I’ll never forget the first time I saw the Successor of St. Peter in person. In 2015, Pope Francis made his apostolic visit to Washington, DC, where I was living at the time. I had only just started the process of becoming Catholic. He visited Capitol Hill and became the first Pope to address a joint session of the U.S. Congress, and I joined the large crowd on the west lawn of the Capitol to watch on outdoor screens. After his speech, Pope Francis appeared on the famous Speaker’s Balcony of the Capitol building to greet the roaring crowd. Francis was flanked by many of America’s most powerful politicians, including Vice President Joe Biden and the Big Four congressional leaders: Speaker John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, and Harry Reid.

I remember experiencing, in that moment, an internal shift of my center of gravity. Until then, American politics and the U.S. Capitol building had been the axis around which my world revolved. Politics was everything to me. But as I stood gazing up at Pope Francis on that balcony, the 266^th Bishop of Rome and the Successor of St. Peter, it was like the ground shifted under my feet.

Here was this humble man, surrounded by some of the most powerful people in the world, and yet he was somehow more important than any of them, and you could tell the politicians knew it. The significance of these political leaders paled in comparison, not because of who Francis was as a person, but because of the office he held and the authority he wielded as delegated by Christ. As my journey to Catholicism unfolded over the following months, the axis of my attention continued to shift: from Washington to Rome, from political power to spiritual authority, from the U.S. Capitol to the Chair of St. Peter.

This first glimpse of the Roman Pontiff was at the forefront of my mind as I watched his successor walk out onto an even more famous balcony to greet an even larger roaring crowd.

The Anticipation

I wrote previously about my experience in Rome during the death, lying in state, and funeral of Pope Francis. As surreal as that week was, it was totally eclipsed by what came next.

The week after Pope Francis’ funeral was a flurry of anticipation. Rome quickly switched gears from respectful mourning to a buzz of rumors and speculation about who might be his successor. Lots of names were thrown around, the most common being Cardinals Parolin, Tagle, Pizzaballa, Zuppi, Ambongo, and Erdő. The common consensus seemed to be that if someone was elected in the first few days, it would likely be Parolin, or possibly Tagle or Erdő. If the conclave went on longer, then anything could happen. At least a dozen additional names were mentioned as possible compromise candidates, and at the very end of these lists, people occasionally included Cardinal Robert Prevost, always adding the caveat: “but he’s an American, and there will never be an American pope.”

In the few days leading up to the conclave, however, I heard the name Prevost whispered by more and more people who I knew were at least somewhat plugged into the process and not just getting their news from CNN. He checked every box, but still… “there will never be an American pope.”

Like millions of others, I watched the beginning of the conclave online. Despite the fact that it was happening just two miles away, I had a big work event, and everything was happening inside and in private anyway. I remember getting chills watching the 140+ cardinals solemnly process into the Sistine Chapel amid the chanting of the Litany of Saints, knowing that one of these men would walk out of that room as the Vicar of Christ. I wondered what it must feel like entering that chapel, with Michelangelo’s famous Last Judgment staring down at you, knowing that there was a chance that the weight of the world could fall on your shoulders.

A few hours later, I joined tens of thousands of onlookers right after work in St. Peter’s Square. The first vote of the conclave was expected to finish around 7:00 pm. No one was expected to be elected, and the first vote is typically seen as a sort of test vote to see where everyone stands. We all expected to see black smoke around 7:00 pm before heading home for dinner.

Except that 7:00 pm came and went, and there was no black smoke. Another hour went by, and still no black smoke. The crowd was getting anxious (and hungry). Of course, the schedule that had circulated was just an estimate based on past precedent, but it was still very late. My friends and I started to wonder, could the unthinkable have happened? Could someone have received the necessary 2/3 majority on the very first ballot and was now in the process of accepting the office? Surely not!

As the clock on the facade of St. Peter’s Basilica inched closer to 9:00 pm, I contemplated giving up and going home. The crowd grew agitated and began to thin out. Then, exactly at 9:00 pm, the video screens that had a live feed of the chimney above the Sistine Chapel suddenly turned off. I assume they were on a timer or something, and no one predicted the voting would go so late! But then, seconds later, thick black smoke began to rise out of the chimney, still just visible against the darkening Roman sky. The video screens suddenly came back on, and it was clear for the whole world to see: no pope had been elected.

Day two of the conclave dawned as a glorious sunny day in Rome. Very few people expected someone to be elected during any of the four votes scheduled that day, but the city was alive with anticipation. The conclave would be in full swing, and the city was eager to meet the next Bishop of Rome.

As expected, no one was elected during the first two votes of the day (and 2^nd and 3^rd votes overall), and black smoke billowed out of the chimney above the Sistine Chapel just before noon, right on schedule.

Even though I didn’t think there was much of a chance of white smoke that evening, I still made plans with some friends to meet in St. Peter’s Square after work. We coordinated bringing meats and cheeses, and planned to make a picnic of it while we waited for the likely black smoke.

I arrived in the Square around 5:00 pm, and if someone had been elected on the first afternoon ballot (the 4th overall ballot), we expected to see white smoke around 5:30 pm. If no one was elected, then the cardinals would proceed directly to the next ballot, and we would either see black or white smoke around 7:00 pm.

It was a festive atmosphere, with a lot of people singing and waving flags. I gathered with a big group of friends as 5:30 pm came and went. By 6:00 pm, we assumed no one had been elected and were hunkered down to wait at least another hour for smoke. People were just sitting on the ground and chatting, and I had given up staring at the tiny chimney above the Sistine Chapel for the time being.

Then, at 6:07 pm, there was a roar that sounded like an airplane engine revving up. It got louder and louder as more people realized that, high above us, bright white smoke was billowing out of the chimney. Immediately, people started running towards the front of the Square and packed in like sardines to get as close as we could to the famous balcony in the middle of St. Peter’s Basilica. Now the festival atmosphere really took off. People were crying, singing, and dancing. We knew we had to wait another hour or so before the appointed cardinal would appear on the balcony and announce to us, and the world, who had been elected.

While we waited to learn who the new pope was, there was a paradoxically blissful hour when we had a pope but didn’t yet know who he was. While bursting with anticipation, I recall thinking that, in that moment, I was simply thankful for the office of the papacy in its purest form. Of course, it’s wonderful to love individual popes, but I had this unique moment to be grateful for the gift of the office of Peter, that mysterious chain linking each Bishop of Rome back to the apostle Christ chose to be His vicar, the visible shepherd of His flock on Earth.

In that hour before learning who our new Vicar of Christ was, I felt an overwhelming gratitude to be Catholic. It’s still hard to describe. There was a palpable joy and relief in the Square as the realization dawned that, once again, we had a shepherd here on Earth, not to replace Christ, but to unify us and guide us ever more fully toward Him. The pope is not Christ. He is a servant, a signpost, the servant of the servants of God, always pointing beyond himself to the true Good Shepherd. I know from experience that the idea of the papacy can be a huge stumbling block for non-Catholics, but I have come to thank God daily for the office of Peter and the authority entrusted to it for the sake of unity and truth.

While the man changes, the mission remains the same: to echo Peter’s ancient confession, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God," and to be the rock that helps the Church keep proclaiming it up and down the centuries. Without even knowing his name, the crowd was joyfully chanting “Viva il Papa!”

Habemus Papam!

At 7:12 pm, just over an hour after white smoke had first appeared, Cardinal Mamberti walked out on the balcony to announce the news.

He clearly savored the moment, taking a painfully long pause as the crowd fell silent, waiting to hear. He knew he had the world’s biggest secret and enjoyed the moment as humanity collectively held its breath.

Finally, he uttered the ancient and familiar formula in Latin:

The crowd went wild! Oh how I had longed to hear those words in person. I’m a sucker for pageantry and pomp and circumstance. I had gone back and watched news coverage of the past three papal elections, of John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis. Even before becoming Catholic, I dreamed of standing in St. Peter’s Square to hear these words.

That dream was now a reality, and it was difficult to take in. Tears in my eyes, I silently waited with the crowd to hear the name. 150,000+ people all crammed together, and you could hear a pin drop as we waited to hear the name announced. Cardinal Mamberti continued for the world to hear:

Stunned. As he said the word Prevost, most people were looking around, asking themselves, “who the heck is that?!”

At the utterance of Robert Francis, however, I knew, and I lost my mind. I’m on video yelling, “We have an American Pope!!”

Even though I had heard his name circulating, I hadn’t taken it very seriously. Like everyone else, I assumed there would never be an American pope, at least not in my lifetime. Also, like everyone else there, I knew very little about him. Just that he had been born in the US, but had spent much of his priesthood as a missionary and eventually as a bishop in Peru.

There was no cell service in the Square to do any quick online research. I was sure the rest of the world, stunned as we were, would be receiving a hastily assembled biography from someone on CNN, pulling it from the bottom of the pile of possible candidates. We were left to just enjoy the moment, not worry about the specifics of the cardinal who had just been elected, but focus at that moment on celebrating and praying for the man we were about to meet.

As soon as the name was announced, the windows to the side of the famous balcony were flung open, and the 140+ cardinals who had just elected the first American pope crammed onto the side balconies to join the celebration. A few minutes later, the curtains behind the central balcony parted, and we, and the whole world watching, got our first look at Leo XIV!

He walked out onto the balcony, and I felt like I was in a movie scene, and this was not real life. To participate in the moment, a moment I had known so well from previous videos and had longed to witness in person. Before he said a single word, I was totally hooked and captivated by our new Pope Leo. Something about his paradoxically humble yet confident presence drew me, and everyone else in the Square, in.

Speaking in a clear Italian I could mostly understand, Pope Leo XIV greeted us with the words of Christ: “Peace be with you all!” It was a comforting surprise that he came out to the balcony with prepared remarks. This was indicative of what we have come to expect from him over his first weeks as pope: he is clearly careful and intentional with all of his words and actions.

Therefore, without fear, united, hand in hand with God and with one another, let us move forward. We are disciples of Christ, Christ goes before us; the world needs His light, humanity needs Him as a bridge to be reached by God and His love. Help us as well—help one another—to build bridges through dialogue, through encounter, uniting everyone to be one single people always in peace.

Following his prepared remarks, he imparted the solemn Urbi et Orbi blessing (to the city and the world) that popes only give on the occasion of their election, and at Christmas and Easter. The same blessing that Pope Francis had given on Easter Sunday, just a few weeks earlier, as one of his final acts in this life.

After Pope Leo waved goodbye to the crowd and walked back into St. Peter’s Basilica, everyone kept chanting his name. It was a giddy atmosphere. Of course, we had to keep the celebrations going. A group of us meandered over to our favorite watering hole, Bar Peru (aptly named!), so we could properly toast our new pontiff. Naturally, celebrations and chants of “Viva Papa Leone!” continued until the bar kicked us out at 2:00 am.

Getting to know Papa Leone

As I write this, it’s now been exactly two months since the world first met Pope Leo XIV. In that time, I’ve had the chance to attend his Inaugural Mass in St. Peter’s Square, several Sunday Angelus and Regina Caeli addresses where he greets the crowds from the papal apartment balcony, and two Wednesday Audiences, where he gives his weekly catechesis and rides through the Square in the popemobile.

It’s incredible to reflect on how much my life has changed in the nearly ten years between first seeing the Bishop of Rome on the balcony of the U.S. Capitol and now watching the first American pope step onto the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica. Not only has my professional life shifted away from American politics and toward working for the Church, but my personal and spiritual center of gravity has continued along the trajectory that began a decade ago. The outward reality of living in Rome rather than Washington, DC, mirrors an inner transformation as much as a geographic one.

It’s been surreal to watch history continue to unfold in the Eternal City. Every day, I’m surrounded by ruins of the great Roman Empire: my office overlooks the Roman Forum, and my commute takes me past the spot where Julius Caesar was stabbed. This city was once the political center of the world. Now, the very people the Romans persecuted stand above their ruins, both literally and figuratively. A massive statue of St. Peter now stands above Trajan’s victory column, and St. Paul above that of Marcus Aurelius. On the sites of Peter and Paul’s tombs stand two of the most magnificent churches in the world, not as relics of a bygone era, but as living, breathing houses of worship, proclaiming and adoring Christ, crucified and risen, the true King above all earthly empires.

It's impossible not to think about the events and people this city has witnessed over the millennia: the rise and fall of empires, great saints and cruel despots, and some of the most brilliant artists in human history... and now, Fr. Bob from the Midwest becoming the 266th Successor of St. Peter. The paradox of Rome: ever ancient and ever new.

I’d be lying if I said my heart hasn’t swollen with pride at the idea of an American pope. The fact that our young country, founded by mostly Protestants and deists (shout out to Catholic Founding Fathers like Charles Carroll!), could offer one of our sons to the Church and to the world in this way is a truly extraordinary thing. In a very real way, however, Fr. Bob from Chicago no longer exists. Now, as Pope Leo XIV, he is the servant of the servants of God, and transcending all nationalities, he is tasked with shepherding the whole world towards Christ, the Son of the living God.

While the world is still justifiably stunned at the idea of an American citizen elected pope, I don’t think we’ve yet fully grasped the profound potential impact of having a native English-speaking pope, the first since Pope Adrian IV in the 12th century. The recent popes each had many strengths, but mastery of the English language was not one of them. Every time Pope Leo XIV speaks in English, I get chills. In an era of viral video clips and global social media, the ability for his words to reach millions directly, without translation, is astonishing. Just this past week, he spoke in English during his Sunday Angelus address, expressing his solidarity and prayers for the people of Texas recovering from the devastating floods.

I truly believe we stand at the beginning of a Leonine Revival and a new era of (re)evangelization not only in the United States, but around the world.

As we step into this new chapter with Pope Leo XIV, I find myself more hopeful than ever. History may never stop unfolding in Rome, but through it all, Jesus Christ remains the same yesterday, today, and forever.

The day after his election, Pope Leo returned to the Sistine Chapel with the College of Cardinals to celebrate his first Holy Mass as pope. His Christocentric homily was incredible and deserves to be read in full. I leave you with an excerpt, which I believe will become a defining theme of Pope Leo XIV’s pontificate:

Even today, there are many settings in which the Christian faith is considered absurd, meant for the weak and unintelligent. Settings where other securities are preferred, like technology, money, success, power, or pleasure.

These are contexts where it is not easy to preach the Gospel and bear witness to its truth, where believers are mocked, opposed, despised or at best tolerated and pitied. Yet, precisely for this reason, they are the places where our missionary outreach is desperately needed. A lack of faith is often tragically accompanied by the loss of meaning in life, the neglect of mercy, appalling violations of human dignity, the crisis of the family and so many other wounds that afflict our society.

Today, too, there are many settings in which Jesus, although appreciated as a man, is reduced to a kind of charismatic leader or superman. This is true not only among non-believers but also among many baptized Christians, who thus end up living, at this level, in a state of practical atheism.

This is the world that has been entrusted to us, a world in which, as Pope Francis taught us so many times, we are called to bear witness to our joyful faith in Jesus the Saviour. Therefore, it is essential that we too repeat, with Peter: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Mt 16:16).

It is essential to do this, first of all, in our personal relationship with the Lord, in our commitment to a daily journey of conversion. Then, to do so as a Church, experiencing together our fidelity to the Lord and bringing the Good News to all (cf. Lumen Gentium, 1).

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I couldn’t sleep last night and had the idea to write a series of open letters to a friend who is suffering. I wrote this one in the middle of the night (with some editing after espresso).

It turned out more like a letter to my younger self, the fruit of eighteen years of living with chronic pain. This is a first attempt to say what I wish someone had said to me half a lifetime ago.

Suffering can feel impossibly lonely, as if no one else could possibly understand the weight you carry. I hope these letters can reach across that chasm. Whether your suffering is physical, emotional, spiritual, or something else entirely, I hope these words feel like a companion on the road and a reminder that you are not alone.

If these words could comfort someone you know, I would be honored if you shared them.

Dear Friend,

I know you’re hurting. I don’t know exactly where it hurts or how long it will last, but I’m here with you. I want to start by telling you that your pain is real. You do not have to hide it or minimize it. You do not have to pretend to be okay.

Don’t be afraid to confront your suffering head-on. Most people spend their entire lives trying to avoid pain, to outrun it, to distract themselves so they do not have to feel it. But facing it is the first, hardest, and most important step. It is only when we stop running that we can begin to understand what our suffering is asking of us and who we might become because of it.

Now is the time to engage in the deep, foundational questions of life. Ask the questions. Read classic literature and study the lives of great men and women, and you will quickly learn how crucial it is to suffer.

To suffer is to be human, and to be human is to suffer.

Why are we so afraid to confront this, both within ourselves and with those around us?

Embrace the suffering. It is one of the most deeply human experiences. Instead of allowing it to unite us, we often let it isolate us and force us to suffer alone. That is a tragedy.

But you are not alone.

You have stepped into this shared human journey. You are loved, not in spite of your pain and your suffering, but because of it. It is a crucial part of what makes you… you. It is a part of what makes you human.

Now that you have entered this experience of suffering in this particular way, you have embarked on an important and life-changing pilgrimage. You cannot let this experience go to waste.

There is a choice before you. Do you sit around and feel bad for yourself, endlessly asking “Why me?” and complaining until no one wants to be around you? Or do you accept the fact that this is happening to you? That it is real? But that it does not define all of who you are?

How are you going to respond?

Your response to your suffering is what truly matters. Do not waste this opportunity to dive deep into what it means to be a member of the human race. Discover that there is meaning in your pain. I cannot tell you exactly why this is happening to you, but I can tell you it is not by accident. My friend, I stopped believing in accidents a long time ago. No, this is part of a bigger plan at work. A design we cannot fully understand.

You are not going to be the same person on the other side of this. Who do you want to be? Do you want to come out stronger, braver, and wiser? Or do you want to come out broken, bitter, and closed off?

Don’t waste this moment. Don’t check out.

Now is the time to confront your suffering, to do the hard interior work, cry out to God in the middle of the night, and wrestle with the deepest questions of pain and suffering, of good and evil. Do not shy away from this.

Seek out spiritual masters and wise voices, past and present, who can walk with you. Read the great texts of humanity. Think. Pray. Engage.

If you embrace this quest, I promise your suffering’s grip on your life will begin to loosen. It might still be there, looming in the background, but you can break out of the cycle of fear it has trapped you in.

Today, you have to decide: do I embrace my suffering, or do I run from it?

Fair warning: you will have to recommit to that decision every single day.

Choosing the first path is not easy, but I promise you it is worth it.

I’m with you step by step.

Your friend,

David

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I’d genuinely love feedback on this format and whether you think this series of Letters to a Suffering Friend is worth expanding to other topics related to pain and suffering.

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It was a slow Easter Monday morning in Rome. The city was quiet after the beautifully intense Easter Triduum liturgies and the joyful, spritz-filled celebrations of Easter Sunday. I was making coffee at home when I saw the BBC alert on my phone: Pope Francis had died.

I said a quick prayer and immediately knew there was only one place I wanted to be: St. Peter’s Square.

I live a twenty-minute walk from the Vatican, and when I arrived, the square was still mostly empty. Pilgrims and tourists were slowly making their way through the long line to enter the basilica. Nothing official had begun, and I’m sure many people there still hadn’t heard the news. Little by little, though, people began to trickle into the square to pray.

Gradually, the scene began to shift. More people entered. Journalists arrived and began interviewing those who had gathered. A few cameras were set up. The gravity of what had just happened and what was about to unfold began to settle in.

At noon, the death bells began to ring. From where I stood, I could see the large bell of St. Peter’s Basilica swinging. Unlike the usual mechanical rhythm, it was being rung by hand. A single person in the bell tower pushed the massive clapper back and forth, one solemn strike for each of the 88 years of Pope Francis’s life.

As I stood there watching, I began to realize that this spot, St. Peter’s Square, was about to become the center of the world’s attention. For the next several weeks, the eyes of the Church and the world would be fixed here. And I would have a front row seat.

The Funeral

On the morning of Pope Francis’s funeral, I arrived at St. Peter’s Square well before dawn. I wanted to be sure I had a good view, and I knew the square would fill up quickly. I arrived a little before 6:00 a.m., but I knew people had camped out since at least 4:30 a.m. They started letting people through security right at 6:00 a.m., and by sheer luck, I managed to be standing in an opportune spot to go through a smaller, unnoticed security checkpoint and beat the main crowds into the square. I was mentally prepared to stand in the square for the next several hours, but I couldn’t believe my luck when I was able to grab one of the few remaining chairs available to the general public.

As the sun slowly rose over the basilica, the square began to fill with pilgrims, priests, religious sisters, seminarians, press, diplomats, and ordinary Catholics from around the world. By the time the funeral Mass began, more than a quarter of a million people were packed into the square and surrounding streets. It was deeply moving to be part of that crowd, with people from every continent, speaking every language, brought together by the death of one man. It was a quiet reminder that, for all its divisions and differences, the Catholic Church remains the one place on earth that can still bring the whole world together.

That morning, I couldn’t help but think about what that place has seen. The Roman emperor Nero had crucified St. Peter on that very hill. Now, centuries later, kings, presidents, and pilgrims from every corner of the globe were gathered for the Requiem Mass of Peter’s 266th successor. Empires rise and fall, I thought, but Christ’s one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church remains.

Two moments from the funeral stand out most in my memory.

The first was the Litany of the Saints. As dozens of saints were invoked by name to pray for Pope Francis, the entire square responded in unison. Pilgrims prayed alongside world leaders and the College of Cardinals. It is one of the central prayers of the Church’s most solemn liturgies, used in ordinations, canonizations, and the Easter Vigil. In that moment, it felt as if the Church was reaching across time, linking the living and the dead, the powerful and the hidden, all united in prayer for one soul.

The second moment that struck me most came near the end of the Mass, when representatives from the Eastern Catholic Churches gathered around the Pope’s coffin and began to chant. The sound was unfamiliar to many in the square. Ancient, haunting, and beautiful. It was a moment that captured something essential about the Catholic Church. It reminded me that the Church is not just Roman. It is made up of many rites and many voices, each rooted in traditions that stretch back centuries. That chant, rising from the heart of St. Peter’s Square, was a small but powerful sign of the Church’s true universality.

Reflections on Pope Francis’s Pontificate

Over the past two weeks, a few moments from Pope Francis’s pontificate have been most clearly on my mind. These moments have shaped my memory of who he was as a pope and what kind of Church he tried to lead.

Visit to the United States

I first saw Pope Francis in person during his apostolic visit to the United States in 2015. At the time, I was living in Washington, D.C., working on Capitol Hill, and still in the early stages of becoming Catholic. I was in RCIA, learning, discerning, and slowly falling in love with the Catholic faith.

When I found out he would be addressing a joint session of Congress, I was determined to be there, even if I couldn’t get inside. Each member of Congress only had a handful of tickets to give out, and despite my best efforts, I couldn’t get my hands on one. So, like thousands of others, I showed up before dawn and stood on the lawn of the Capitol, where they had set up large screens to show his speech. When it was over, Pope Francis walked out onto the Speaker’s Balcony and greeted the crowd.

That moment left a deep mark on me. There he was, flanked by then–Vice President Joe Biden and Speaker of the House John Boehner, standing at the seat of American politics. And yet, even in that setting, he wasn’t just another political figure. He carried something older, something weightier. Until that moment, the U.S. Capitol had been the center of my world. Ever since my college internship in D.C., everything in my life had revolved around that building and American politics. But standing there that morning, I realized something had shifted. The axis of my attention was moving: from Washington to Rome, from political power to spiritual authority, from the U.S. Capitol to the Chair of St. Peter. My center of gravity was shifting under my feet.

That moment didn’t convert me, but it became one of the quiet turning points. One of the markers I look back on and recognize as part of the long arc of my conversion.

Visit to Iraq

One of the most powerful moments of Pope Francis’s pontificate came during his visit to Iraq in 2021. Years earlier, ISIS had declared its intent to conquer Rome and behead the Pope. They saw him as a symbol of everything they hated: Christianity, peace, the West, and the Church itself.

And yet, there was Pope Francis in Mosul, standing in the ruins of a church that ISIS had destroyed.

It was profoundly moving to see him there. In the years since, reports have revealed that there were credible threats against his life during the visit. His security team couldn’t fully guarantee his safety. But he went anyway.

That decision was quietly defiant. He went to pray with both Christians and Muslims. He stood in a place devastated by evil and chose to respond not with fear but with hope, not with revenge but with the quiet witness of faith.

It was a simple act, but one that said everything. The Church does not run from the darkness. The successor of Peter had come to stand with the people who had suffered at the hands of evil.

To me, that moment was a visible sign of good confronting evil, not with force, but with love. His very presence in that place was a quiet act of defiance and a powerful act of hope. It said to the world: we do not give in to fear. We show up. We pray. We stand with those who suffer. And we believe that even in the ruins, Christ is still present.

Urbi et Orbi Blessing During the Pandemic

The third moment I keep returning to is the night Pope Francis gave the Urbi et Orbi blessing during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The world was locked down. Cities were quiet. Streets were empty. No one really knew what was coming next. And then, one night, the Pope stepped out alone into a dark, rainy, and silent St. Peter’s Square.

There were no crowds. No long procession. Just silence, rain, and prayer.

He offered a beautiful homily and led Eucharistic adoration. Then he lifted the monstrance and blessed the city and the world with the Eucharistic Lord.

There is one image from that moment that has stayed with me ever since. As he raised the monstrance to bless the world, his face disappeared beneath the folds of his cope. You couldn’t see him at all, only the face of Christ in the Eucharist.

That moment, to me, was a quiet icon of the Church at its best. The Pope wasn’t drawing attention to himself. He wasn’t performing. He was simply there, holding Christ before the world. In that moment, it wasn’t the Vicar of Christ blessing the world. It was Christ himself.

The whole scene has remained with me in a hauntingly beautiful way. The rain. The silence. The empty square. The crucifix. The Eucharist. It was one of the loneliest images of the papacy, and yet also one of the most hopeful. In the midst of global fear and isolation, he offered what only the Church can offer: the presence of Jesus.

The Eve of the Conclave

These are just a few of the moments I’ve been thinking about over the past two weeks since Pope Francis died. His legacy will be examined and debated for years to come, and no single reflection can capture the full scope of his papacy. But these are the memories that remain with me. These are the moments when he helped shape my own life of faith.

Pope Francis is the only pope I’ve known since becoming Catholic. His voice, his image, and his priorities have marked every year of my life in the Church so far. When I served as a diplomat for the Holy See, I had the honor and responsibility of advocating on his behalf on the international stage. While I didn’t always agree with every decision or prioritization, I never doubted his heart for the world or his desire to bring people closer to Christ.

As I write this, the Church holds its breath on the eve of the conclave. Tomorrow, the College of Cardinals will lock themselves in the Sistine Chapel and begin the process of choosing the 267th successor of St. Peter.

Once again, St. Peter’s Square will draw the world’s attention, as every eye turns toward the small, recently installed chimney, waiting for white smoke and the chance to catch our first glimpse of the new Bishop of Rome. And once again, I will have a front row seat.

I’m praying that the Cardinals will be attentive to the Holy Spirit and that the next pope will be led by the Sacred Heart of Jesus, chosen as a shepherd for this moment in history to be a source of hope, unity, and truth for the world.

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I’m heartbroken. Two of my favorite paintings in the world went on display in New York last weekend. I was in the city, but I didn’t know about the exhibition.

Missing the Caspar David Friedrich exhibit that just opened at the Met feels like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity slipped through my fingers.

I was first introduced to Friedrich during my college study abroad program. One of my professors, Gabriel, was an Englishman who had lived in Germany for a decade. He had clearly become obsessed with Friedrich’s paintings, and he passed that obsession on to several of us.

The first of his works I encountered was Winter Landscape in London’s National Gallery. It captivated me. The painting depicts a man who has cast aside his crutches and is praying before a large crucifix. Within the snowy landscape, Friedrich places the cross protruding among three evergreen trees, full of life in the middle of winter. In the background, shrouded in mist, the silhouette of a large gothic church looms ominously.

It's easy to miss the man at first glance as he leans against a boulder. Only when you notice his discarded crutches is your eye drawn through their leading line to him. Has he been miraculously healed, casting down his crutches in celebration and now praying in thanksgiving? Or has he thrown them aside in desperation, pleading with God to heal him? Maybe for the thousandth time? Or has he simply dropped them out of faith, neither desperate nor jubilant, but humbly approaching the Redeemer, trusting in God’s plan for his life?

I naturally saw myself and my experience in chronic pain depicted in the figure of the painting (a common occurrence for me with Friedrich’s work). The ambiguity of the scene mirrors the tension in my own life between resilience and surrender, doubt and faith. Friedrich masterfully captures that tension in many of his paintings.

I grew up surrounded by beautiful art. My mom took us to the Getty Museum in LA and to world-class museums whenever we traveled, sometimes dragging us along to see her favorite paintings. We had a few large prints decorating our house. My favorite was Monet’s Woman with a Parasol. I’ll never forget the thrill of seeing it for the first time in Washington, D.C., in 2013.

My semester abroad built upon the foundation my mom laid. Instead of staying in one place like most study abroad programs, ours spanned 13 countries across Europe and the Holy Land over four months. One of our classes was an art history course, and our classrooms were the great museums of Europe: The Louvre, Rijksmuseum, Musée d’Orsay, Van Gogh Museum, Monet’s Gardens, Kunsthistorisches, Uffizi, Vatican Museums, Galleria Borghese, Gallerie dell’Accademia, and so many others. It was an incredible experience that I underappreciated as a 20-year-old.

The Monk by the Sea

Over the course of that semester, the painting that most dramatically stopped me in my tracks was Friedrich’s The Monk by the Sea in the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin (but currently at the Met in New York. Go see it!). I encountered it almost 14 years ago, but it has haunted me ever since.

The painting is relatively large, and in it, a tiny monk stands on a sliver of land overlooking a churning sea and a massive, ominous sky. The monk is just a few brushstrokes of paint, yet he has captivated my imagination for years. As the sea crashes and the sky threatens, he stands his ground. Is he leaning away in fear or leaning forward in defiance? It’s hard to tell. But his feet are firmly planted.

This is one of the best depictions of prayer I’ve ever encountered in art. The monk perceives the vastness and power of his surroundings. He is minuscule before the endless sky and sea. He is insignificant before the infinite. And yet he remains. He does not run away. By the look of his hand, he is contemplating, beholding the Creator and the raw beauty of creation.

Is it any different for us to stand in the presence of God? We are insignificant before the infinite. We are dwarfed by the vastness and awful beauty of the divine. And yet, in our contemplation, we are drawn into the mystery swirling around us. When we stand on the edge of the open ocean or atop a giant mountain, we become one with creation, encountering and beholding our Creator.

This painting beautifully depicts what I imagine the interior life of a suffering soul looks like. Throughout my 18 years in chronic pain, I have been in the place of this monk by the sea. I have been overwhelmed by the chaos that surrounds me, inside and out. Sometimes, I lean away in fear, and other times, I lean forward out of faith. But no matter what, I hold my ground. Filled with awe and trepidation, I behold my Creator amidst the storm of my life.

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The Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog

The Monk by the Sea remains my favorite painting I’ve seen in person. However, Friedrich’s most famous work, currently in New York but usually in Hamburg, is my favorite painting overall. I had a large poster of it in my college dorm, and it’s been the background on my phone for years.

The Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog is not just Friedrich’s most iconic painting. It is one of the masterpieces of the entire Romantic movement.

At the center stands a well-dressed man, the Wanderer, with his back to the viewer. His posture allows us to project ourselves into his position, and the fact that he’s a redhead makes it even easier for me!

I oscillate between two interpretations of the painting: Is he looking forward or is he looking backward?

Most assume he is looking forward. If so, he sees the path ahead hidden in fog. He can see his presumed destination and a few touchpoints along the way, but the overall journey is obscured. Just like in life, we may know where we want to go and see a few waypoints, but the path itself is hidden. This is the adventure of life. We navigate the unknown, occasionally emerging above the fog to get our bearings before continuing onward. Spiritually, these moments are the “mountaintop experiences” of retreats, pilgrimages, or other encounters with the divine that keep us on course.

But I also love the interpretation that he is looking back, surveying the road he has already traveled. He sees his starting point clearly, but the exact path that brought him to this moment is hidden beneath the fog of experience. The touchpoints he sees are not his next steps but markers of where he has been. They are like the twelve stones Joshua raised on the banks of the Jordan River as memorials of God’s faithfulness. In life, we cannot recall every twist and turn of our journey, but we can place markers to remember the moments that shaped us.

In either interpretation, the Wanderer, like us, does not get to see the whole board. The reality of life remains hidden beneath the fog. We glimpse the beginning and the end, with only a few touchpoints in between. The rest is an adventure on the ground, a daily journey through hills and valleys. Like the Wanderer, we occasionally climb above the fog to catch sight of parts of the trail. We can pause to look back and look forward, but life is not meant to be lived sedentarily on the mountaintop. It is meant to be lived through the journey.

One day, I hope to see this masterpiece in person. I’m genuinely tempted to return to New York before the exhibit closes in May. I would be extremely grateful if anyone could transfer me some airline miles to help with the flight! Realistically, however, I’ll have to go see it in Hamburg another time. Until then, I will continue navigating through the fog, occasionally climbing my own mountaintops, and pressing forward through the adventures of life.

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The Cycle of Fear

For years, I lived in fear of my own body. Physical activity seemed like a dangerous gamble, where every movement felt like a potential trigger for the kind of increased back pain that could sideline me for days or weeks. Fear trapped me in a vicious cycle: I avoided physical activity to prevent pain, but that avoidance only deepened my fear and left my body weaker over time.

Anyone who has suffered physically or emotionally over prolonged periods of time knows how these cycles of fear can entrap you. We become convinced that any step forward will only make things worse, so we stay put, waiting for a change that never comes. These cycles of fear can feel impossible to escape. Breaking out requires more than just a change in circumstances, it often requires a complete shift in mindset.

Around the time I turned 30, my mindset on my physical health began to change. For years, I had simply coasted on the benefits of youth. Our bodies can endure a lot of neglect in our 20s, but I knew it wasn’t sustainable. If I wanted to remain healthy later in life, I needed to steadily increase my physical fitness. This wasn't just about staying slim. I wondered how I could remain physically healthy enough to enjoy the life I wanted. I thought about my future as a husband and father, wanting to keep up with my kids and carry them around. Could I really be a supportive husband and engaged father if I let my body deteriorate?

While I was still afraid of increasing my pain, I was convinced that something needed to change. I needed to be able to at least do basic physical exercises in order to ensure my future health.

Facing My Fear

For most of my life in chronic back pain, I saw physical therapy as an attempt to take the pain away. I’d do my exercises for a few weeks, hoping for relief, and when that relief didn’t come, I’d give up in frustration. It felt pointless.

Then something clicked. What if, instead of trying to eliminate the pain, I focused on building strength in spite of it? Could a good trainer teach me how to lift weights and exercise while protecting my back and preventing flare-ups? My goal shifted from trying to eliminate my pain to seeing how strong I could become without dramatically increasing it.

Changing my mindset was the first step, but then I had to act on it. It took me months to gather the courage to make an appointment for physical therapy. I was still afraid of failure, still questioning whether I could handle it. That fear didn’t disappear overnight. Even when we recognize the cycle of fear and glimpse a way out, finding the courage to act can take time. Confronting these cycles isn’t easy. It requires us to face uncertainty head-on, to take a step forward even when the outcome isn’t guaranteed. For me, making that appointment was the first step in finally breaking free.

Testing My Limits

In early 2023, I finally began physical therapy for the first time in years. Armed with my new mindset and an awesome trainer, I committed to getting stronger, even if it meant working through my pain. As long as my pain levels didn't dramatically spike, I was going to force myself to push through.

We moved slowly, carefully monitoring my body and pain levels. I started with bodyweight exercises and gradually moved to weightlifting. Initially, I used machines to brace my back (which felt less intimidating) and eventually progressed to dumbbell and barbell exercises.

At every step, I feared my back pain would skyrocket, but it mostly stayed the same. I learned to be in tune with my body and what would start to increase my pain. For example, despite trying multiple variations, barbell deadlifts always temporarily increased my back pain. It’s not a debilitating increase, but it’s enough that I can’t complete my other exercises well. So my physical therapist and I found other exercises to strengthen those same muscle groups without increasing my pain.

Weeks of careful strength training at physical therapy increased my confidence in my fitness journey and my curiosity about what my body could handle. My trainer helped me plan solo workouts to do at the gym in addition to our weekly sessions together. I had spent more than 15 years convincing myself that I didn’t belong at the gym, and I was initially incredibly intimidated and self-conscious. It took a lot of time to feel confident there, but little by little, I built a routine.

After a few months, I "graduated" from physical therapy and focused solely on the gym. Still a novice in the gym, I joined a new group fitness app from an Instagram “fitness influencer” whose content I had found genuinely helpful. Angus mapped out our weekly training sessions, and the app tracked our progress. It was during this time that I finally began to feel confident in the gym and believed that I belonged there, just like everyone else! For the first time in my life, I started to identify as someone who prioritized fitness. I was at the gym at 6:00am, 4 days a week. Not even Swiss snowstorms could stop me!

Even with this progress, however, fear lingered. I was cautious in the gym, hesitant to push myself too hard for fear of causing a major setback. This slow and steady approach was probably wise, but I couldn’t help wondering: What were my body’s true limits? How far could I go without crossing the line into debilitating pain?

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Breaking the Cycle in Thailand

After nearly a year of slow but steady strength training in the gym, I finally devised a plan to fully confront my cycle of fear head-on. Throughout that year, I had no shortage of excuses for not pushing myself harder physically. I had moved abroad and no longer had access to my medical support group. I was juggling a stressful job and didn’t want to risk injury in the gym that might sideline me from work. On top of that, the cold weather often aggravated my pain, so I avoided pushing myself too much during my first Swiss winter. The list of justifications was endless, even if they felt legitimate at the time.

But last spring, I quit my job in Switzerland, and before starting a new role in Italy that September, I decided to decompress by backpacking around Southeast Asia. I knew Thailand had become something of a fitness hub, and months earlier, I had stumbled across the website of a fitness boot camp on the island of Koh Samui. At the time, I never thought I would actually do it. But the question lingered: Could my body handle something like that?

Well, now was the time to find out. For the first time, I had the chance to truly test my limits. Worst-case scenario, if I pushed too hard and ended up causing my back pain to dramatically flare up, I could always recover on a Thai beach, drink in hand. With no work deadlines or major commitments hanging over me, it felt like the perfect opportunity to experiment.

I arrived for the week-long “total fitness retreat” excited and terrified. I wrote a deeper dive about it here:

The daily schedule was relentless: an early morning circuit class, a mid-morning strength and conditioning workout, and a high-intensity evening session. Just reading it felt impossible.

To my complete amazement, I discovered that my body was capable of far more than I had ever believed. The boot camp pushed me through grueling workouts, from strength training circuits to intense cardio drills and Muay Thai boxing. Each day brought new challenges that I would have dismissed as impossible just months earlier.

But I didn’t just push myself physically. I listened to my body and committed to rest and recovery. Every afternoon, I took a two-hour nap. I got a 90-minute massage most days (shout-out to $5 Thai massages!), attended optional yoga and stretching classes, and made full use of the gym’s recovery center with its sauna, cold plunge, and hot mineral baths.

For the first time in my life, I could be singularly focused on my health and well-being. The challenge now is figuring out how to maintain that level of commitment in a sustainable way for the rest of my life.

That week changed everything. I broke through a cycle of fear that had controlled me for half my life. For more than 15 years, my mind and body had been lying to me, insisting that I couldn’t do what I had just done. The boot camp was the culmination of an 18-month journey of slowly testing the validity of that lie and finally crushing it.

Finding Freedom

Fear has a way of taking root in our lives, especially for those of us who live with chronic pain. It whispers that any movement, challenge, or step outside our comfort zone will lead to disaster. Fear convinces us that staying still is safer than taking a risk. But fear lies. It traps us in cycles: fear of pain, failure, rejection, or the unknown. And then those cycles quietly take control of our lives.

Breaking free from fear takes more than just time or patience. Sometimes, it requires bold, even dramatic, action. For me, breaking the cycle of fear involved quitting my job and traveling halfway around the world to push my body to its limits. But the specifics don’t matter as much as the principle: it was an intentional step toward confronting what had been holding me back.

The key is to identify the cycle of fear that’s keeping you stuck and start experimenting with ways to disrupt it. Maybe it’s having that difficult conversation you’ve been avoiding. Maybe it’s signing up for a class or activity that feels intimidating. Maybe it’s committing to a small, consistent step forward. Whatever it looks like for you, the important thing is to take that first step. And then keep going.

Step by Step

Since that boot camp, I’ve committed to pushing my limits in the gym, growing stronger and more confident week by week. I reconnected with Angus, the online trainer I previously worked with, and he’s now my 1-on-1 coach. He plans every workout, tracks my progress, and keeps me accountable to my high-protein diet and overall health and fitness goals.

My pain is the same as it’s been for over 18 years, but my relationship with it has transformed. I’ve learned to measure success not by the absence of pain, but by the progress I’m making in spite of my pain.

If you’re feeling stuck, I hope my experience encourages you to take that first step. I know how hard it can be. Booking that first physical therapy appointment was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done. It was just a phone call, but I had built up so much fear. Fear of my body. Fear of failure. Fear of making things worse. The afraid part of my brain knew that phone call could mark a turning point, so it threw everything at me to delay or postpone it. But eventually, I made the call, and it set everything in motion.

Two years later, I can’t believe how far I’ve come: physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Let go of fear and take that first step, no matter how uncertain it feels. Change doesn’t happen overnight, but it starts with a decision. I made a simple phone call, which set me on a path I never thought I’d be strong enough to walk. It hasn’t been easy. It’s often felt like one step forward, two steps back. But that’s the pilgrimage I’m on: a step-by-step process of growth and resilience.

Breaking the cycle of fear takes time, but every step chips away at its hold.

Start small, stay consistent, and give yourself grace along the way.

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As 2025 gets underway, I wanted to take a moment to reflect back on the 52 books I read in 2024 and the most important lessons they taught me.

While reading 52 books over 52 weeks might sound like a steady pace of one book per week, my reading habits were very inconsistent. For example, during the height of my solo backpacking trip through Asia, I finished 11 books in July. In contrast, while visiting my sister in Australia and moving to Italy in August, I managed to finish only one book. To be fair, though, part of that time was spent working my way through the nearly 1,000-page epic The Pillars of the Earth.

Here are a few quick stats about my 2024 reading:

• 52 books totaling 15,853 pages

• 41% fiction, 59% nonfiction

• 62% were less than 300 pages, 25% were between 300-499 pages, and 13% were 500+ pages

One of the most interesting shifts this year wasn’t about the genres of books I read but the format I consumed them in.

Until about two years ago, I was firmly against e-books. I would only bring my Kindle on long trips, and even then, I used it sparingly, reading just two or three e-books a year. I have always been a fan of audiobooks, though. While I never listen to a fiction book for the first time as an audiobook, I find them great for rereading fiction or for powering through nonfiction books, especially dense biographies that I want to absorb but don’t have the patience to sit and read.

Moving abroad, however, has made me rethink my commitment to physical books. In an effort to keep my life condensed to just a few suitcases, I only brought a handful of print books with me to Europe. Since then, I’ve gone nearly all-in on e-books, using my Kindle extensively and taking advantage of apps like Readwise to organize my highlights and notes.

This shift was further amplified by my time on the road. In 2024, I spent over three months backpacking in Southeast Asia and visiting Australia. Being constantly on the move meant e-books and audiobooks became my primary way of reading.

Here’s how my 2024 book formats broke down:

• 21% print books

• 35% e-books

• 44% audiobooks

As I reflected on my reading year, I wanted to share some key takeaways and reasons you might enjoy a few of my favorite books from 2024.

FICTION

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

I started the year rereading one of my favorite books (currently ranked #2 behind Steinbeck’s East of Eden). Tartt is my favorite living author, and I’m obsessed with her prose. She spends a decade writing each book, and it’s now been 11 years since her last book, The Goldfinch, came out. I’m anxiously waiting to read whatever she’s been working on!

The Secret History is dark, weird, and wonderful. It pulls you into a world where beauty, intellect, and darkness intertwine. The story revolves around a group of students at an elite New England college who become obsessed with ancient philosophies and moralities without limits and (as you discover on the first page) end up murdering one of their own friends. Tartt explores the dangers of idealism, obsession, and the pursuit of knowledge without boundaries. I love how she articulates the tension between intellectual ambition and the consequences of ignoring the ethical dimensions of our actions.

A few favorite quotes:

“Does such a thing as 'the fatal flaw,' that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn't. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.”

“Death is the mother of beauty,” said Henry. “And what is beauty?” “Terror.” “Well said,” said Julian. “Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.”

“The Roman genius, and perhaps the Roman flaw,” he said, “was an obsession with order. One sees it in their architecture, their literature, their laws—this fierce denial of darkness, unreason, chaos.” He laughed. “Easy to see why the Romans, usually so tolerant of foreign religions, persecuted the Christians mercilessly—how absurd to think a common criminal had risen from the dead, how appalling that his followers celebrated him by drinking his blood.

Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

Pillars of the Earth is an epic historical novel that immerses you in the intricate struggles of politics, faith, and ambition in 12th-century England. At its core, the story revolves around the construction of a cathedral in the fictional town of Kingsbridge, a monumental endeavor that raises questions about vision, power, and purpose. Have you ever walked into iconic cathedrals like Notre Dame, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, or St. Peter’s Basilica and wondered, “Who built this? How? And why?” Ken Follett became obsessed with answering these questions, and through meticulous research, he answers them by telling the story from multiple perspectives: the master builder driven by his own architectural vision, the idealistic prior determined to expand his monastery, the ruthless bishop desperate for power, the noble families battling for control of the land, and the humble townspeople just struggling to survive. These intertwined narratives paint a vivid picture of the medieval world and explore the themes of ambition, faith, and the desire to leave a lasting legacy

“He had forgotten that God saw through the silk robes to the sinful heart, that the only wealth worth having was treasure in heaven, and that even the king had to kneel down in church. Feeling that everyone else was so much more powerful and sophisticated than he was, he had lost sight of his true values, suspended his critical faculties, and placed his trust in his superiors. His reward had been treachery.”

“He wondered if he really was capable of it. Then he thought what a thrill it would be to create something from nothing; to see, one day in the future, a new church here where now there was nothing but rubble, and to say: I made this.”

“What you’re doing is wrong,” he said. “I mean evil. To give up happiness like this is like throwing jewels into the ocean. It’s far worse than any sin.”

Steinbeck

In 2024, I started working my way through all of John Steinbeck’s novels in the order they were published. Steinbeck has been my favorite author for a long time, and I wanted to take a more intentional approach to studying his writing style and the key themes that evolved throughout his career. I read his first four books, and it’s been fascinating to see how his voice and vision developed over time.

Cup of Gold

Steinbeck’s debut novel is nothing like I expected… it’s a full-on pirate and treasure story! Loosely based on the life of Henry Morgan and his sacking of Panama City, it’s an entertaining read, but if I didn’t know it was Steinbeck, I’d never guess. There are only a handful of moments where his future writing style shines through, hinting at the brilliance to come.

“How is it, John, that such a great soldier can be such a great fool?” Said John Evelyn, “How could it be otherwise? If great men were not fools, the world would have been destroyed long ago. How could it be otherwise? Folly and distorted vision are the foundations of greatness.”

The Pastures of Heaven

After being amazed at how unexpected Steinbeck’s debut novel was, I was equally shocked by how quickly he immersed us in the familiar settings and characters that would define his work. This collection of interconnected stories about the inhabitants of the Salinas Valley captures Steinbeck’s early exploration of recurring themes: the weight of family history on future generations, the profound connection between people and the land, and the enduring tension between idealistic dreams and life’s harsh realities.

“…it’s almost impossible to read a fine thing without wanting to do a fine thing.”

To a God Unknown

Of the four Steinbeck novels I read in 2024, To a God Unknown was my favorite. While not as widely known as his later works, it’s a haunting exploration of humanity’s relationship with nature, faith, and the mysterious forces that shape our lives. Set in a rugged, almost mythic California landscape, the novel follows Joseph Wayne’s obsessive connection to the land and his increasingly blurred line between reverence and desperation. The novel grapples with questions of purpose, sacrifice, and the divine in a way that feels both timeless and deeply personal.

“In a way it gratified him that his health was bad, for it proved that God thought of him enough to make him suffer. Burton had the powerful resistance of the chronically ill.”

“Life cannot be cut off quickly. One cannot be dead until the things he changed are dead. His effect is the only evidence of his life. While there remains even a plaintive memory, a person cannot be cut off, dead.”

Tortilla Flat

Set in a small California town after World War I, Tortilla Flat follows a group of friends who live by their own code, sharing whatever they have (or don’t have) while navigating love, loyalty, and mischief. Beneath the playful tone, Steinbeck weaves in his usual themes of community, morality, and the complex ties between people and place. It’s short, charming, and profound.

“Time is more complex near the sea than in any other place, for in addition to the circling of the sun and the turning of the seasons, the waves beat out the passage of time on the rocks and the tides rise and fall as a great clepsydra.”

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

I can’t believe I’d never read this book before! I’ve always loved the movie, but I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the book is just as fun, if not even more so. Douglas Adams’ wit and absurd humor leap off the page, making every chapter a delight. The quirky characters, ridiculous situations, and clever insights into life, the universe, and everything had me awkwardly laughing out loud on my long bus rides through Vietnam.

“He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.”

The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton

While I love Chesterton’s non-fiction work, I’d never actually read any of his fiction until now. The Man Who Was Thursday did not disappoint. It’s an absurd, thrilling, and philosophical novel that starts as a spy story but quickly veers into something much stranger. I’m excited to dive into more of Chesterton’s fiction soon.

“Thieves respect property; they merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.”

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

The day I set out on my solo backpacking trip, one of my lifelong best friends bought me a copy of The Alchemist. It was the perfect book to set the tone for my journey, and I devoured it on my long flight from LA to Tokyo. Paulo Coelho’s classic follows Santiago, a shepherd who leaves his ordinary life behind to pursue his “Personal Legend.” Along the way, he meets a series of characters, each offering lessons about courage, perseverance, and trusting the journey. It’s a short, simple read, but its themes of self-discovery and following your dreams hit me right where I needed them as I embarked on my own adventure. While I wasn’t on an Eat Pray Love style “find myself” trip through Asia, it was still a powerful season of self-discovery, and this book set the perfect tone.

“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity.”

Silence by Shūsaku Endō’s

While in Japan, I reread Shūsaku Endō’s Silence. The book definitely hit differently this time around, both because I was reading it in Japan and because I was reading it for the first time since becoming Catholic. The novel follows a Jesuit missionary, Fr. Rodrigues, as he endures unimaginable trials while spreading Christianity in 17th-century Japan during a time of brutal persecution. Endō grapples with profound questions about faith, doubt, and the silence of God in suffering, crafting a story that is haunting, thought-provoking, and deeply moving.

Attending Mass in Tokyo deepened the impact of the book for me. Reflecting on the incredible hardships Christians have endured in Japan over the centuries, and seeing Catholics still gathering for Mass today, was incredibly powerful. I still find myself wrestling with the book’s ending and wondering what I would do if I were in Fr. Rodrigues’ place.

A terrible anguish rose up in his breast. Violently he shook his head trying to control the ugly imaginings and the words rose up to his throat like nausea… Repeating the prayer again and again he tried wildly to distract his attention; but the prayer could not tranquilize his agonized heart. ‘Lord, why are you silent? Why are you always silent…?

Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis

Every other year or so, I reread or relisten to C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia series. I loved these books as a kid, and in 2018, I reread them with some friends for the first time as an adult. I was expecting a simple and fun children’s series, but I rediscovered a profound exploration of themes like family, friendship, faith, adversity, adventure, confronting evil, and more.

As an adult, I’m continually struck by the richness of Lewis’ imagination and how he weaves timeless truths into stories that remain accessible to children. He explores what it means to live with courage, humility, and hope. The series reminds me that life’s most important lessons, like the value of self-sacrifice, the reality of redemption, and the beauty of forgiveness, are often best conveyed through simple, heartfelt stories. Each time I revisit Narnia, I uncover something new, whether it’s a deeper understanding of Aslan’s unwavering grace or a fresh reminder to see the wonder and adventure in the world around me.

“It isn't Narnia, you know," sobbed Lucy. "It's you. We shan't meet you there. And how can we live, never meeting you?"
"But you shall meet me, dear one," said Aslan.
"Are -are you there too, Sir?" said Edmund.
"I am," said Aslan. "But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.”

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

The Requisitions by Samuel Lopez-Barrantes

I met Samuél Lopez-Barrantes last spring in Paris while visiting a mutual friend. Over drinks, Samuél mentioned his recently published second novel, The Requisitions, and I couldn’t resist picking up a copy. A week later, I stayed up for nearly an entire transatlantic flight because I simply couldn’t put it down.

The Requisitions is set against the backdrop of the Soviet invasion of Poland, but the main characters are figments of the narrator’s imagination. Samuél artfully weaves together multiple storylines creating a layered narrative that explores themes of memory, resistance, oppression, and the resilience of humanity. It’s a thought-provoking story that blurs the line between history and imagination.

Other non-fiction books I read this year included:

• The Dinner, Herman Koch

• The Lemon Tree, Sandy Tolan

• The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman

• Waverly, Walter Scott

• The Divine Embrace, Martin Aspelund

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NONFICTION

Stoicism & Roman History

Since moving to Rome, I’ve been inspired to dive deeply into Stoic philosophy and Roman history. Living in the city where so many of these ideas and events took shape has given me a new appreciation for their enduring power and relevance.

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

I can’t believe I’ve never read this incredible book before. Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations is packed with timeless wisdom that feels as relevant today as it must have been in ancient Rome. Written as a private journal, it offers profound reflections on resilience, self-discipline, and the nature of virtue. What struck me most was how deeply personal it feels. It’s less a philosophical treatise and more like reading someone’s soul laid bare. I plan to add it to my short list of books I reread every year or two, as it’s the kind of work that has something new to offer with every visit.

“Concentrate every minute like a Roman—like a man—on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions. Yes, you can—if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable.”

SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, Mary Beard

Reading Mary Beard’s SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome while living in Rome was a surreal experience. Her vivid descriptions of ancient politics, society, and daily life make it impossible not to picture the scenes she describes as I walk past ruins like the Forum and the Colosseum. Her exploration of how Rome shaped the modern world feels even more powerful when you’re surrounded by both the monuments of its past and the evidence of its legacy. It’s like getting a crash course in the city’s layered history, with the added thrill of standing exactly where it all happened.

“There is little point in asking how ‘democratic’ the politics of Republican Rome were: Romans fought for, and about, liberty, not democracy.”

Caesar: Life of a Colossus, Adrian Goldsworthy

Goldsworthy’s Caesar: Life of a Colossus provides an in-depth look at one of history’s most fascinating leaders.

Caesar’s life reads like a whirlwind of ambition, brilliance, and controversy. Rising from a relatively modest background for Roman nobility, he became a skilled general, orator, and politician, reshaping the Republic through his military conquests, political alliances, and reforms. Goldsworthy captures both his charisma and his ruthlessness, showing how Caesar’s relentless drive to consolidate power ultimately led to his dictatorship and his assassination at the hands of former allies.

On my daily commute to and from work, I walk past the ruins of the Curia of Pompey, where Caesar was stabbed to death on the Ides of March. It’s surreal to live in a city with layers and layers of history thousands of years old. Reading about Caesar while walking through the city he once ruled brings the story to life in a way no classroom or documentary ever could.

“Ultimately, most of the Roman elite preferred to allow some of the major problems facing the Republic to go unanswered rather than see someone else gain the credit for dealing with them.”

Right Thing, Right Now & Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday

This year, I read two of Ryan Holiday’s books: Ego is the Enemy and Right Thing, Right Now: Justice in an Unjust World. Both have been fascinating additions to my move to Rome, offering practical ways to implement the timeless Stoic principles I’ve been exploring in the context of the city’s rich history.

Ego is the Enemy delves into the dangers of pride and self-importance, urging readers to embrace humility, focus on their work, and let go of the need for constant recognition. It’s a humbling reminder of how ego has toppled even the greatest leaders.

Right Thing, Right Now: Justice in an Unjust World takes a more outward perspective, exploring how Stoic principles like fairness, courage, and integrity can guide us in responding to the world’s injustices. The book was a powerful call to action, reminding me of the importance of living virtuously even in the face of chaos and challenges, a mindset that feels deeply rooted in the legacy of ancient Rome.

Together, these books have not only deepened my understanding of Stoic philosophy but also helped me connect the Roman history books I’m readin to my daily life. They’re a great way to bridge the wisdom of the ancients with the challenges of modern living.

“And that’s what is so insidious about talk. Anyone can talk about himself or herself. Even a child knows how to gossip and chatter. Most people are decent at hype and sales. So what is scarce and rare? Silence. The ability to deliberately keep yourself out of the conversation and subsist without its validation. Silence is the respite of the confident and the strong.” Ego is the Enemy

Rethinking Work

During my mini-sabbatical in Asia, I spend some time recovering from a toxic work situation and rethinking my relationship with work in general.

Good Work, Paul Millerd

I am a huge fan of Paul Millerd’s first book, The Pathless Path, and was very excited to dive into his follow-up, Good Work: Reclaiming Your Inner Ambition. This book is a thoughtful reflection on how we define work and success, challenging the traditional scripts that often leave us unfulfilled. Millerd weaves personal stories, philosophical insights, and practical advice to inspire readers to realign their ambitions with their values and creativity. As someone who has been rethinking my own relationship with work and purpose, Good Work felt both validating and motivating. It’s a great read for anyone looking to reimagine what a meaningful life of work can look like.

“Embrace the long, slow, stupid, fun way. Look for ways to slow down to make it easier for you to stay “in the game.” If you can find a path where you start to feel confident about continuing to do something over a long period of time, you will have no competition.”

Deep Work & Slow Productivity by Cal Newport

This year, I read two books by Cal Newport: Deep Work and Slow Productivity. Newport’s work has been transformative in helping me rethink how I approach focus and time management. Deep Work emphasizes the value of uninterrupted, high-quality focus in a world increasingly filled with distractions. Newport’s strategies for cultivating deep work have not only helped me be more productive but also more intentional about the work that truly matters. In Slow Productivity, he takes a step back to challenge the hustle culture mindset, advocating for a deliberate, sustainable approach to accomplishing meaningful goals over time. Together, these books serve as a guide for creating space for intentional, focused work while avoiding burnout.

“We've become so used to the idea that the only reward for getting better is moving toward higher income and increased responsibilities that we forget that the fruits of pursuing quality can also be harvested in the form of a more sustainable lifestyle.” Slow Productivity

The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery, Ross Douthat

In my essay, The Secret Suffering Society, I reflected on Ross Douthat’s The Deep Places, a memoir that struck a deep and personal chord with me. Douthat’s raw and honest account of his battle with chronic illness offers a profound exploration of suffering, faith, and resilience. Through his vulnerability, he gives voice to the often-isolating experience of chronic pain, showing how it reshapes one’s identity and relationship with the world.

Reading this book while reflecting on my own experiences with chronic pain was both comforting and challenging. Douthat doesn’t sugarcoat the difficulty of suffering, but he also doesn’t let it have the final word. Instead, he offers hard-won insights about perseverance, hope, and the ways in which pain can deepen our faith and humanity. If you’ve ever struggled with illness, adversity, or the search for meaning in difficult times, I think you’ll find his story as moving as I did.

“But when the crisis simply continues without resolution, when the illness grinds on and on and on—well, then a curtain tends to fall, because there isn’t an obvious way to integrate that kind of struggle into the realm of everyday life. It’s not clear what the healthy person is supposed to give to a friend or family member who isn’t dying, who doesn’t have some need that you can fill with a discrete act of generosity, but who just has the same problems—terrible but also, let’s be frank, a little boring—day after depressing day.”

The Road to Character & The Second Mountain by David Brooks

I read two books by David Brooks: The Road to Character and The Second Mountain. Both books explore what it means to live a meaningful life, but they approach the question from different angles.

The Road to Character focuses on the importance of cultivating inner virtues over external success. Brooks contrasts what he calls “résumé virtues” (achievements and skills) with “eulogy virtues” (the deeper qualities that define who we are). It’s a thought-provoking reminder that true fulfillment comes from humility, service, and moral depth rather than accolades or status.

“Self-respect is not the same as self-confidence or self-esteem. Self-respect is not based on IQ or any of the mental or physical gifts that help get you into a competitive college. It is not comparative. It is not earned by being better than other people at something. It is earned by being better than you used to be, by being dependable in times of testing, straight in times of temptation. It emerges in one who is morally dependable. Self-respect is produced by inner triumphs, not external ones.”

The Second Mountain builds on these ideas, presenting a vision of life as a journey from self-centered ambition (the “first mountain”) to a deeper, other-focused existence (the “second mountain”). Brooks challenges readers to embrace commitment, community, and purpose as the keys to living a richer, more fulfilling life.

“Political freedom is great. But personal, social, and emotional freedom—when it becomes an ultimate end—absolutely sucks. It leads to a random, busy life with no discernible direction, no firm foundation, and in which, as Marx put it, all that’s solid melts to air. It turns out that freedom isn’t an ocean you want to spend your life in. Freedom is a river you want to get across so you can plant yourself on the other side—and fully commit to something.”

Together, these books made me reflect on the kind of legacy I want to leave behind and how I can better align my life with my values. They’re a powerful pair for anyone grappling with questions of meaning, success, and what it means to live well.

Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel

Morgan Housel’s The Psychology of Money is one of the most insightful and accessible books I’ve read on personal finance. Instead of just focusing on technical advice, Housel explores how our behaviors, emotions, and mindsets shape the way we handle money. It’s a must-read for anyone looking to build a healthier relationship with money.

“Most financial advice is about today. What should you do right now, and what stocks look like good buys today? But most of the time today is not that important. Over the course of your lifetime as an investor the decisions that you make today or tomorrow or next week will not matter nearly as much as what you do during the small number of days—likely 1% of the time or less—when everyone else around you is going crazy.”

St. Francis of Assisi by G.K. Chesterton

Between Christmas and New Year’s, I took a short pilgrimage to the beautiful town of Assisi. While there, I reread G.K. Chesterton’s biography of St. Francis of Assisi, and it was the perfect companion for the trip. Chesterton’s signature wit and charm bring the story of St. Francis to life, capturing not only his extraordinary life but also the spirit of his times. This book is an excellent introduction to one of the most fascinating and misunderstood figures in medieval Christianity, shedding light on his radical humility, deep joy, and unwavering commitment to the Gospel. Reading it while walking the streets of Assisi added a profound sense of connection to this great saint.

“The transition from the good man to the saint is a sort of revolution; by which one for whom all things illustrate and illuminate God becomes one for whom God illustrates and illuminates all things.”

What's Next: A Backstage Pass to The West Wing, Its Cast and Crew, and Its Enduring Legacy of Service by Melissa Fitzgerald & Mary McCormack

The West Wing has been my favorite TV show for most of my life, so I was thrilled to read this behind-the-scenes look at the show. Written by two of its stars and featuring stories and insights from the entire cast, it’s a fascinating glimpse into what made the series so special. This show had an enormous impact on my upbringing and my desire to get into politics. It was a joy to dive back into that world through this book and be reminded of how deeply The West Wing captured the idealism, challenges, and humanity of public service.

Other nonfiction books I read in 2024 included:

• The Medici & Death in Florence, Paul Strathern

• The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Mark Manson

• Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel, Rolf Potts

• Thomistic Mystagogy, Urban Hannon

• Benedict XVI, A Life Volume Two, Peter Seewald

• Healing Back Pain, John Sarno (more on this one in a future post!)

• Atomic Habits, James Clear

• Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch Albom

In the queue for 2025:

Fiction

• The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, Victor Hugo

• Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky

• Next few Steinbeck novels:

  • In Dubius Battle

  • Of Mice and Men (reread)

  • The Grapes of Wrath (reread)

  • The Moon Is Down

• Laurus, Eugene Vodolazkin

• The Little Friend, Donna Tartt

• The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien (reread)

Nonfiction

• Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic, Tom Holland

• Augustus, Adrian Goldsworthy

• Catherine of Siena, Sigrid Undset (reread)

• The Everlasting Man, G.K. Chesterton

• On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Stephen King

• Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard

• The Writing Life, Annie Dillard

• The 5 Types of Wealth, Sahil Bloom

• Like Streams to the Ocean, Jedidiah Jenkins

• Political Fictions, Joan Didion

• With God in Russia, Fr. Walter Ciszek

If you’ve made it this far, I’d love to hear what books you read in 2024 and plan to read in 2025. Leave a comment below!

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First, a sincere thank you:

I’ve been truly overwhelmed by the outpouring of support and positive feedback on my essay from two weeks ago that marked 18 years of living with chronic back pain.

Your messages of encouragement and kindness have meant more to me than I can express. If my responses have felt a bit lackluster, it’s only because I’ve been at a loss for words to fully convey my gratitude.

For those of you who are new here, welcome! Alongside my long-form essays, I also send out David’s Digest, a semi-regular roundup of the books, articles, videos, and other things I’ve been learning from and enjoying.

Book I’m reading:

Caesar: Life of a Colossus by Adrian Goldsworthy

I recently finished listening to Adrian Goldsworthy’s epic biography of Julius Caesar. Ever since moving to Rome in August, I’ve been diving into ancient Roman history, for obvious reasons! I started with Mary Beard’s SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, which gave a wonderful overview of the mythical and archaeological origins of Rome through the rise and fall of the Republic. Goldsworthy’s Caesar: Life of a Colossus provides an in-depth look at one of history’s most fascinating leaders.

Caesar’s life reads like a whirlwind of ambition, brilliance, and controversy. Rising from a relatively modest background for Roman nobility, he became a skilled general, orator, and politician, reshaping the Republic through his military conquests, political alliances, and reforms. Goldsworthy captures both his charisma and his ruthlessness, showing how Caesar’s relentless drive to consolidate power ultimately led to his dictatorship and his assassination at the hands of former allies.

On my daily commute to and from work, I walk past the ruins of the Curia of Pompey where Caesar was stabbed to death on the Ides of March (pictured below). It’s surreal to live in a city with layers and layers of history thousands of years old. Reading about Caesar while walking through the city he once ruled brings the story to life in a way no classroom or documentary ever could.

“Ultimately, most of the Roman elite preferred to allow some of the major problems facing the Republic to go unanswered rather than see someone else gain the credit for dealing with them.”

Video I’m loving:

A good friend of mine, Taylor Kemp, recently appeared on Journey Home, a show on EWTN where converts and reverts to Catholicism share their stories. Taylor and I first met in 2015 in RCIA, the weekly classes for adults entering the Catholic Church.

At the time, Taylor was playing for DC United, Washington, DC’s professional soccer team. There probably weren’t many other MLS fans in the room, but I was a lifelong soccer fan and was a bit intimidated by Taylor at first. But over time, Taylor and his wife Brittany became two of my closest friends in DC. In 2016, Taylor and I were confirmed together during the Easter Vigil at St. Peter’s on Capitol Hill.

On Journey Home, Taylor shares his awesome story of how God broke into his life during his time as a professional soccer player. It’s a powerful testament to the way faith can transform us, no matter where we are in life.

Podcast I’m enjoying:

Recently, Matt D’Avella relaunched his podcast under a new name: Three Rules. Each 15-minute episode features a guest sharing three simple rules they live by.

In the first episode, Matt interviews Ryan Holiday, one of my favorite non-fiction authors and a leading voice in reintroducing Stoicism to modern audiences.

Ryan’s three rules are timeless yet practical:

1. Always be reading.

2. Seek out mentors.

3. Say yes. Then say no.

If you’re looking for a quick burst of inspiration, this podcast is worth a listen.

Music I’m listening to:

The Dominican House of Studies has an incredible Christmas album! It’s very much still Christmas, so have a listen and stay in the Christmas spirit.

Quote I’m reflecting on:

“We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the neverending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.”

― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Photo I’m reminiscing about:

This past August, I visited my sister in Australia, and we took a road trip along the breathtaking Great Ocean Road. One of the highlights was seeing the Twelve Apostles, a stunning rock formation rising from the ocean at the very edge of the world.

Standing there, gazing at the towering cliffs and crashing waves, was a powerful reminder of how small we are in the face of the epicness of creation.

Taken with my Rollie 35 S film camera.

Leave a comment sharing what you’ve been enjoying lately!

This week marks 18 years since a botched surgery left me in chronic, intense back pain.

I was planning to share some more general reflections about spending over half my life in severe back pain, but recent events have shifted my focus.

Like much of America, I’ve been following the aftermath of the recent murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in midtown Manhattan. As the suspect they’ve charged with the crime, Luigi Mangione, has become an internet sensation, I’ve also become determined to find out more information on him, but for a different reason than most. Early reporting indicates extreme back pain may have played a role in his actions.

Given the number of people justifying or even praising the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and fawning over the suspect, Luigi Mangione, I need to start by wholeheartedly condemning the murder. Like all Americans, Mangione deserves a fair trial for the horrific crime he’s charged with. If he’s found guilty, he deserves to be punished. Full stop.

What follows is in no way an attempt to justify his alleged actions. Instead, this is an effort to process them in light of my own story and the striking parallels between my experience and the emerging details of Mangione’s last few years.

Police and journalists are just beginning to piece together the events that might have led Mangione to go from surfing in Hawaii to allegedly murdering Brian Thompson in Manhattan. The story will evolve as they learn more. However, it seems clear that Mangione’s life took a dramatic turn sometime in 2022 when he suffered a serious back injury, reportedly due to a surfing accident. Social media accounts apparently connected to Mangione show spine x-rays and talk about spondylolisthesis (slipped vertebra), and his Goodreads account included several recently read books about back pain and chronic pain (some of which I’ve read as well).

The evidence points toward Mangione’s life being dramatically upended by extreme pain. I’m sure there will be additional factors that contributed to his alleged actions, but it’s uncomfortably impossible for me not to relate to how life-shattering extreme and chronic pain can be.

My (Very Abridged) Story

Eighteen years ago this week, my life was turned completely upside down by intense pain. When I was 15 years old, I went in for what was supposed to be a fairly routine stomach surgery and woke up in severe back pain. That pain has been my constant companion ever since. Despite the seemingly obvious connection between that surgery and my back pain, it took years for doctors to identify the exact cause of my pain.

During that time, I saw dozens of specialists, driving countless hours across Southern California with my dear mother, desperately trying to find relief. Doctor after doctor told me they could not help me, with several suggesting the pain was all in my head or telling my mom they thought I was making it all up for attention or access to pain medication.

In those first few months, I barely slept. I drifted through life in a haze of exhaustion and despair. My parents shuffled me from appointment to appointment as my entire world fell apart. I dropped out of high school, rarely saw my friends, and spiraled without any hope. If I hadn’t been a teenager living with my parents, I probably would have completely disappeared like Luigi Mangione seems to have done.

After six months, my mental health hit rock bottom. My parents, alarmed and desperate, became seriously worried for my safety. I was struggling to find a reason to keep going, overwhelmed by the pain and sleeplessness. My parents and primary doctor decided to admit me into the hospital, both to protect me from harming myself and to try to get several specialists to evaluate me in one place, hoping for answers.

That hospital stay didn’t provide many clear answers, but it gave me two crucial things: sleep and hope. I met specialists who showed genuine care and concern for my situation. They didn’t dismiss my pain just because they couldn’t fully understand it. Crucially, they gave me hope without overpromising.

Unfortunately, these doctors were the exception, not the rule. Too often, if a doctor couldn’t identify a clear source of my pain on a scan, they would either throw up their hands and say, “I can’t help you, go see someone else,” or they would suggest my pain was imagined or fake. No curiosity. No compassion. No hope.

It took over two years, but finally, a doctor at USC determined through a series of temporary nerve blocks that my initial stomach operation had damaged a series of nerves in my abdomen. This set off a cascade of nerve misfirings, radiating pain throughout my back. Despite no significant damage to my spine, my nerves are firing constantly, sending signals of intense pain to my brain.

This confirmation launched a series of procedures to try and “turn off” these misfiring nerves, but none were successful. However, it also gave doctors concrete proof that my pain was real. Even though I was still just a teenager, my doctors finally felt comfortable prescribing serious pain medication to help manage my symptoms while they searched for a long-term solution.

While the medication provided short-term relief, it came with severe drawbacks. For several years, I basically relied on morphine to function. I’m now completely medication-free, but I had to endure absolute hell while weaning my body off its narcotic dependency. I hit an even deeper emotional, physical, and spiritual rock bottom, but that’s a story for another day.

Fast forward to today, and I’ve managed to build some semblance of a normal life. The pain hasn’t gone away, but I’ve learned to live with it. Part of that is simply the miracle of human resilience. Our bodies can adapt to unimaginable circumstances over time. I’ve also learned to recognize what triggers my pain and what helps calm it, avoiding certain activities and seeking out strategies to bring my pain under control.

I still have good days and bad days (and some very bad days), but 15-year-old me would never have believed that a relatively stable life was possible while living in this much pain.

Looking back now, I see those early years of searching for relief and struggling to survive as the beginning of an unexpected pilgrimage, one that would take me deeper into suffering than I thought I could endure.

I share these abridged details from my story, in part, because I see unsettling parallels between my experience and what little we know of Mangione’s story. While the full truth of his situation remains unclear, it appears that intense back pain played a devastating role in his life. I understand, perhaps better than most, how extreme, unrelenting pain can bring someone to the brink of despair. But no amount of suffering can justify his alleged actions. Pain might help explain a downward spiral, but it cannot excuse it.

The current reporting surrounding the tragic murder of Brian Thompson is a sobering reminder of how quickly suffering can push someone to the edge. It forces me to ask: what more can we do to support those in pain before they feel entirely consumed by it?

Too often, people in chronic pain are left to suffer in silence, dismissed by doctors, and unsupported by communities unsure of how to respond. But pain, no matter how consuming, does not have to destroy someone’s life. Even when medical solutions remain elusive, our communities can and must do better. By fostering a culture of compassion and accompaniment, we can help those in pain feel seen, understood, and supported. We can combat the loneliness and despair that so often accompany suffering and ensure no one feels they must carry this weight alone.

The Loneliness of Pain

I can confidently say that I would not be here today without the incredible support of my family and friends over the past 18 years.1 Few things in life are as isolating as prolonged pain and suffering. While everyone else moves on with their lives, you’re stuck living with it day in and day out. This is especially true for those with invisible illnesses or hidden suffering.

My naturally stoic demeanor means people often don’t know I’m in pain unless I tell them. This has led to awkward conversations with friends, sometimes months or even years into a relationship, when I finally mention it. I suspect there will be people who have known me for a while who will learn about my back issues through this essay.

This stoic tendency is also a factor in why so many doctors didn’t believe the extent of my pain. I’ve never seen the point in complaining or using my pain to draw attention to myself because the very last thing I want is pity. However, that also means people often don’t realize the weight I’m constantly carrying… that I’m just struggling to push through and make it to the end of the day.

It’s a constant tension: on one hand, I don’t want pity or to be treated differently. On the other hand, I don’t want to go through life feeling invisible because the people around me are unaware of such a significant aspect of my life.

There are a few people in my life, however, who’ve always struck the perfect balance in how they approach my pain. My aunt, for example, never fails to ask about my back. Within the first few minutes of seeing me, she’ll say something like, “David, how’s it going? How’s the back doing? Try anything new lately?” There’s no pity in her voice: it’s casual, curious, and matter-of-fact. Her questions make me feel seen and cared for, but without the heaviness that often accompanies discussions about pain. She could be asking about a new hobby or my schoolwork. It’s a masterful way to acknowledge my reality while reminding me that I’m not defined by it.

Online forums for people in chronic pain, like those on Reddit or Twitter, often reveal just how isolating pain can be. What I’ve found in these spaces is a horrific cycle of self-pity, despair, and anger. Tragically, many of the people in these forums have no one else to talk to about their suffering, so they endlessly one-up each other with stories of pain and suffering.

Chronic pain isn’t just a medical issue. It’s intertwined with our society’s broader crisis of loneliness. In his bestselling book, "Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community," Robert Putnam identified a steep decline in social connections and close friendships in America. This trend has only worsened over the quarter century since his research was published and has become especially problematic among single men, where one in five report having zero close friends to rely on.

This makes me even more grateful for the community I have around me. Their support has been a lifeline, especially when I’ve come close to hitting rock bottom. Just this past week, several people reached out to check on me, knowing that the news about Luigi Mangione might be triggering for me. One friend texted me, “I immediately found myself very thankful that you know Jesus, but also very thankful that you are alive.” I’m thankful for those two things, too. Another was more blunt: “Thinking of you and your back pain with this dude… and appreciate you for not going on a murderous rampage as a result.” I’m thankful for that, too, especially considering the amount of medical malpractice I’ve endured over the past two decades.

The cure to loneliness is genuine friendship. It doesn’t have to come from a huge friend group. Even one or two friends who truly know you can make all the difference. Building this kind of connection takes intention. It requires the courage to let others see your struggles and the compassion to ask about theirs. It’s about learning to support one another, not with pity, but with a curiosity and care that says, “I see you. I’m here for you.”

At its core, combatting the loneliness of pain is fundamentally about presence. Real, consistent, genuine presence. It doesn’t erase the suffering, but it can make it bearable. It reminds you that you don’t have to face it alone.

Finding Meaning in Suffering

The unfolding story of Luigi Mangione has been a wake-up call for me. As someone who has endured nearly two decades of intense physical suffering, I can’t help but see echoes of my own darkest moments in the fragments we know of his story. The difference is that I’ve been fortunate to build some stability in my life, thanks to a loving community and a growing sense of purpose. Those things don’t come easily. It’s a fragile balance I constantly have to maintain. Mangione’s story, however, has reminded me how precarious that journey was (and still is), and how close I’ve come to losing hope.

It took me years to begin seeing my pain as more than just a burden to endure. Over time, I’ve come to understand it as a kind of gift, though not one I would have chosen for myself. Stephen Colbert said in a fascinating interview with Anderson Cooper that he had learned to be “grateful for the thing I most wish hadn't happened” (the tragic death of his father and two brothers in a plane crash). He goes on to say, “What punishments of God are not gifts?” There’s a lot to unpack there, but I genuinely do see my experience of suffering as a gift. I wouldn’t have understood this 18 years ago, but I do now. It has shaped me in ways I am only beginning to understand. It’s taught me resilience, patience, and empathy. It’s deepened my faith, forcing me to cling to God in moments when nothing else made sense.

My search for meaning in suffering played a significant role in my journey into the Catholic Church. For years, I wrestled with questions like why me? and why would God allow me to suffer like this? Unlike the surface-level answers I received early on, when I began exploring these questions through a Catholic lens, I encountered a willingness, even an eagerness, to confront the deep mysteries of pain and suffering.

The Catholic Church’s teaching on redemptive suffering, particularly as articulated by Pope John Paul II, changed the way I viewed my pain. In Salvifici Doloris, John Paul II writes that suffering, when united with Christ, is no longer meaningless. It becomes a participation in His redemptive work on the Cross: “Each man, in his suffering, can also become a sharer in the redemptive suffering of Christ.” Christ not only suffered for us, but He also suffers with us.

This understanding transformed how I approached my own pain. Instead of enduring it in isolation, I began to see my suffering as something I could unite with Christ’s for a greater purpose, even when I couldn’t fully understand it. The pain that once felt senseless became an offering, one I could give back to God. In the depths of solitude and loneliness, I realized I was never truly alone. Christ was not just beside me, He was suffering with me.

This doesn’t make my pain disappear, nor does it romanticize it. But it gives it meaning. What once seemed unbearable and purposeless has become something I can carry with faith, trusting that even my suffering can bear fruit in ways I may not yet see.

What’s Next?

As I reflect on 18 years of back pain, I’m reminded how much of this journey has been about survival. Just getting through the day used to feel impossible. Slowly, I’ve learned to live with the pain, to build a life that acknowledges it without letting it completely consume me. There are still plenty of days when it feels like I’m back at square one, just trying to survive. On those days, I try to remind myself that even two steps forward and one step back is still making progress in the long run.

I’ve come to see this experience as a pilgrimage. Pain has been the road I never would have chosen, but it’s also been the path that has shaped me into the man I am today. Like any pilgrimage, it’s full of detours, setbacks, and moments where the destination feels impossibly far away. But it’s also taught me resilience, gratitude, and a deeper reliance on God and the people around me.

I keep coming back to the question: what can I do to help others who are suffering? I don’t know what, if anything, could have redirected Luigi Mangione’s tragic journey from a surfing accident in Hawaii to an alleged murder in Manhattan, but I keep asking myself what could have been done to give him the support he clearly needed.

For all I know, Mangione’s motivation could have nothing to do with his back pain. But if any good can come from this situation, I hope it serves as a wake-up call, reminding us to better support those living with pain before they lose themselves to despair.

For me, I think it starts with simply being honest about my own experience and sharing my story in ways that might resonate with someone who feels isolated or hopeless.

For the past 18 years, I’ve resisted being labeled as someone who is in chronic pain. As I look ahead, however, maybe I’m finally mature enough in my journey to rethink this approach. Maybe I do want to be known as the chronic pain guy. Maybe I do want to be known as someone who has endured great suffering and, through the grace of God, has clung to hope and emerged stronger. Maybe I can help others prevent pain from destroying their lives.

I’m not trying to pretend I’ve got it all figured out. Far from it. But I do know what it feels like to think there’s no way forward, and I also know what it feels like to find even the smallest glimmer of hope. That’s what I want to offer others. Not platitudes or quick fixes, but the reminder that they don’t have to walk this path alone.

Indeed, You'll Never Walk Alone.

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Yearly Review and 2025 Goals Worksheet:

For the past few years, I’ve made it a point to spend December reflecting on the previous year—its highs and lows, lessons learned, accomplishments, and challenges—and setting clear goals for the year ahead.

This year, I decided to create a reusable template for this process. It’s a collection of the best worksheets and resources I’ve found, brought together in one place. Most of it isn’t my original work, but I’ve tried to give credit where due.

If you’re up for a totally over-the-top, but hopefully helpful, Yearly Review and 2025 Goals Worksheet, here you go!

Book I’m reading:

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett.

Pillars of the Earth is an epic historical novel that immerses you in the intricate struggles of politics, faith, and ambition in 12th-century England. At its core, the story revolves around the construction of a cathedral in the fictional town of Kingsbridge—a monumental endeavor that raises questions about art, power, and legacy. Have you ever walked into iconic cathedrals like Notre Dame, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, or St. Peter’s Basilica and wondered, “Who built this? How? And why?” Ken Follett became obsessed with answering these questions, and through meticulous research, he answers them by telling the story from multiple perspectives: the master builder driven by his own architectural vision, the idealistic prior determined to expand his monastery, the ruthless bishop desperate for power, the noble families battling for control of the land, and the humble townspeople just struggling to survive. These intertwined narratives paint a vivid picture of the medieval world and explore the themes of ambition, faith, and the desire to leave a lasting legacy.

This 1,000-page book starts a bit slow but is worth the effort. It’s the first in a trilogy. Has anyone read the others? While I enjoyed this one, I’m not necessarily itching to continue the series. Let me know if you think it’s worth it!

“When you're thinking, please remember this: excessive pride is a familiar sin, but a man may just as easily frustrate the will of God through excessive humility.”

Video I’m loving:

Speaking of beautiful cathedrals… reading Pillars of the Earth has given me a whole new perspective on the restoration of Notre Dame.

The cathedral is nearly unrecognizable—not because of any misguided attempts to “modernize” or “update” (thankfully, those efforts failed), but because it’s been cleaned for the first time in centuries and restored to its original splendor. The newly unveiled Notre Dame serves as a beautiful reminder that medieval churches weren’t “dark” at all—they were bright, airy, and colorful. I can’t wait for my next trip to Paris to see it in person!

Article I’m still thinking about:

Dating App Fatigue? In Vermont, Personal Ads Still Thrive by Adrienne Raphel

I envy my friends who found their partners prior to the rise of dating apps. There’s no other way to describe them: they suck.

For decades, this small newspaper in Vermont has had a thriving personal ads section that people are increasingly turning to instead of dating apps.

Does this only work because Vermont is so small-town quirky, or can it be replaced elsewhere?

My adopted hometown of Santa Barbara is pretty small-town quirky too…

I nominate Matt Bennett to start a dating ads section in the Santa Barbara Independent to see if it works!

Podcast I’m enjoying:

Time to Unplug - Deep Questions, Cal Newport

A post-election encouragement to unplug and reset your life at the end of the year.

Music I’m listening to:

Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming by my friends, The Hillbilly Thomists

Quote I’m reflecting on:

“All human wisdom is contained in these two words - Wait and Hope”

― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

Photo I’m reminiscing about:

The temperature is dropping in Rome, and I’m really starting to miss those warm Bali afternoons! I took this photo with my new film camera, a Rollie 35s I bought before my summer adventures throughout Asia.

Leave a comment sharing what you’ve been enjoying lately!

This period is one of my favorite times in the Church calendar. As the liturgical year came to a close, the scripture and prayers at Mass increasingly focused on the end times. Starting with the great feasts of All Saints and All Souls at the beginning of November, the liturgy throughout the month guided us to contemplate our own mortality—on life, death, judgment, heaven, and hell. The end of the liturgical year culminated in the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, a vivid reminder that all things within the entire created order are subject to Christ’s kingship and dominion. He is in charge.

I don’t know about you, but I desperately needed this reminder as I limped across the finish line of this election cycle. American politics has become emotionally and spiritually exhausting. Yet now, as it so often does, the Church’s liturgical calendar invites us to refocus on what truly matters.

As the season of Advent begins, we start a new liturgical year. This is a season of expectation, of preparation, and of hope. It’s a chance to reset, not just spiritually, but in every area of our lives.

Unplug

No matter who you supported in the election, everyone needs a break. If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably realized that your social media and news consumption rates have become terrifyingly high.

Political campaigns, especially presidential elections, are designed to shatter all of our self-imposed barriers and safeguards. Both the media and the candidates want us glued to our screens, checking and rechecking the news 50 times a day to see the latest updates.

If we don’t reevaluate and restructure our relationship with social media and the news, we risk getting sucked into another cycle of allowing external forces to dictate our mental and spiritual well-being. During the first Trump administration, Americans became addicted to our country’s political theater. Like John Mulaney’s bit about Trump as a horse loose in a hospital, we tuned in every day to see what would happen next. We told ourselves, “I’ve gotta stay updated!”

This post-election season is the perfect time to unplug and rethink your relationship with social media and the news. As Cal Newport recently suggested, “Use the stress of this election to be the final push needed to step away from the exhausting digital chatter that’s been dominating your brain. Take a break from social media. Stop listening to news podcasts. Unsubscribe, at least for a while, from those political newsletters clogging your inbox with their hot takes and tired in-fighting.”

While social media fasts are often associated with Lent, Advent offers another chance to reset your brain and focus on this season of joy and hope. When we unplug, we create the mental and spiritual space necessary to answer Advent’s invitation to refocus and prepare our hearts.

Refocus

I’m the last person to minimize the importance of politics. Our world is at a critical juncture, and complete disengagement is not an option. But as vital as the issues consuming our news cycles are, they cannot dominate our everyday lives. Without focus, we risk being consumed by every new controversy, every headline, every storm.

There’s a Stoic saying I’ve been reflecting on lately: “The winds may howl, but I will not be swept away.” The winds are indeed howling all around us: violence abroad, political turmoil at home, and divisions within our own families. These storms threaten to sink us, but Advent reminds us to refocus, to look up from the swirling waters, and to fix our gaze on Christ, the anchor that holds us steady and offers peace amid the chaos.

This season isn’t just about waiting for Christmas, it’s about recalibrating our priorities. It’s about intentionally redirecting our hearts and minds toward what is eternal. Our faith assures us that while the winds howl and the waves crash, the King of the Universe reigns. He is unshakable. When we anchor ourselves in Him, we find the clarity and strength to withstand even the fiercest storms.

Prepare

Advent is a gift. It calls us to slow down, to prepare, and to hope. These first few weeks are especially important. They are a rare window of time to step back from the noise of life and reflect. Once mid-December hits, the busyness of the Christmas season will likely take over. Traveling to visit family, last-minute shopping, and holiday parties will pull our attention in a dozen directions, and it will be all too easy to lose sight of the preparatory nature of the season of Advent.

But right now, we have an opportunity. Now is the time to prepare our hearts. Now is the time to sit in silence, to listen, and to pray. Now is the time to wait in humble expectation for Christ’s coming.

Advent reminds us that God is always present, even in the noise and chaos we create around ourselves. But to truly hear Him, we must quiet our hearts and our minds. He comes in the quiet. In the stillness. In the manger in Bethlehem. If we don’t slow down, we risk missing Him.

This Advent, I challenge myself—and I challenge you—to embrace this quiet. To turn off the distractions, set aside the to-do lists, and simply be present.

Aslan is on the move. The King of the Universe is coming, and He invites us to meet Him with hearts that are ready and open.

Beneath the chaos of Election Day, America is holding its breath. We’re quietly hoping that something might finally shift. Maybe this year will be different. But there’s an uneasy feeling that we’re caught in a loop. Our leaders, our institutions, even ourselves, all seem to be spinning in place, waiting for a change that never materializes.

If the pre-election polls are any indication, Americans remain entrenched in their political divide, each side convinced that our democracy itself is on the line. Like many, I’ve grown disgusted by the electoral process and the unacceptable choices we’re presented with, cycle after cycle.

It often feels like we’re left with two options: either to join the hyper-partisan screaming, where every disagreement becomes an existential threat, or to completely disconnect and disengage. If I’m being honest, I’ve increasingly leaned toward the latter. I was once obsessed with politics, elections, and American history. You know those classic yearbook superlatives, like “class clown” or “most likely to earn a million dollars?” I won “most likely to be president” not only in elementary school, middle school, and high school, but even within my political science department in college.

After undergrad, I immediately moved to Washington, D.C., and began my career on Capitol Hill. Back then, I admired leaders on both sides of the aisle who were serious about policy and thought compromise wasn’t a weakness but a virtue. Sure, there were plenty of “knuckleheads,” as Speaker John Boehner used to call them, but there were also plenty of hard-working, principled leaders who cared deeply about the institutions they served.

One of my first bosses, Congressman Greg Walden from Oregon, embodied that spirit. He devoted himself to serving the people he represented. He proved you could succeed in both the partisan political campaigns and the complex policy fights on Capitol Hill without losing focus on the job of working with his colleagues to improve people’s lives. It was the kind of leadership that gave me reason to believe the system could work if we had enough serious people willing to push it forward.

But since 2016, that hope has dwindled. Most of the principled legislators on both sides of the aisle have either been kicked out of office by radical primary challengers or simply retired because there was no longer a place for serious legislating on Capitol Hill. The list of senators and representatives I can genuinely respect grows shorter with each election cycle.

Of course, this is just my subjective measurement of the state of American politics, but I think it points to a simple fact that most Americans agree on: our leaders are no longer serious people.

These days, most politicians care more about building their social media profiles than governing. When I was on the Hill, most offices had three or four legislative staffers for every communications staffer. Now, that ratio is often reversed. Many offices function more like PR firms, crafting viral posts and soundbites instead of hammering out legislation. It’s not just frustrating, it’s dangerous. Social media rewards outrage, not reason.

This shift has deepened the toxic cycle of partisanship. Politicians now compete for viral attacks instead of solutions. Each party justifies anything its candidates say or do so long as it helps defeat the other side. When outrage is the currency, leaders become more interested in ideological purity and viral moments than in real governing.

I didn’t come into politics overly idealistic or naïve. While I loved The West Wing, I knew DC was much closer to Veep: power-hungry narcissists stumbling through their careers. Still, I held out hope that enough well-intentioned people were there to push the country forward.

Now, though, I’m forced to conclude that both parties, their leaders and their political machines, have fundamentally failed the American people.

I’ve gone from a hyper-engaged political junkie to someone who can barely stomach reading the news. There were many reasons I took a job in Europe last spring, but I won’t deny that the chance to escape this election was appealing.

I guess this is a mea culpa: I’ve let the loudest, most radical voices drown me out, giving me an excuse just to tune everything out and disengage. And I don’t think I’m alone in that. I still have hope that this disillusionment represents a real “silent majority” in America, one made up of those who have been silenced by hyper-partisans screaming at us to either fall in line or be labeled as the “enemy.”

So, what’s next? How can we break the cycle?

There are plenty of articles decrying the failures of national politics. Many urge us to look local, to get involved in city or county politics, to start building a better political system from the bottom up. That’s good advice, and I wholeheartedly agree with it. But I don’t think it’s enough. The problem is even deeper.

We don’t just need better leaders. We need better citizens. Americans, collectively, need to work on ourselves.

Yes, our leaders have failed us. But if I’m being honest with myself, I have failed at being a good citizen. We have all failed at being good citizens.

The change we need won’t be found in City Hall, any more than in the White House. It starts with how we show up in our everyday lives.

Being a good citizen isn’t just about knowing who’s in power or debating the latest issue. It’s about being a good listener, a curious thinker, and someone willing to extend patience and compassion even when it’s inconvenient. A good citizen is open-minded enough to reconsider their beliefs and learn from unexpected sources. In a world that rewards certainty and punishes ambiguity and doubt, that’s a tall order. But if we’re serious about change, maybe we need to start letting go of the impulse to always be right and embrace the quiet work of listening, thinking, and rethinking.

It’s easy to dismiss this as soft or idealistic, but history shows that real strength is anything but rigid. Abraham Lincoln famously filled his cabinet with political opponents who challenged him, believing that dissent led to better decisions. He invited debate, wrestling with his own beliefs and refining his principles as he led the country through its most divisive crisis. Lincoln understood that strength isn’t about clinging to ideology but about convictions sturdy enough to adapt and grow with the moment.

We don’t just need more Lincolns in the White House or Congress. We need them in our neighborhoods, schools, and churches. We need people who seek out challenging conversations, who surround themselves with others who disagree, who are willing to wrestle with their beliefs as they engage with their communities, raise their families, and grow in virtue. This kind of strength—humble, open, principled—isn’t just what we want from our leaders, it’s what we need as the foundation of our society.

So maybe that’s the challenge for this Election Day: not just to demand something better from our political parties and leaders, but to demand it from ourselves. To be the kind of people we want in our neighborhoods and in our country. People who treat civic responsibility as a calling, not a chore. Who don’t just vote but listen, don’t just advocate but understand. And maybe, in doing so, we’ll begin to see a different kind of change—one that goes far beyond the next four years. 

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I’ve been reading Emperor Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations and have been struck by how much his thoughts on suffering and resilience remind me of Fr. Walter Ciszek, a 20th-century Jesuit priest whose writings have been a massive source of encouragement in my journey with chronic pain. Even though these two men come from vastly different worlds, their reflections on suffering, providence, and surrender share surprising similarities.

Two Men from Two Very Different Worlds

Marcus Aurelius, who ruled the Roman Empire in the second century A.D., is the embodiment of a philosopher-king, someone who combined immense power with a deep commitment to virtue and wisdom. His Meditations, written as a personal guide during his military campaigns, offer timeless reflections on how to live a life grounded in reason and inner strength. As a Stoic, his worldview was shaped by the belief that the universe, governed by the logos (rational order), is indifferent to human desires. For the Stoic, peace comes from accepting what fate brings and focusing on what we can control—our thoughts and actions.

Fr. Walter Ciszek’s story takes place in an entirely different context. In 1941, he was arrested as a suspected Vatican spy in Soviet Russia and spent 23 years in prison and labor camps. He endured brutal conditions, including five years of solitary confinement in the infamous Lubyanka prison, and 15 years of hard labor in the Gulag. His writings, particularly He Leadeth Me, reflect a deep Catholic faith centered on God’s providence. Ciszek teaches that no moment of suffering is wasted because everything that happens to us is allowed by God for a purpose. For him, trusting in God’s will—especially in the hardest times—was the key to both survival and spiritual growth.

Parallels in Their Approach to Suffering and Providence

Despite the stark differences in their lives, Marcus Aurelius and Fr. Walter Ciszek both offer profound wisdom on enduring suffering, trusting in a higher order, and finding peace in difficult circumstances. Their teachings align in several key areas.

1. Acceptance of What Cannot Be Controlled

Both men emphasize the importance of accepting what lies beyond our control and focusing instead on what is within—our thoughts, responses, and actions. In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius reflects on this when he writes:

"... [external] things have no hold on the soul. They stand there unmoving, outside it. Disturbance comes only from within—from our own perceptions" (Meditations 4.3).

The Stoic response to suffering, then, is to master the self—cultivating resilience by letting go of any anxiety about external events and focusing instead on how we choose to perceive and respond to them.

Fr. Ciszek echoes this wisdom, but through the lens of divine providence. In He Leadeth Me, he describes the profound realization that everything happening to him—even his imprisonment in Soviet Russia—was part of God’s plan:

“God is in all things, sustains all things, directs all things. To discern this in every situation and circumstance, to see His will in all things, was to accept each circumstance and situation and let oneself be borne along in perfect confidence and trust. Nothing could separate me from Him, because He was in all things.” (He Leadeth Me, 83)

For Ciszek, peace comes not just from enduring suffering, but from recognizing that every hardship is woven into God’s larger, loving plan. This trust in divine providence allows him to accept even the harshest circumstances with confidence, knowing that no situation, however difficult, is outside God’s care or purpose. His approach transforms suffering from something to simply tolerate into an experience that brings him closer to God’s sustaining presence.

2. Suffering as a Path to Growth

Both men see suffering as a path to growth, though they approach it from different foundations. In Marcus Aurelius’ view, suffering becomes a way to test and strengthen one’s virtues, particularly patience, resilience, and self-discipline. His famous line,

“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way” (Meditations 5.20)

encapsulates the Stoic belief that obstacles, rather than halting progress, provide the very opportunities needed to cultivate character. The challenge is not merely to endure but to transform difficulties into catalysts for personal improvement and greater alignment with nature’s rational order.

Ciszek, similarly, views suffering as a path to transformation, but his understanding is deeply spiritual and rooted in faith. He writes:

“I had continuously to learn to accept God’s will—not as I wished it to be, not as it might have been, but as it actually was at the moment. And it was through the struggle to do this that spiritual growth and a greater appreciation of his will took place. Of course, there were doubts; at one time, there was near despair. It was not reason that sustained me then but faith. Only by faith could I find God present in every circumstance; only by faith could I penetrate the mystery of his saving grace, not by questioning it in any way but by fully cooperating with it in exactly the way he asked. It was then, in differing measures and with varying degrees of success, that the glimpses of his providence ruling all things would work to dispel the doubts and the fears that were constantly on the edges of the mind. So I learned by trial and error that if I wanted to preserve my interior peace and joy, I had to have constant recourse to prayer, to the eyes of faith, to a humility that could make me aware of how little my own efforts meant and how dependent I was upon God’s grace even for prayer and faith itself” (He Leadeth Me, 124).

For Ciszek, suffering is not only about building internal strength or endurance. It is a spiritual process that draws one closer to Christ and deepens one's faith. While both men agree that suffering can be redemptive, Ciszek’s theology introduces a deeply personal relationship with God as the foundation of this transformation. In contrast to Stoicism's reliance on reason and inner control, Ciszek places trust in God’s providence and grace, seeing suffering as a means to participate in Christ’s redemptive work and to grow in humility and dependence on divine will.

3. Freedom Through Surrender

Another shared theme between Marcus Aurelius and Fr. Walter Ciszek is the idea that true freedom comes from surrender—whether to the rational order of the universe or to God’s will. Marcus Aurelius writes:

"Just as you overhear people saying that 'the doctor prescribed such-and-such for him' (like riding, or cold baths, or walking barefoot …), say this: 'Nature prescribed illness for him.' Or blindness. Or the loss of a limb. Or whatever. There 'prescribed' means something like 'ordered, so as to further his recovery.' And so too here. What happens to each of us is ordered. It furthers our destiny… So there are two reasons to embrace what happens. One is that it’s happening to you. It was prescribed for you, and it pertains to you. The thread was spun long ago, by the oldest cause of all. The other reason is that what happens to an individual is a cause of well-being in what directs the world—of its well-being, its fulfillment, of its very existence, even. Because the whole is damaged if you cut away anything—anything at all—from its continuity and its coherence. Not only its parts, but its purposes. And that’s what you’re doing when you complain: hacking and destroying" (Meditations 5.8).

Marcus Aurelius teaches that what happens to each person is not random but "prescribed" by nature, as if to fulfill a greater purpose. Surrendering to this reality, rather than resisting or complaining, is the key to achieving inner peace. The Stoic path to peace lies in relinquishing control over external events and focusing on harmonizing one’s internal life with the flow of the universe. By accepting life’s challenges as part of a larger, predetermined order, one can find freedom in aligning with nature's rational course, knowing that everything contributes to the coherence of the whole.

Fr. Ciszek, imprisoned in a Soviet labor camp, found similar freedom through surrender, though in a deeply spiritual context. He writes:

“By renouncing, finally and completely, all control of my life and future destiny, I was relieved as a consequence of all responsibility. I was freed thereby from anxiety and worry, from every tension, and could float serenely upon the tide of God's sustaining providence in perfect peace of soul” (He Leadeth Me, 84).

For Ciszek, freedom came not from trying to control or change his horrible circumstances, but from abandoning all control to God’s providence. In contrast to Marcus Aurelius' submission to the impersonal logos, Ciszek’s surrender was to a personal and loving God who guided his every moment. This relinquishing of personal control allowed Ciszek to find peace amid great suffering, knowing that God’s hand directed his fate. In both cases, the surrender is the key to liberation—Marcus Aurelius finds peace by yielding to the rational order of the cosmos, while Ciszek finds peace by trusting completely in the will of a loving God.

Both men demonstrate that true freedom does not come from controlling our circumstances, but from letting go of that desire for control and placing trust—whether in a divine will or the cosmic order.

Beyond Stoicism: The Christian View of Suffering

While Marcus Aurelius offers profound wisdom on how to endure suffering with reason and inner strength, Fr. Ciszek’s Catholic perspective goes a step further. For Marcus Aurelius, the logos—the rational order governing the universe—is impersonal. We submit to it because it is the natural way of things, but there is no personal relationship or love between the logos and the individual.

For Ciszek, however, the Logos is Christ Himself, the second person of the Trinity. God not only governs the universe but knows and loves each of us, individually and personally. This makes all the difference. Suffering, in the Christian view, is not just something to be endured but something that can be redemptive. Ciszek believes that suffering can bring us closer to God, not because it builds character in the abstract, but because it unites us with Christ’s own suffering. Rather than viewing suffering merely as a test of endurance, Ciszek sees it as an invitation into a deeper relationship with the divine life, an opportunity to share in Christ’s passion and love.

For the Christian, suffering is not isolated or random. It is embedded in a divine plan of redemption. While Stoicism encourages us to accept fate and bear suffering with equanimity, Christianity offers the hope that suffering has a purpose. Ciszek emphasizes that suffering is not sent by God as punishment, but as a means of transforming us into the image of Christ. It draws us deeper into God’s love and His plan for our lives, where we are not only participants in a cosmic order but beloved children of a God who suffers with us and redeems that suffering. This transformation from endurance to love-filled suffering is what ultimately sets Ciszek’s Catholic theology apart from the Stoicism of Marcus Aurelius, offering a richer, more personal understanding of human suffering and divine providence.

The Deeper Call

So, what do we take away from these two very different men? Both Marcus Aurelius and Fr. Walter Ciszek teach us that suffering is not something to be feared, but something to be embraced and transformed. Marcus Aurelius shows us that pain is part of life’s natural order and a tool for cultivating inner strength. But Ciszek invites us to go further—he reminds us that suffering is not only a tool for growth but also a sacred opportunity to unite ourselves with Christ’s love and redemption.

As we walk our own Pilgrimage of Pain, we can draw strength from both Stoic resilience and Christian surrender. Marcus Aurelius teaches us that we have the power to control our responses, even in the face of suffering. But Fr. Walter Ciszek reminds us that we don’t walk this path alone—God walks with us, transforming our suffering into something holy, meaningful, and ultimately redemptive.

In the end, suffering is not just a trial. It’s an invitation to deeper faith, trust, and transformation. May we find, in our own pilgrimage, the strength to endure, the courage to surrender, and the grace to grow closer to the One who makes all things new.

Through this newsletter, I plan to dive deeper into my story of chronic pain and share the hard lessons I've learned.

Whether you are currently grappling with chronic pain, supporting someone on their journey, or facing hardships in other facets of life, I'd like to join you as a fellow pilgrim to help you find hope and purpose.

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A few months ago, I was asked to share my journey from an Evangelical Protestant to Roman Catholic at an event in Geneva, Switzerland. There were a number of speakers talking about their different roads to Catholicism: conversion, reversion, and the need for daily, continual conversion.

I’m still working on writing down an overview of my journey with chronic back pain, but this talk gives a window into the many ways chronic pain has impacted my faith. 

I hope you enjoy it!

Called to Conversion

Someone asked me last night how I would describe my faith journey in one sentence. Without hesitation, I answered: one crazy trust exercise after another. 

In the short time I have, I'd like to share with you a few times God has asked me to take a leap of faith, and how, after each “yes” I've given, He's used that moment to show up in expected ways.

I grew up in a strong evangelical family in Los Angeles. I attended Sunday School every week, fun church camps every summer, and Bible studies during the week.

When I was 14, my youth pastor asked us if we wanted to get baptized. Most of my friends immediately said yes, but I hesitated. I couldn't put words to it, but I just didn't feel ready. Something was missing. I had decided not to get baptized and was trying to figure out how to tell my parents when, one Sunday, I felt an overwhelming conviction that I needed to go through with it. It didn't matter if I didn't "feel ready," I knew deep down that God wanted me to get baptized, and I needed to trust Him. So I did. This process would become a recurring theme in my life.

I know now that God was preparing me with the graces of baptism to be able to endure what was about to come. 

Just a few months later, I went in for a routine stomach surgery, and woke up in extreme back pain, a pain that has persisted to this day, over 17 years later. 

Over the next few months, and years, as countless doctors tried to diagnose the source of my extreme pain and attempt to reverse it through dozens of procedures, my world came crashing down around me. It was devastating, at 15 years old, to be told by doctors that I would probably live in chronic pain for the rest of my life, and they couldn't do anything about it.  

I hit rock bottom, losing the will to live. I couldn't sleep, I dropped out of school for a time, and I didn't think a life in so much pain life was worth living for much longer. 

During one of the few times I managed to make it to youth group, my pastor advertised an upcoming mission trip opportunity in South Africa. Again, I felt that overwhelming conviction to go, and without telling my parents, immediately signed up. By the time they found out, they were mortified. I was in so much pain, I couldn't sit through an hour of school, and yet I wanted to sit through 20 hours of flying from Los Angeles to Cape Town? I audatiously told them that God wanted me to do it, and that I wanted to trust him. And for some crazy reason, my parents let me go. 

By the grace of God, I was able to manage my pain moderately well on that trip, and it completely pulled me out of myself. Working with kids enduring situations a thousand times worse than my own, I slowly started to put my life into perspective. I didn't know how I would ensure my own pain and suffering, but during that trip, God showed me it was possible.

God asked me to trust him, and He showed up.

Daily life became a trust exercise for me. I would wake up not knowing if I had the strength to get to the end of the day, but God would provide, always. Relying on God to get through the day wasn't a metaphor for me, it was my reality. 

Flash forward to my final year of university, and I felt another overwhelming conviction to take bold action and trust God would take care of me. By this time, I had basically become dependent on painkillers to function. I wouldn't say I was addicted, but at just 22 years old, I was close to the edge of very dangerous territory. I knew it would be extremely difficult, but I was confident God would catch me. After all, He has so clearly shown himself every time I took a leap of faith, I assumed this time would be the same.

What followed was the most physically, emotionally, and spiritually difficult six months of my life.

I will spare you the most graphic details, but imagine the worst hangover you've ever had (or heard of) lasting for over six months: constant nausea, dizziness, sweating, and aching. All of this was miserable, but I had faced plenty of pain and sickness before. I was used to physical suffering. 

What made this so unbearable was the feeling of complete abandonment by God that overshadowed everything else. He was absent from me and removed any sense of peace or love from my spiritual life. I took a leap of faith, expecting Him to catch me, but instead, it felt like I landed flat on my face. I felt abandoned and rejected by God, and I was angry.

However, purely through grace from God, I couldn't walk away completely. I interpreted His silence as indifference, but deep in my heart, I knew He still existed. I couldn't deny how often God had been tangibly present in my life. Even at rock bottom, in the midst of feeling spiritually abandoned and physically spent, I simply couldn't deny the existence of God.

It was precisely at this moment, when my faith had crumpled down to the bedrock conviction of the existence of God and nothing else, that He placed the first Catholics into my life. 

Breaking out of my evangelical bubble, I was so intrigued by my new Catholic friends. Their devotions and practices simultaneously felt so foreign and yet so natural to me. For the first time in my life, I learned from Catholics what Catholics actually believe. I was intellectually fascinated but still spiritually unmoved. These friends occasionally invited me to Mass, but I politely refused. Learning about Catholicism was just a fun thought exercise.

Then, one weekend, I gave in, and before I realized what I was doing, I was headed to Mass for the first time in my life. 

To this day, it's difficult for me to describe what I experienced there, but I know it was the Holy Spirit moving in my heart. I had heard my Catholic friends talk about the Eucharist before, but I struggled to see its importance. At my church growing up, we would "take communion," too. How was this really any different?

But at the words of consecration and the elevation of the Eucharist during that Mass, something stirred inside of me. 

I wasn't converted at that moment. I couldn't tell you that I believed that what looked like bread and wine was truly the body and blood, soul and divinity of Christ. But I could tell there was something there. Something I had never experienced in any Protestant church service before. 

To all of the Catholics here today, take note. A simple invitation to Mass, casually yet persistently offered, can fundamentally change someone's life. I'm living proof of that.

That moment, sparked by a friend inviting me to Mass, led me down the road toward my conversion into the Catholic Church. 

The Eucharist was the hook of this conversation. I realized I couldn't be neutral. 

If Catholics were right and this really was the body and blood soul and divinity of Christ, then nothing else mattered besides receiving that incredible gift. 

However, if they were wrong, then it was the worst kind of idolatry imaginable, and I should run away as fast as possible. 

This process of discernment took years of prayer, education, and deep conversations with friends and mentors. I could stand up here all day talking about how I wrestled through the different teachings of the Church: the doctrines of the Virgin Mary, the papacy, confession, and all of the classic protestant objections. There were also non-theological barriers I had to work through: what about the horrific abuse crisis? Did I really want to join an institution that could cover that up? What would my friends and family say? Would my parents think I was rejecting the faith they raised me in? 

I was enormously fortunate to have incredible friends and world-class theologians to help me wrestle with all these things, but that could only get me so far. As hard as I tried, I couldn't think my way into Catholicism. 

For anyone considering becoming Catholic and wrestling through those same issues here today, I'm sorry to tell you this: no amount of Pints with Aquinas podcasts, Bishop Barron videos, or Fr. Mike Schmitz talks can 100% convince you to be Catholic. 

At the end of the day, it takes a leap of faith. It can be terrifying, I know, but I promise it will be the single best decision you ever make. 

Take the leap.

For me, that leap centered around the Eucharist. The more my heart softened to the reality of what the Church teaches, the more everything else faded into the background. Paradoxically, seen through that focused lens of the Eucharist, my theological objections surrounding the Virgin Mary, the papacy, and confession all fell away as I began to understand how interconnected it all is. 

By God's grace, in 2016, I was confirmed in the Catholic Church and received my first Holy Communion at the Easter Vigil at St. Peters on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. It was the single best day of my life. 

I still wrestle with so many aspects of my faith, but let me tell you, it's so much more beautiful to wrestle with it from the inside than from the outside looking in. 

Now, as a Catholic, my life continues to be one crazy trust exercise after another… and I wouldn't have it any other way

Through this newsletter, I plan to dive deeper into my story of chronic pain and share the hard lessons I've learned.

Whether you are currently grappling with chronic pain, supporting someone on their journey, or facing hardships in other facets of life, I'd like to join you as a fellow pilgrim to help you find hope and purpose.

Pilgrimage of Pain

I recently completed a week-long fitness retreat in Koh Samui, Thailand.

It was physically the most challenging thing I've ever done, and completing it is honestly one of the most significant accomplishments of my adult life. I'm incredibly proud of myself. 

For most of the past 17 years, I've told myself I can't do very much physical activity. I convinced myself that my chronic back pain limited my ability to do just about anything athletic or physically strenuous. There were enough times when playing beach volleyball or soccer left me in so much pain for days or weeks that I decided to write off doing any actual physical activity for over a decade. 

Over the past two years, that's started to change. As I wrote in a previous post, I restarted physical therapy with a new mindset, not to get out of pain but to push myself to do as much physical exercise as possible without increasing my pain. After months of physical therapy, I eventually progressed to gym consistency.  

Even in the gym, however, I was extremely cautious. My mindset has been slow and steady wins the race, and I never pushed myself too hard. I always had a fear in the back of my mind that I could hurt myself again and not be able to get out of bed for days. I was too worried I might have to miss work, so I still overprotected my back. This cautious attitude wasn't necessarily a bad thing; it was necessary at the time. 

In the back of my mind, however, I always had the thought of "what could I accomplish physically if I didn't have any fear of hurting myself. How far could I push my body if I had unlimited time to rest and recover after working out?"

I decided to finally test that out. I'm currently on a 3-month mini-sabbatical in Southeast Asia and I came up with a plan to push myself. I signed up for a week-long fitness retreat in Koh Samui, an island in southern Thailand. The "total fitness retreat" offers three intense workouts a day: an early morning circuit class, a 10 a.m. strength and conditioning class, and a high-intensity evening circuit class. 

I walked into my first session at 7:30 a.m. on Monday morning and was terrified by what was on the board: 

• 1-mile run 

• 500m row

• Circuit of 15 get-ups, 20 lunges, 10 burpees, 15 plank twists 

• Two 1/4 mile laps around the garden with a 10kg plate overhead

• Repeat the circuit of 15 get-ups, 20 lunges, 10 burpees, 15 plank twists

• Another 500m row

• 4 lengths of the pool

And this was just the first workout of three on Monday! Oh, and by 7:30 a.m., it was already almost 90 degrees with insane humidity.

A part of me legitimately wanted to say, "Thanks, but no thanks," forget cost of the retreat, and go back to my beach vacation. 

There was another part of me, however, that was excited. I signed up for this! I wanted this! I was there to push myself and see what my body could do. 

If I couldn't do it, then I would know my limit. And then a tiny voice in my head said, "But what if I can?"

I gritted my teeth and decided to try it.

Over the past two years, I've focused almost exclusively on strength training with practically no cardio. That was a mistake. 

Halfway through the mile run, I was ready to call it quits again. My nervous enthusiasm and pride had gotten the best of me, and I hadn't paced myself well. As I was climbing up a hill, I felt like I was going to pass out. I had already passed a handful of my classmates walking behind me, and I decided to shove my pride aside and be okay with walking. With a push from one of our instructors, who was comfortably on her motorcycle shouting encouragement, I half-walked and ran the rest of the mile. 

The fact that I couldn't even run a mile without walking was a rude wake-up call, but I didn't have time to process it. The run was just the warm-up, and I still had the rest of the session to complete! 

The following 40 minutes or so is a complete blur, but somehow, I completed the morning workout session. Afterward, I sat in the gym's cafe exhausted, drenched with sweat, and devouring an omelet. I was proud of myself for what I had just completed, but I was painfully aware that this was just session #1 of the week. I had about an hour to recover before our 10 a.m. strength and conditioning class!

Thankfully, the strength class was much more familiar. It was leg day, which was a brutal way to start the week. We began with barbell squats, weighted hip thrusts, and elevated goblet squats. Then, the "conditioning" part of the call included:

• 150 air squats.

• Two 1/4 mile laps around the garden.

• 50 mountain climbers.

• 100 more air squats.

• A 250m row. 

It was brutal, and my legs would be sore for days, but this was manageable. 

After a much-needed yoga class and a massive lunch, I returned to my hotel and took a three-hour nap. It took everything in me to drag myself back to the gym for the evening class.

I had heard the evening circuit classes were "the absolute worst" from just about everyone who had been there already. The classes alternated throughout the week, but the overall theme included a dozen or so exercises, done at peak intensity for less than a minute, a quick rest, and then repeat. Again and again and again and again. 

Here was Monday night's circuit. We did each exercise for 45 seconds of intense work, as much as possible in the 45 seconds, followed by 15 seconds off, where we would move to the next exercise, 45 seconds of intense workout, then 15 seconds off, etc. After we finished all 10 exercises, we'd have a generous 30-second break, then do the entire circuit again. After another 30-second break, then do it a third time!

1. Ski Erg

2. Get ups

3. Press-ups

4. Box jumps

5. Walk out plank

6. TRX row

7. Air bike

8. Slam ball

9. Rower

10. Ball to target throw

By the end of the first time through the circuit, I was so sweaty I looked like I had just gotten out of the pool. The other two circuits were an out-of-body experience. I don't know how I kept going, but somehow I found myself lying on the floor, exhausted beyond belief but finished. 

And so the week went, with variations each day. We took Muay Thai boxing classes on Tuesday and Thursday mornings instead of a circuit workout. 

Every muscle in my body hurt. Thankfully, I could get a Thai massage for about $3 every day (sometimes twice a day). The gym had a spa facility with a sauna, ice bath, and onsen hot mineral bath, which was a lifesaver.

When I arrived at each class, our trainers would write the workouts on the board. Except for a few strength classes, my immediate thought was, "There's no way I can do that." But an hour later, somehow, I'd have done it. Did I do it well? Not really. Many of my classmates regularly outworked me during each session, but I didn't care. I was still doing it. And I couldn't believe what my body was capable of. 

Every night, I went to bed thinking that the following day would be when my back gives out. The next morning, I assumed, I wouldn't be able to get out of bed, and that's when I'll know I found my limit. 

But I somehow got up each morning and did it all over again. 

I couldn't believe it. 

I won’t go into too much detail about each and every workout kicked my butt, but there was one on Thursday that was a scales falling from my eyes moment. 

I walked into the 10 a.m. class expecting another classic strength session when I instead saw "Mini-Spartain!" written on the whiteboard. My heart sank, and my mouth gaped as I saw the program for the day:

• 1-mile run

• Monkey bars (up and down)

• Over/under through an obstacle course of workout benches

• Farmers walk (holding a 16kg kettlebell in each hand) 1/4 mile garden lap 

• Rings

• Massive tire flip across the room and back

• Tire carry (regular size) 2x 1/4 mile garden lap

• Rope climb

• 30 burpees

This was their mini attempt at a Spartan Race, aka the "hardest obstacle course race on the planet."

This kind of obstacle course workout was entirely foreign to me. I've had a few friends do this kind of stuff, and they are absolute beasts. Yes, this was a highly scaled-down version of the real Spartan Race, but it still terrified me. 

That morning was the biggest temptation to leave the retreat since the very first morning. Every fiber in my being was telling me I couldn't do it. My mind raced back to all of those painful moments, bedridden because I had tried to do some stupid activity like a soccer match or beach volleyball with my friends in college.

My back and mind screamed at me: YOU CANNOT DO THIS!

Armed with the proof of what I had already accomplished that week, I responded more forcefully than I ever have: YES, I CAN. WATCH ME. 

I should have paced myself better (I had mostly learned to do this by now), but something burned inside of me. I was there to push myself physically further than I ever had in my 17+ years of chronic back pain, and dammit, I was going to push myself to the breaking point if I had to. 

I still had to walk parts of the mile but minimized it as much as possible. I'd catch my breath, then start running again. 

When we got to the monkey bars, I was surprised to see most of my classmates couldn't get past the first few bars. If you couldn't get 1/3 of the way through, you had to replace the exercise with 15 burpees (which most people had to do). The monkey bar course was about 24 bars across. The first few are flat, then they go at an include, flat again across the middle, then decline, and finish flat again.

I went across the first few bars, shocked that I could keep going. I went up the incline with a massive smile across my face, across the middle, and by the time I was going down the decline, my classmate were all cheering me on as they were doing their burpees as punishment for not completing it. I jumped off the final bar laughing. I couldn't believe I did it! 

I didn't have much time to savor the moment, though, since this was still only the second activity of the session. The over/under obstacle course through workout benches was fine, and the farmer's walk wasn't fun, but it was doable. 

When I got to the rings, the same thing happened. Many of my classmates couldn't get past the second ring onto the third, but I swung across all 6 on my first attempt! 

The massive tire flip sucked, but I was careful to flip with my legs and not my back and got through it. Carrying a tire around for a 1/2 mile wasn't fun either, but I pushed through with minimal breaks. 

I get back into the gym, and again people are struggling with the rope climb. By this time, my adrenaline was rushing, and I was confident that I could somehow do it, and I did! I got some pretty bad rope burn climbing back down, but I had reached the top!

As I completed my 30 burpees (just a cruel finish to the workout), I couldn't stop smiling. This was the first time I’ve ever had fun doing a grueling workout. 

I did it.

Many of my friends are incredible athletes, some even professional athletes, and could have done this course in their sleep. But for me, someone who has thought of themselves as physically disabled for the past 17+ years, this was a massive deal. 

As I said, this was a moment when scales were falling from my eyes. 

I was exhausted, and sore beyond belief, but my back pain hadn't measurably increased. 

It was still there, it's always there. My nerve pain stabbing into my spine like 1000 needles and my muscles constantly aching. But the massive, debilitating flare-up of pain that I had expected never came. 

This retreat hadn't happened in a vacuum. I'd spent the past year and a half focusing on strength training, especially my back and core. If I had tried this retreat two years ago, I very likely would have been unable to get out of bed. 

My hard work over the past 18 months had clearly paid off. 

I was overjoyed at my accomplishment. I finished the week strong, capping it off with a big hike through the jungle on Saturday morning. 

As I rested and recovered in yet another sauna and ice bath routine, something dampened my enthusiasm. 

For the past 15+ years, my mind and body have been lying to me. They kept telling me I couldn't do what I had just done. For the past 18 months, I had been slowly testing the validity of that lie, and during this retreat, I had finally crushed it. 

Obviously I was excited, but I was also angry. I was angry at myself, at my own mind, for convincing itself I had to overprotect my body. 

I had been stuck in a cycle of fear for half of my life! 

I texted one of my best friends about these feelings. Nate’s a rare close friend who has known me continuously since we were kids, well before my chronic pain started when I was 15 years old. His response was exactly what I needed to hear:

"Bro I don't know how to describe how happy I am for you. Just keep moving forward. Don't beat yourself up. You're not ready until you are, there's no explanation for it. Now you know and youg et to live big!"

For whatever reason, the timing wasn't right before. I stopped believing in accidents and coincidences a long time ago. 

Yes, I had been stuck in a cycle of fear, but now I was Kevin in Home Alone screaming, “I’m not afraid anymore! Do you hear me? I’m not afraid!” (Just ignore the fact that he runs away screaming right after he says that.)

Nate was right: now I get to live big! 

This moment marks a significant new chapter in my life. While my chronic pain is still there, it feels as if I’ve been healed. The scales have fallen from my eyes, and I’ve seen what my body is capable of.

Whenever we suffer, we put limits on what we think we can and can’t do. This is easiest to think about when we are physically suffering, but it’s also true with emotional or spiritual suffering. When we suffer, we think we can’t be around people and isolate ourselves. Or we think we can’t pray and try to detach ourselves from God.

Most of these barriers we put up are lies. I’m increasingly realizing that the things I think I can’t do are precisely the things I MUST do.

When my back hurts, I don’t want to exercise. But strengthening it is exactly how I decrease flare-ups.

When I’m depressed and feeling bad for myself, I don’t want to be around people. But time with friends is exactly how I get out of a funk.

When I’m pissed off at God or doubting His very existence, I don’t want to pray. But prayer and worship are exactly how I encounter Him and know His love for me.

Healing often comes not from avoiding our struggles, but from confronting them head-on. By challenging our self-imposed limits, we can discover a strength and resilience we never knew we had. 

From this day forward, I’m going to strive to break free from these barriers and embrace the fullness of life, even in the midst of suffering.

Through this newsletter, I plan to dive deeper into my story of chronic pain and share the hard lessons I've learned.

Whether you are currently grappling with chronic pain, supporting someone on their journey, or facing hardships in other facets of life, I'd like to join you as a fellow pilgrim to help you find hope and purpose.

Living with a chronic illness often feels incredibly isolating. Watching others go about their seemingly ordinary lives can make it seem like you’re the only one suffering. However, this sense of isolation is often self-imposed. In reality, most people we encounter each day are suffering, some in ways surprisingly similar to our own.

Recently, I started reading Ross Douthat’s book, “The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery.” Douthat describes his immensely difficult struggle with Lyme Disease. While our medical challenges are different, there are many parallels in our experiences: his world crashing down as he went from perfectly healthy to incapacitated, endless doctor visits, and being passed around the medical community trying to diagnose his symptoms. Like me, he faced quiet suggestions from doctors, friends, and family that maybe it was all in his head.

I’m only halfway through the book, but this passage stood out to me, and I wanted to share some thoughts on it:

“The only place to turn for real solidarity was the secret fraternity into which I had been initiated—not just Lyme patients, but the much larger group to whom a confession of chronic illness (and as I said, I confessed my situation to everybody) opened up. In my wanderings for work, in my visits to greenrooms and radio studios, in chance encounters and long online conversations, I constantly proved the truth of Scott Alexander’s observation: There was extraordinary suffering everywhere, people dealing with pain of every variety, with conditions diagnosable and not, that had been largely invisible to me until I came into the country, cleared the filter, and experienced that misery myself.”

Living with a chronic illness, whatever it is, makes you a card-carrying member of a secret society, an exclusive club. At first, you think you’re the only member, but everyone gradually realizes how massive the club actually is. This membership gives you access to a side of people the rest of the world doesn’t easily see.

If your chronic illness is invisible (as it is for me and Ross Douthat), you can only meet other members of this club if you show your card. How do you do this? You have to be vulnerable and open about your own suffering to connect with other members.

For Ross, this was never a problem. He describes how he was obsessed with his illness and couldn’t stop talking about it. Especially when struggling to find a diagnosis, he would talk to people everywhere he went, hoping to find parallels and answers.

My experience has been different. Probably because my chronic pain started when I was a teenager, I’ve been much more hesitant to share it with others. All I wanted in high school and college was to be normal, to fit in! I’d hide my chronic pain, often not telling new friends about it until awkwardly late into our friendship. I must confess I still do this sometimes.

However, I’m slowly starting to feel more comfortable flashing my chronic pain card. I’ll casually mention it in conversation, sometimes as simply as, “I’ve been dealing with back issues since I was a teenager.” It feels intense to drop the whole, “I’ve been in intense chronic pain every single day for the past 17 years” on someone I’ve just met, but occasionally I will. I’m still trying to find a middle ground: a way to indicate the severity of my suffering without eliciting pity (something I dread).

I remember posting a casual remark on social media marking 15 years of chronic back pain, and someone from high school I had completely lost touch with reached out to me. She had been suffering with intense back pain for the past five years and had similarly gone from doctor to doctor unsuccessfully trying to diagnose its source. Our stories certainly had parallels, but I couldn’t give her any concrete answers. Instead, all I could offer was an empathetic, “I know, doesn’t it suck?” Sometimes that’s all a person needs to hear to feel validated in their pain. We’ve kept in touch and continue to be a source of encouragement to each other.

Close friends and family members of someone with a chronic illness can be honorary members of our secret club. I remember immediately bonding with a professor in graduate school because his daughter had experienced extreme pain for over two years in her abdomen that doctors couldn’t diagnose. His anguish as a parent was palpable and reminded me of my parents’ own suffering as they’ve watched me in pain. I established a connection with this professor that went far beyond a simple classroom relationship. Our shared experiences with chronic illnesses helped us build a lasting relationship that has remained strong long after I graduated.

If you’re a member of this club, you know how tempting it is to be ashamed of it. We often hope no one will find out because we don’t want to be pitied or treated differently.

It’s time to start wearing your membership card like a badge of honor! This doesn’t mean obsessively talking about your chronic pain or suffering in every conversation. It does mean looking for opportunities to casually mention it. Other members of the club are often just as hesitant or ashamed to talk about their chronic pain, so you have to be the one to be vulnerable first.

Over the past few years, I’ve realized how selfish it was to keep my story of chronic pain to myself and pretend to be “normal.”

By being open about our suffering, we not only validate our own experiences, but we also offer a lifeline to those who might feel just as isolated and misunderstood as we do.

All around us, there are fellow pilgrims walking their own Pilgrimage of Pain. It’s an enormous privilege to encounter people on this journey and be able to empathize with them in ways that their friends and family can only sympathize. 

Through this newsletter, I plan to dive deeper into my story of chronic pain and share the hard lessons I've learned.

Whether you are currently grappling with chronic pain, supporting someone on their journey, or facing hardships in other facets of life, I'd like to join you as a fellow pilgrim to help you find hope and purpose.

Pilgrimage of Pain

For more than half my life, I told myself I was in too much pain to exercise. Since some activities, like playing beach volleyball or surfing, would worsen my chronic back pain, I decided to exclude all physical activity from my life.

While my physical limitations are real, I recently realized how much I had overly protected my body, to the actual detriment of my well-being.

Backstory

Growing up, I was extremely active. I played football, baseball, and soccer, skateboarded, biked, surfed—you name it. As a freshman in high school, I was in peak physical shape, fresh off a successful football season. But after a routine stomach surgery, I woke up with severe back pain that never went away.

For the next 15+ years, I avoided almost all physical activity. Whenever I tried to play sports, like a pickup game of beach volleyball, the pain would be so bad afterward that I'd spend days in bed, regretting it. 

I convinced myself that avoiding all physical activity was the best way to manage my pain. My friends would go to the gym and join after-work sports leagues, but I sat out, believing my chronic pain wouldn’t allow me to participate.

I deprived myself not only of the physical, mental, and emotional benefits of exercise but also of the social aspect of these activities. Chronic pain is isolating as it is, but by overprotecting my back, I forced myself further into isolation and loneliness. 

Shortly after turning 30, I realized that protecting my back by avoiding physical activity wasn't sustainable. Our bodies can endure a lot of neglect in our 20s, but I knew this wouldn't last. My metabolism was going to catch up with me eventually! 

More important than staying slim, however, was being physically healthy enough to enjoy the life I wanted. I thought about my future as a husband and father, wanting to keep up with my kids and carry them around. Could I really be a supportive husband and engaged father if I let my body deteriorate? I decided it was time for a change.

A New Approach

I started physical therapy again, but this time with a completely different mindset. Instead of trying to eliminate my pain, my goal was to push myself as much as I could without significantly increasing my pain. 

I told my new physical therapist I wanted to focus on my entire body, not just core strengthening. We moved slowly, carefully monitoring my body and pain levels. I started with bodyweight exercises and gradually moved to weight lifting. Initially, I used machines to brace my back (which felt less intimidating) and eventually progressed to dumbbell and barbell exercises. 

I began going to the gym on days I wasn’t at physical therapy—a huge step, considering I hadn’t been to a gym since my high school football days. I had spent 15 years convincing myself that I didn’t belong at the gym, and I was initially intimidated and self-conscious. 

At every step, I feared my back pain would skyrocket, but it mostly stayed the same. I learned to be in tune with my body and what could start to increase my pain. For example, despite trying multiple variations, deadlifts will always increase my back pain. It’s not a debilitating increase, but it’s enough that I can’t complete my other exercises well. 

Eventually, I graduated from physical therapy and got a personal trainer at my local gym. Finding the right trainer took time, but I found someone with a solid understanding of physiology who helped me elevate my workouts and develop a consistent plan. 

It’s wild for me to look back at the progress I’ve made.

My personal record for squats is 155 lbs—not much by typical standards, but it’s a massive achievement for me. I remember the very first time I squatted just the bar (45 lbs) and was terrified I wouldn’t be able to walk the next day. Now, I can’t help but smile as I load up weights and slowly, very slowly increase my max lift.

However, my mental progress has been even more important than my physical progress. I have gained a new confidence not just in the gym, but in life as a whole. It’s incredible to prove your mind wrong when it’s so sure you can’t achieve something. Unlearning the lies I told myself about what I can and can’t do over the past 17 years has been the most valuable lesson I’ve learned in years. 

Lessons Learned:

1. The Human Body is Amazing

I was filled with doubts and fears when I started this journey. My chronic pain couldn’t let me imagine being the person who not only goes to the gym four times a week but who genuinely enjoys it!

There was a transformational moment early on when I was doing goblin squats at the gym. I was adjusting my form in the mirror when suddenly I got emotional just looking at my reflection. I never thought I could physically do what I was doing at that moment. 

It's incredible how much we underestimate our capabilities. This journey has taught me that our bodies and minds are far more resilient than we often give them credit for. 

If you’re dealing with chronic pain, know that you are likely capable of more than you ever thought possible. Work with a trained professional to help you take the first step and push through the fears and lies you've been telling yourself.

2. Slow and Steady Progress is Key

In the past, I would go all in and quit when my pain increased. This all-or-nothing mindset hindered my progress for years. This time, I approached my fitness journey with patience and caution. Instead of aiming for drastic changes, I focused on consistent, small improvements. 

Of course, I’d love to be able to squat 250 lbs. I’m a long way from that at 155 lbs, but less than a year ago, I was only squatting 45 lbs! I take progressive overload much more cautiously than the average guy in the gym, but I’m still always progressing. It might be only 5 lbs every other week, but it’s progress! This methodical approach has allowed me to make steady progress without increasing my pain. 

Remember, slow and steady truly wins the race, especially when managing chronic pain. It’s better to move slowly and consistently than to rush and risk injury or burnout.

3. Embrace Small Wins

Fitness isn't a zero-sum game, and neither is managing chronic pain. I used to believe that if a treatment didn’t completely eliminate my pain, it wasn’t worth pursuing. This mindset kept me from experiencing even minor improvements. Now, I celebrate every small victory. Just like aiming for 5% more strength each month, I also appreciate any reduction in pain, no matter how slight. This shift in perspective has been transformative. Instead of focusing on what I can’t do, I now focus on what I can achieve, no matter how small. These small wins add up over time and make a significant difference in our overall well-being.

What's Next?

Over the past year and a half, I've focused primarily on strength training. The next step will be incorporating cardio workouts. I have all of the same internal fears that running or cycling with dramatically increase my pain. I plan to apply the same cautious approach, starting slowly with professional guidance.

Final Thoughts

Starting a fitness journey while living with chronic pain is challenging, but it's possible with the right mindset and approach. I'm excited to continue pushing myself and discovering my physical limits. Now that I’ve seen how much progress I can make when taking small, careful, but very deliberate steps forward, I feel confident applying this strategy to any area of my life!

I hope my story inspires you to rethink your own self-imposed limitations and take small steps toward a healthier, more active life.

Through this newsletter, I plan to dive deeper into my story of chronic pain and share the hard lessons I've learned.

Whether you are currently grappling with chronic pain, supporting someone on their journey, or facing hardships in other facets of life, I'd like to join you as a fellow pilgrim to help you find hope and purpose.

Pilgrimage of Pain

"Happiness is not the goal and unhappiness is not the enemy. Getting happier is the goal…  The goal is happierness. ...to get happierness, you need unhappiness in your life.”  -Arthur Brooks

In my favorite podcast episode of 2023, Tim Ferriss and Arthur Brooks discussed the role of unhappiness in living a full life.

Here's the key part of the conversation:

Arthur Brooks: “One of the biggest mistakes that people make… is that people say, “I want to be happy, but…” And then they talk about some source of unhappiness in their life that they think blocks their happiness. And that’s the wrong way of thinking because you can get happier even if you’re unhappy, absolutely 100 percent all day long, because these are existing in different parts of your brain, number one. But number two, happiness is not the goal and unhappiness is not the enemy.

Getting happier is the goal… The goal is happierness.

That’s really what we’re going for is happierness. And to get happierness, you need unhappiness in your life.”

Chronic pain sucks, there’s no getting around that. I’ve spent years letting the unhappiness of chronic pain consume my life, hoping—praying that if only my pain would go away, then I could be happy. 

Being told at 15 years old that I’d likely spend the rest of my life in extreme back pain was devastating. Pain took over my life, and with it came a tsunami of unhappiness. 

For years, I believed happiness was unattainable amidst my suffering.

I thought my pain was a total barrier to happiness. It was a zero-sum game. Happiness was a distant, unreachable shore, and I was treading water, barely able to stay afloat, weighed down by pain and despair.

Arthur Brooks’ concept of “happierness” (which is actually Oprah’s idea from the book they recently wrote together called Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier) has been transformative for me. The goal isn’t to be 100% happy 100% of the time. That’s impossible. The goal is to be aware of your mixed levels of happiness and unhappiness, and to use your unhappiness to slowly grow in happiness. 

The goal is happierness.

But why do we need unhappiness to achieve happierness? Arthur explains:

“Look, you need negative emotions to keep you alive, but you also need the deferral of gratification to get your satisfaction. And you need to understand the nature of the frustration that comes such that you can start to manage your wants. You need serious, full-on suffering to find the answers to the questions of meaning

Carl Jung said that you don’t really understand happiness until you’ve experienced unhappiness because of the contrast.

Suffering is what helps you understand what you’re made of and what you can bear. And only then will you find the answers to the “Why am I alive?” or “For what I’d be willing to die?” questions. You don’t find the meaning questions, the answers at that week at the beach in Ibiza. You find it in the depths when somebody you love dies, when you’re afraid of what your future holds, when you feel hopeless. That’s when those moments become real, and that suffering turns out to be an integral part in your journey to happiness.“

We need the unhappiness that comes with suffering to grow in happiness. 

Rather than seeing suffering and unhappiness as the enemy, we need to see it as a catalyst for profound personal and spiritual growth. By entering into the depths of our suffering, accepting it, and funding purpose in it, we add meaning to our life. 

As Tim Ferriss said in the same podcast, “The greater the potency of the meaning, the less the suffering incapacitates you.” 

Meaning is the secret to happierness.

If we wallow away in our suffering and refuse to find meaning in it, we waste an opportunity to grow. We waste our suffering! 

Finding meaning in suffering isn’t a fun process; no one can do it for you. It takes tremendous courage to enter into the depths of our souls, to sift past the physical and emotional pain, and to find what’s underneath. 

“The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity—even under the most difficult circumstances—to add a deeper meaning to his life.” -Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

Seventeen years into my Pilgrimage of Pain, I’m still trying to find meaning in my suffering. I tend only to catch glimpses, but I hold on to them when I do. I don’t think we’ll ever get a clear picture of the purpose of our suffering in this life.

Here’s what I know:

I know that I wouldn’t be the man I am today without my chronic pain. 

I wouldn’t be as empathetic. I wouldn’t be as brave. I wouldn’t be as strong. 

The most important part of my life, my Catholic faith, entered into my life because of my quest for answers to questions about pain and suffering. My conversation to Catholicism fundamentally transformed my life and gave it true meaning. 

I believe that because of my chronic pain, I am happier – not in spite of it, but because of the meaning I’ve found within it.

Meaning is the secret to happierness. 

Let’s embrace our Pilgrimage of Pain, not as a path of despair, but as a journey towards happierness.

Challenge: As we walk together on this pilgrimage, take some time this week to contemplate how previous unhappiness has led to discovering greater meaning in your life. Has this caused a net growth in happiness over time?

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Through this newsletter, I plan to dive deeper into my story of chronic pain and share the hard lessons I've learned.

Whether you are currently grappling with chronic pain, supporting someone on their journey, or facing hardships in other facets of life, I'd like to join you as a fellow pilgrim to help you find hope and purpose.