79:The future is more beautiful than I could have imagined.

Episode 79 Blake, a Catholic in America, shares the family circumstances that led him to really pray from the heart, for the first time. In charting his faith and his life so far, he describes feeling attuned to spiritual pain in people and places. He recounts how, through working for a faith-based organisation, he has 'seen directly with my eyes' the calming effect that the presence of Christ has on people. And there's a special boy-meets-girl story too.

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Transcript

You're listening to All Kinds of Catholic with me, Theresa Alessandro. My conversations with different Catholics will give you glimpses into some of ways we're living our faith today. Pope Francis used the image of a caravan for our travelling together on a sometimes chaotic journey.  And Pope Leo, quoting St Augustine,  reminds us, Let us live well and the times will be good. We are the times. I hope you'll feel encouraged and affirmed and maybe challenged now and then.  I am too in these conversations. And if you're enjoying them, it helps if you rate and review on the platform where you're listening. Thank you.  

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Listeners, thanks for joining the podcast today. This is going to be a really interesting conversation. I'm being joined by someone from America. So I'd like to introduce Blake. Hi, Blake.  

Hey, everybody. Thanks so much for having me on. 

So Blake, you're in Georgia. We'll talk a little bit about the work that you do and the organisation that you work for because I think that will be really interesting for listeners to hear about. But let's start with you and your faith, if we may. So I thought a good way to get into the conversation might be to think about, you know, when in your life did you first think that God might be working in your life? And what happened? 

Just to start, I am a cradle Catholic. So I was baptised and confirmed at the same church, St. Thomas Aquinas in Alpharetta, Georgia. Of course, as a child, I know probably it's the same thing for a lot of people, you go to church, but sometimes it can be hard to really understand or feel the weight of Christ's sacrifice or what the Lord does for us, in our innocent imagination. I'd say the first time in my life that I really felt the presence of the Lord, I was actually in eighth grade  - a crazy year. I was actually on an ATV like a four-wheeler. I was in a pretty bad accident riding on the back of a four-wheeler in rural Georgia. And I had essentially injured my knee and my leg extremely badly. I was actually in a wheelchair for several months and it was a lot of pain. And then on top of that, my father actually had a  devastating heart attack. So my poor mother,  right in the middle of all of that - such a sweet lady - I was injured. I had some secondary infections that came from the surgery and my leg swelled up like a balloon. So they were worried I had a blood clot. So that was on the same day my dad had to get a bypass surgery to rectify his heart. I was able to be discharged from the hospital and I went right over to St. Joseph's, which is a Catholic hospital here in Atlanta that is known to be a regional centre especially for heart-related diseases.  And I remember going and my father was very badly. He was extremely ill. I was very young and I can't remember the name of the priest who came, but the priest came to offer alms for the sick to my father. In that moment, I really remember just - I had prayed before, superficially maybe running through the motions, as a kid sometimes does. You  want to just go play PlayStation or something and you're just there and your parents are dragging you to church.  In that moment, I really sat down with the priest and really just prayed, like really from the heart for the first time, really prayed for healing for my father  and for peace for my mother and my brother who was with me as well and just really prayed. He ended up making a full recovery. I'm 29 now. That had to have been, that's many years ago. My father's in pretty good shape now. Father Daniel Brandenburg, he's the Chair of our organisation, amazing man. But he even spoke about this connection there is between suffering and joy and faith that happens. And sometimes, ironically, it's like in the moments of our greatest suffering, we instinctively reach out to the Lord. 

Thank you, Blake. I was thinking while you were speaking the first part about you being injured, your leg and your knee and needing a wheelchair, I was kind of thinking about our physical bodies that when they're damaged, we have so little to  do to help ourselves. You know, we just hope that time is going to help it get better and obviously some medical support, but you can't mend your own knee. But actually that sounds like that, horrible though that all was, it was actually the terrible thing happening to your father that really drew this deep prayer out of you.

it was their spiritual pain and their physical pain and I think spiritual pain is the stronger of the two any day. 

I like that. And so when that happened and your father, thank God, has made a really good recovery, was that the beginning of a kind of change in your relationship with God or did things settle back and it took a bit longer till you really began to feel that you were –

I've gone through phases. Maybe I stayed more religious after that for a while. And I had gone on mission trips with St. Thomas Aquinas several times in middle school all through early years of high school. We’d go to White County, West Virginia. It’s one of the poorest areas in the entire United States.  We would go out and do mission trips there. It's had something in the 90 % of unemployment. It was a former mining boom town. All the mines had closed and now people were just in poverty. So we had gone and done work to help repair homes and do all these things. it was very, at that age, I realised, you know, I will never feel closer to God than when I'm really trying to work and use my labour to help people.  

I was going to ask what a mission trip looks like. It's not a term I'm used to here in Britain. So you're helping people who are in poverty, as you say, with practical work. 

Mission trips can mean a few different things. Sometimes mission trips are more purely evangelisation. But it's largely an opportunity to  do service. Mission trips are highly practical in nature. We're gonna travel in a group and build a water filtration system, or we're gonna repair a complex at an orphanage in rural Africa. It's really an opportunity to go and see how other people live and to try to actively help them in the day-to-day life. And I think they're an incredible experience, especially for young people to go on and really become attuned to their faith and what's important.

Yeah, and I think often guests on the podcast, I can see this huge history in their lives of service of others in the name of their faith. But there is something about that physical work, you know, giving your own energy to help others that connects with us, with our faith as Catholics isn't there? So it sounds like some of that had made an impact on you as a young adult.

It really did. And then of course, I you know, became a teenager and became a little bit of an angsty rebellious teenager as teenagers often do and I fell away from active service and active practice really. It was never that I didn't believe in God necessarily. I just kind of had this idea that, okay, if God is benevolent and omnipotent, then as long as I'm a good person, that's all I need to do, which was an idea that can be kind of infectious and a lot of people get, and get into this sort of passive, almost kind of agnostic  thought process and belief. 

Yeah, I think listeners will recognise that. I recognise it myself as a kind of, Well, well, I'm not a bad person. So, you know, that's all right then, isn't it? 

Exactly. And I still was very committed to service though, even at that time, I ended up my first career going out of high school, I became an EMT, which is, I'm sure you have a different phrase for it in Europe, but I worked on the ambulance. 

How did you find that?  I can remember with my own children, I encouraged them to think about working on ambulances as a kind of career opportunity many years ago. They said, I don't want to be in horrible situations seeing people horribly injured or whatever. It's like, Why would anyone do that? Obviously not everyone feels like that, but what was it that drew you to that do you think? 

I wanted to be able to help people and serve in, I don't know, in sort of an action way. I've always been someone that in emergency situations, rather than panicking, I get a sense of calm come over me. I was a little bit of an ADHD kind of kid. You know, I'm very, very scattered and all that stuff. When I'm fascinated by something, I become obsessed with it and very much, you know, want to read it and research it. And so that was one reason I wanted to become an EMT. So it was a lot of work, but things weren't necessarily how I imagined when I actually got into that. There was a lot of dealing with mental health crises, which there wasn't a particularly large amount of training for in the certifications I did. And it was largely mental health crises and transporting people in the middle of mental health crises to various institutions in the ambulance. I guess I became kind of aware and attuned and I worked on night shifts. I was always a little bit sleep deprived. I became aware of this overwhelming feeling of spiritual pain in a lot of these places.  You know, people who have severe mental health crises, even just hospital settings in general, the elderly who are afraid to die who have physical ailments, a lot of people who suffer from high levels of dementia, nursing homes and care facilities that are really rather subpar and substandard. Where you wouldn't want your loved one to be, yet, but you have no choice but to take someone where they're supposed to be and drop them off.  I don't know, it just became too much.  

Yeah, I was going to say it sounds like too much of a burden somehow. And I think when you are attuned to that, I think that's a really good term, spiritual pain of people in those situations. It's hard not to bring that home with you over and over, isn't it? 

It is very hard not to bring that home and it's very tough situation to deal with and with a lot of the career paramedics and EMTs,  some of them either kind of shut down and just do their job and follow procedures, but they kind of disconnect from the human side of things  or they just burn out very badly. And I felt myself burning out after a few years pretty bad.  

I think there'll be people listening who recognise some of that, Blake. I really do. That's an experience that many people have had to find a way through themselves in different ways from work situations and also sometimes family situations can have that effect on us. And I wonder whether, was it something you were able to bring to prayer at that time? 

I would pray. I would go to church. I would go and I would sit at the altar and pray sometimes. But I think I was just very negatively affected by the spiritual pain around me and I had fallen into a bit of a depression around all those things. It can be hard in a depressed state to connect spiritually.

Yeah. Okay. So you got yourself out of there? 

I did, shortly before COVID.  I had gotten myself out of there.

In getting yourself into a different environment, did you feel the Lord leading you into a different environment? Could you look back and think, Oh, actually the Lord did have a hand in this  or doesn't that really, doesn't that seem like the right narrative? 

In hindsight, yes. At the time where something in the moment was just a bad experience to you.  You can't see the bigger picture in the moment, but in hindsight, I see that how my life has gone, everything happened the way it was supposed to. 

And so what are you doing now? Is this where you went into the organisation that you're with now?  

No. So I had a little bit more things. Actually, I learned to be an English teacher. I became certified as a English teacher of English as a second language.  I had planned actually to go teach in Thailand at that point, but with COVID and everything that ended up kind of derailing. And then the war in Ukraine ended up breaking out and I was just seeing all these horrible things and became very emotionally invested in it.  And I decided I wanted to do something to help. So I started volunteering to teach English at the Ukrainian School of Atlanta, which helped take care of a lot of Ukrainian refugees  that were coming into the city. Yeah, I started teaching a class of Ukrainian grandmothers  there.  So I had 10 to 12 Ukrainian surrogate grandmas that I was teaching English. So we did all these classes and actually at that school, I ended up meeting my now wife, Tanya,  just a beautiful experience meeting her. It was actually interesting. I had just decided to go in early to the school one day. I just felt called to and I got there and I hear this chanting and the singing.  I kind of meet this very beautiful young woman and we kind of make eye contact and speak for a moment. The chanting and the singer is getting closer and there's an entire team of Orthodox monks who were there at the school to bless the school that day. So they were just singing so beautifully and so spiritually. And I got to meet my wife briefly. And then she ended up actually coming into my class after we had met. And I guess all my Ukrainian grandmas saw there was a mutual attraction there and had kind of pushed us together to go out. They really kind of played matchmaker there.

Is Tanya Ukrainian then? 

She is. I felt like that was definitely an example of God working in my life in a very real way. I mean, you've got monks chanting as I meet my wife for the first time. Can't get much more than that. 

The whole learning to teach English as a foreign language, thinking you're going to Thailand, but actually no, there's this little place picked out for you here with people coming from Ukraine and there's somebody here the Lord wants you to meet.  

Exactly. It was all just perfect how things worked out and I couldn't be happier. We're married a little over a year ago and we have our first little girl on the way actually, due in December. So we're just over the moon, just elated and excited and nervous and just thanking God every day for the health and wellbeing of our girl to come. 

Well, prayers for you and your lovely wife and your lovely daughter soon to be with you. How wonderful. So tell us about the organisation you're working for now. For listeners, I'll put a link to it in the episode notes. 

Please do. So this is... One of the things that's really just reinforced my faith more than anything else in my life and has just been a supreme honour. I was able to start working for Catholic World Mission, which is a small Catholic nonprofit. Well, small in terms of the number of people in it, but not in terms of the impact. A Catholic nonprofit based in Roswell, Georgia. It's just incredible to get involved. I had worked in other nonprofit jobs before that with refugees and things like that and had a lot of incredible experiences. But at a point I was with my wife, and I decided that I really wanted to be working within the faith. I wanted to apply my talents that God gave me for the glorification of God and for building His kingdom. This job, everything just worked out well. I was able to interview. I met James Flanagan, who's our executive director and quickly became fast friends. He's just an incredible man who does a lot of good things. I was able to meet just everyone on the team and it was just, it just felt like this is home now. And I was able to learn about the work and meet these incredible partners overseas.  Essentially, we see ourselves as the bridge between donors and partners overseas in order to relieve both spiritual and material poverty. So, when we say we're the bridge, it's because there really is just this incredible gap between how people and how our Catholic brothers and sisters live in some of the poorest places on earth and how we are able to live blessed in first world countries with modern amenities and all these things like the United Kingdom or United States. So much privilege and then you see and you really learn and you hear the stories that the missionaries have seen and people who've been from a lot of places around the world where I always kind of think about it in this way: We hear about women who are giving birth without access to a doctor. We hear about kids who are working in mines. We hear about people dying of entirely preventable diseases just sheerly due to their poverty. And there can be a tendency to be like, Oh, that's the things that our ancestors had to deal with back in the Victorian times. There's a tendency to almost think of it like these are problems of the past. This is like something that people had to deal with back in the day. But that's not true. A significant percentage of the population, especially our brothers and sisters, our Catholic brothers and sisters, live those realities every day. 

Yeah, I think that's really helpful, Blake, actually. That's right. We can think that's all sorted just because it's sorted for us. 

Right. 

We don't just lift our eyes a bit and see what's happening to, as you say, our brothers and sisters. That's really helpful. 

You know, when we talk about material and spiritual poverty, of course, there's the obvious material poverty that people live in. They don't have enough food, the housing, no access to medical care, education, things of that nature. But there's also a spiritual poverty. There's big swathes of the world where there's many faithful and there's very few priests or people that are able to minister to them. There's people out there who are very faithful to God and they pray every day, but they don't have a church to meet in. Or if they do, it's a very ramshackle construction that is not safe. We worked in Ghana in an incredible little community called Bowena where they actually had a chapel that was built by missionaries in the 1990s and it was a mud construction and it was totally dilapidated and in the rainy season, big chunks would fall off the roof and actually someone was nearly killed by pieces falling off the roof in the middle of Mass. So, they had to totally abandon the church.  They continued to worship. They continued to pray. They actually set up under a large mango tree on the property of the church. They continued to have Mass under that mango tree and they were actually raising money to build their new church themselves. But due to the poverty of their community at the rate they were going, it would have taken, I think they said 25 years to build a new church. So we were able to actually partner with their community. We had some very generous benefactors in the United States. And we do actually have a decent amount of British supporters as well. We were able to help fund the construction and they actually bought all the materials locally. All the men from the village actually built it themselves. So they went in a big team, the women prepared food and their own sweat, their own labour built the new chapel, which was able to be consecrated several months later. This is just an example of how we do things because not only is that just an incredible project from a spiritual perspective and what it was able to do to that community, but it was so efficient because we were able to essentially just pay for the raw materials. People had their own sweat equity and that's what we're all about. We're all about local solutions to local problems. We work exclusively through the priests and the nuns.  We actually ask as a part of our application for funding to our partners, what is your plan to evangelise in this project?  How do you intend to spread the faith?

I think there's something really interesting about working with the church partners and also with the community themselves that they, you know, on building that church that you're talking about, they can feel some ownership of that. Having built it themselves, it's not something that people in the West have parachuted in and done for them. You bought them the raw materials, which they really needed, but that's their church that they built and that they can take pride in. 

That's exactly right. And that's why, you know, every project has three elements. There's, we call our Trinitarian approach. Of course, there's always the benefactors who are able to support the project. There's the partner themselves who is either a priest or a nun or a lay missionary connected to  a legitimate Catholic organisation.  And thirdly, and very importantly, the community themselves who needs some sort of buy-in, which is very important for not just getting the project done quickly and effectively, but also the sustainability of the project. You know, for a fact,that that church in Bowena, Ghana is going to be maintained. The people in the community who came together to build that church are going to make sure it's painted. If there's a leak that sprungs up, they're going to climb up on the roof and they're going to fix it because that’s their church or their community. 

Just going back a little bit, Blake, to what you were saying about how important it's been for you to feel like you're working for the church in a  setting which is about faith and is about evangelising and where you feel very comfortable that you're using your skills for God. Again, I think people listening who are lucky enough to work in faith organisations will recognise that. I think there is something, you know, when you know that there's an extra layer of meaning to what you're doing, you know, it's very aligned to your faith and the values you have as part of your faith, but you don't - perhaps, you're not as susceptible to that kind of burnout that you experienced previously.

 I would completely say that and speaking a little bit more about that. You know, I obviously, I spent a lot of time in medical institutions and there's this kind of a lot of times feeling of just desperation and spiritual suffering that's there. Recently, I had the amazing opportunity, one of the members of our board, Nicholas Donnelly, great guy, he's been leading a mission trip to Mustard Seed Communities in Jamaica for over 20 years. They are just an incredible partner and we have supported them for years as well. But they are a network of homes that take care of some of the most vulnerable people in society on a full-time basis. So, largely and initially, they work to take care of very developmentally and physically and or mentally disabled people who need a full-time home, somewhere that they can be safe. It's actually also an order of priests that are Mustard Seed priests and they go to seminary and they form on these houses. So, as they're in seminary, they're taking care of the residents every day who they recognise are perfect children of God despite the challenges they have. What I'd say, Theresa, about this whole place at Mustard Seed that was shocking to me is despite the relative poverty of the care in terms of funding, there wasn't this air of spiritual pain despite the people having these immense challenges and significantly reduced resources financially speaking. But the key ingredient that they did have was that God was with everything. They actually have people who have a very high level of disability to where they are not verbal or there's people with microcephaly. There's people that are very profoundly in different physical pain or have different problems that might affect their life and make them unable to be in society, but they actually have adoration chapels. And actually, a lot of the people who might be very  emotionally or mentally disturbed in different ways  can just sit there in adoration and just be with Jesus. You really truly see the calming effect that the presence of Christ has on people. Almost more than anything I've really seen directly with my eyes in my life is just this immense  impact and difference because I've seen it's just such a juxtaposition. I've seen very wealthy, very well-equipped facilities  that are just miserable places.  And then I've seen this poor facility. Don't get me wrong, they really do a really good job with what they do there, but ultimately they're relying on donations to make their thing work. They're not a for-profit business with massive budgets to build out huge new wings and giant hospital floors. But that place had a sense of peace about it. A sense of tranquility that the only explanation for that can be that God is everywhere, that they take people to church, that they pray with them, that they're among the seminarians and priests there every day. That's the missing ingredient it’s the presence of the Lord. The Lord has presence everywhere, but I mean that they really work to make sure that people are spiritually supported as well as just physically supported. 

Thank you, Blake. That is really moving to hear about. I did just think about slightly when you mentioned spiritual poverty before and it turned out you were talking about people having an absence of priests because I think there is a different kind of spiritual poverty in the Western world, isn't there? Where we just have lost a connection with ourselves as spiritual beings in many cases and I think it does lead to this, what you described earlier, spiritual pain, this sort of emptiness and hopelessness. 

Exactly and I think a lot of it is a symptom of our comfort and the fact that we don't worry about our - what do they call the Maslow's hierarchy of needs? I don't remember exactly what it is, but it’s this whole idea that you first need to take care of this and then that and then what kind of progresses.  But I don't know if I necessarily buy that because I see people out there who are in extreme poverty or do not have their basic needs met, but they are spiritually alive in a way that you can see that can be rare sometimes in the West when people... We have so much comfort. Like I said earlier, when you're in pain, that's a lot of times when people instinctively know to reach out to God. Even atheists, even people who are raised agnostic, you know, they'll still call out God or Jesus in moments of pain or distress. They don't think anything of it, but I do think it speaks to this  innate underlying feeling and knowledge that people have that they know they need God. And even if their mind isn't willing to acknowledge that, their subconscious does. Their spirit does.  

The other thing I was going to say, Blake, and this might just be that I think another thing that's innate in us is that this desire to have a story, you know, a thread that runs through our lives. And I was kind of thinking about you going on those mission trips and being somebody that helped build stuff for people. And now here you are working in an organisation that that's facilitating that for other communities in all sorts of parts of the world. You know, there is a little thread running through there, isn't there? 

There really is. You know, earlier when I was a teenager and I had a little bit of, you know, kind of the things that a lot of teenagers will think, I couldn't have imagined this, you know. The future is more beautiful than I could have imagined. Like a lot of teenagers, you  dream of being popular and, you know, having all the ladies like you and doing all this, shallow aspirations.  But it's really so much more fulfilling than any of that, just to know that when I'm meeting with someone, when I'm presenting with someone, that there's really real people out there that are being impacted. It's just such a beautiful thing to think, you know, that Sister Janet with the St. Joseph the Worker home is able to buy wheelchairs for the kids she helps, or the Sisters of the Lovers of the Holy Cross in Vietnam are able to feed the kids that they have in their care now, or any other number of projects. I mean, I think we have upwards of 40 active projects just in 2025 that are all just incredible, deserving partners and it's hard not to feel humble when you see these priests and these nuns who are really just putting themselves in immense danger. They're in civil war situations. They're dealing with situations where they can be arrested by the government. There are situations where they have to thread the gap between the rebels and the government forces, both of which can kill them or attack their parish or village if they think you're being too friendly with the other side. Until you really talk with people, it's almost impossible to think. You know, we think of these martyrs, we think of all these saints we know, and it's another thing where we look at it like it's a historical thing. But we live in Western countries where there's a concept of freedom of religion. That's not true for everyone. There's people out there who are really living the faith in the realest way, in the most dangerous situation all around the world. I think it's important that we don't forget them.

You've spoken really well about the work that you're doing and why you're doing it, how the Lord has brought you into this work. I wonder if there's something about your life now as a Catholic, some little bit of Scripture that sticks with you or some prayer practice that's really important to your faith these days? 

Firstly, Eucharistic adoration, just every chance I have to be there in adoration.  I like to be quiet and contemplative and just sit in the presence of Jesus. I just think it's so powerful. Particularly speaks to my kind of personality and how I like to worship. That's actually another thing we're doing. We’re sending monstrances to remote regions of the world. So there's a lot of Catholic communities that don't even have the opportunity for Eucharistic adoration. So people support the monstrances and we actually pay them for the shipping and distributing the monstrances to partners all over the world. But in terms of scripture, I'd say the story that really sticks out to me is the story of Nehemiah in the Old Testament. And I'd say anyone else that does work in a religious nonprofit that I think the story of Nehemiah can really be an inspiration. Nehemiah was in a very dangerous situation to ask King Artaxerxes of Persia. He was the cup bearer and he showed sorrow in the presence of the king, which was inherently a very dangerous thing and he might have been killed just for having a wrong face there, being the king's cup bearer. Did you poison me? What's going on? Are you plotting against me? The king asked him and he was able to have the courage in that moment to be honest and tell him, I'm sad because the city of my ancestors, the city of my God is in ruins. My people are scattered and dispersed. I can't smile when it's like this. I think it just speaks to the fact that sometimes it can be hard to remember when you're asking somebody to support something. You almost feel like it's I, Blake Lowry, am asking you for money. I'm not. You're asking on behalf of the people that you're serving. You're asking on behalf of the mission. You're giving someone an opportunity to live their faith, which I think is an important thing to keep in mind and help give us courage in the face of power. Of course, he was able to ask King Artaxerxes and not only did he just make the ask in general, he was able to make the specific ask. He said, I need this many timber beams. I need this many camels. I need this many people to help work. He prayed for the courage and for God's favour in making that ask. Of course, the city of Jerusalem was able to be rebuilt. I would ask anyone who does work in a field or even if it's not a religious nonprofit, just in a nonprofit that does good work that is living the Lord's work. Just remember that. It's not about you. 

Well, thank you, Blake. That has really brought to life the story of Nehemiah. Thank you so much. That's amazing. And I think that will be something people reflect on in those situations that you mentioned and other situations too. 

I’d just say, I think it's beautiful that you have this Catholic podcast there in England and that I've heard talk of the Church rebuilding itself in England. I know there is a history of persecution there. There was a lot of destruction. It was illegal to be a Catholic for a very long time. I really see England as a zone that evangelisation can really be effective in. And I think the service you're doing in helping spread the Catholic faith in England, which was so historically abused and repressed, I think is a beautiful thing that has a lot of spiritual power.  And I want all you British listeners to know that you're awesome. 

Oh thank you, Blake. Thank you. That's really lovely. Thank you. Listen, it's been really good talking to you today. I've really enjoyed hearing about your life and your faith, how the Lord is working in you through this organisation that's doing such great work out of America. But as you say, with some British support as well, that's good to hear about. And I wish you all the best for the arrival of your baby in a short time. So thank you so much for joining the podcast today. 

Thank you so much for having me Theresa.  God bless you.

Thanks so much for joining me on All Kinds of Catholic this time.  I hope today's conversation has resonated with you. A new episode is released each Wednesday.  Follow All Kinds of Catholic on the usual podcast platforms, rate and review to help others find it. And follow our X/Twitter and Facebook accounts  @kindsofCatholic.  You can comment on episodes and be part of the dialogue there. You can also text me if you're listening to the podcast on your phone, although I won't be able to reply to those texts. Until the next time.