The Church Wanderer

📍⛪Igreja de Santa Maria de Loures in Portugal.
From World Youth Day in 2023.

Navigating solo in a foreign country can be a quite stressful thing, as I discovered upon arriving in the Lisbon airport.
In time I would find my way to my little group's check-in point, but that initial discomfiture at potentially lacking any means of funding transport, of communication, and overall navigation through and to a place I knew not colored my initial hours in Portugal.

I recall that now, sharing this church, accompanied by two minor reflections:

- The first is that need for guidance in this life, through the various avenues that God chooses to work: family, peers, mentors, etc.
In conversation with a parent from the Archdiocese recently, I had a chance to reflect on just how influential the support of my family - and especially my parents - has been as I've discerned the will of God, with all the twists that my own steps have led to.
Without such gifts, I imagine I'd be running amok, and that's putting it mildly.

- The second is on safe havens such as these churches. Inevitably I return to these thoughts, as it was the first intention of starting this page.
I can't really count the number of times I step into all manner of churches and feel like the weight of the world just fell from my shoulders.
Many are the burdens, and great is our need for the Lord.
If spending more intentional time with Him isn't part of our Lenten resolutions - because it shouldn't be a penance to encounter the Beloved! - then I deeply encourage it.

In a particular way, bringing both thoughts together, I imagine the loving embrace and protection of the mantle of Mary. The gentle reminders of her Motherly care are spread about, and for myself I know that I need to lean further into it.

Pax,
Miguel Angelo

📍⛪Igreja de Nossa Senhora do Rosário de Fátima in Lisbon, Portugal.
From World Youth Day in 2023.

In dealing with some of those things that come up through living life and increasing in self-knowledge, I've found I often need to detach myself from the notion of a "perfect" work.

It's a thought I keep coming back to through the years - and in no small part due to reflecting on the past -but I've found it tends to manifest most readily in certain things - the photography being no exception.

Whether it be memories of ways I could have better acted, places I never grasped the full experience of, maybe a shot I missed in this or that church, there's a way that it sticks in the craw that sets it apart from a good examen.

Reflecting on one's faults (whether they be true or apparent) in a rightly ordered manner, in the light of God's grace, ought to propel one forward, not leave one in a strange paralysis.

I've found that a dwelling on - rather than a dwelling within Love - isn't very helpful.
My forward momentum is stymied by such thoughts.

But where better to make the right reflection than in this season of Lent, on the campaign trail?

Take it as both a self-correction and an encouragement to you, then.
We move forward seeking perfection, but not as sole producers of it - if indeed we could make any such partial claim at all.

"May God Who has begun the good work in you bring it to fulfillment."

Have a blessed Lent,
Miguel Angelo

Our Lady of Victory in Cincinnati, Ohio.
From the Passiontide wandering of March 2024.

I hope to return and give this church its more proper due in the near future.

For the moment, stranded though my intrepid band of seminarian brothers and I are, and late though the hour be as I share this post from Ronald Reagan Airport, we find ourselves utterly weary and yet in good spirits.
May any good pains we and others endure be an aid and an offering for the suffering of those much less fortunate and in need of prayers, and may Our Lady aid us in triumphing over the intent of the Devil to thwart our efforts of fraternal charity.

Pax Christi,
Miguel Angelo

Saint Joseph Chapel at the Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio.
From a seminary exploration in February 2025.

Happy Feast of the Holy Family!
While it would be most fitting to share a church/chapel for each member of the Holy Family, I admit the Christmas traveling has taken a bit out of me, so perhaps a simpler two-parter will suffice.

The first to Saint Joseph, the Foster Father set in honor over the Christ Child.
In the windows of this beautiful seminary chapel are depicted those great scenes through which Mary and Joseph give faithful witness in following God's plan to raise the Savior.

And on another note, in one of the photos are "cameos" by my seminarian and ex-seminarian brethren, Sean and Keith, who were faithful companions even as I took my sweet time admiring just about every inch of the place.

Pax Christi,
Miguel Angelo