narrative to passively observe – art can also be a means of evangelization, through which true conversion can take place. And Steve is no stranger to evangelization; he is the author of The Missionary of Wall Street: From Managing Money to Saving Souls on the Streets of New York, which tells the story of his radical mission of evangelization in downtown Manhattan. For Steve, Pilgrimage Through the Museum, and art itself, is just another way to bring others into an encounter with God’s love and mercy:

“Art is a form of evangelization for a culture that doesn’t want to talk about God. It’s a lighter approach, a common ground to meet people at, because everyone appreciates art, everyone appreciates beauty. The book itself is a form of evangelization, a gentle invitation to think about what the art is really about, which is God, and our search for him through beauty.”

Steve has spent his career on Wall Street, and has worked for Federated Investors for over 20 years; he currently serves as executive vice president and a chief investment officer of Federated Global Equities. As well, both Steve and Evelyn are deeply involved in their Regnum Christi vocation. Steve is on the board of Lumen Institute, and was instrumental in starting Lumen teams in Manhattan, New Jersey, and Naples, Florida. Evelyn is on the Board of Directors at both Divine Mercy University and Catholic World Mission. They have also participated in missions in Mexico, and have led the New York City street mission for 10 years.

Steve and Evelyn will be touring the country speaking about Pilgrimage Through the Museum: to schedule a book signing or a talk on art and spirituality in your section, contact Mary Soressi at Maryann.Soressi@federatedhermes.com. You can order Pilgrimage to the Museum, for yourself or as a Regnum Christi team book study, as well as Steve’s first book Missionary of Wall Street, through Sophia Press Institute. Pilgrimage Through the Museum is also available to purchase at the MET gift shop. The book is co-authored by Evelyn Auth and Fr. Shawn Aaron, LC, and all author proceeds of the book go towards the formation of Legionary priests at the seminary in Cheshire, Connecticut.