Feb. 5, 2026 Dr. Jeremy Sienkiewicz
South Bend, Indiana

Beauty does not always come to us whence we expect.  Certainly I’ve experienced the beauty of mountains, starry nights, Michaelangelo’s David, or Mahler’s “Symphony #2: Resurrection”.  These are typical places people seek beauty.  But, we often forget (save for the unique pull of the sexual difference) to seek beauty in the pinnacle of God’s creatures: man.  It was from a man that I experienced the most influential encounter with beauty in my life.

The desire for the infinite which defines every human heart was certainly driving my younger self at the University of Notre Dame.  It helped define my course schedules every semester consisting of theology, music, history and literature.  I believed I was looking for love in all the right places.  But, I was unable to seize it or, better, to let it seize me and do with me as it pleased.  Then I ran across Samuel.  In my entire time at Notre Dame, I never actually met Samuel, but I knew of him.  He was in a crowd of students who took seriously their lives as gifts from God and sought to incarnate their response in all they were becoming.

The moment of beauty occurred in the already beautiful setting of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on campus.  As I entered with the intent to confess my sins, yet prior to the time for confession, I saw a lone person in the church awash in colored lights streaming in through the stained glass.  Samuel knelt in the middle of the church, in the middle aisle, even, with a look of true dialogue in his face.  The church is so large and he was so caught up in his prayer that he didn’t notice my presence whatsoever.  I heart a muffled speech coming from somewhere in the church.  He was the only source it could be.  I was dumbfounded to see a man praying to God out loud, by himself, realizing that he truly believed He could hear him and cared to listen.  It may have been the first real moment of prayer I had ever experienced.  His unabashed and, nevertheless, matter-of-fact conversation with God demonstrated a simple recognition (faith is too strong a word) that God-is-with-us and gives himself to us existentially and that our gift back is our prayer.  It illuminated my lifelong lack of faith in the God I thought I served.

Years later, at an historic parish church, at the baptismal celebration of an acquaintances second child, I was shocked to see Samuel walk in.  I immediately introduced myself and told him how he changed my life.  It was a further gift of God that I was able to speak with the living instantiation of beauty that struck a wound in my heart that has (thankfully) yet to heal.  May this wound ever bleed!