Journey with Mary
A Sunday Letter, Issue One
Week of May 10, 2026 · Sixth Sunday of Easter
Dear friends,
Welcome to the very first Sunday letter from Journey with Mary. Each Sunday morning, a short walk through the week ahead, a voice from the early Church, a Marian shrine to remember, what the Holy Father has been saying, the gospel waiting at Mass, and a few new things for the children.
A small grace this first week: the shrine I most want to visit one day in this life, Our Lady of the Rosary of Pompeii, is also where Pope Leo XIV chose to spend his first anniversary as Pope. So this inaugural letter has Pompeii at its heart.
From the Early Church this week
Tuesday, Sayings of the Desert: Ignatius on the Way to Rome
Ignatius of Antioch wrote his most famous letters while being marched in chains toward Rome and the lions. He did not write fearful letters. He wrote letters about wheat. About being ground fine by the teeth of the beasts so that he might become “the pure bread of Christ.” A man on the way to martyrdom, more concerned with the joy ahead of him than the death behind.
Read the full piece on Tuesday →
Friday, Voices from the Early Church: Anthony Goes Into the Silence
Anthony of Egypt was a young man of comfortable means who, hearing the gospel one Sunday, “Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor”, took the words personally. He gave his inheritance away and walked into the desert. There, he learned the long, slow work of becoming silent enough for God.
Read the full piece on Friday →
A Marian shrine this week, Our Lady of the Rosary of Pompeii
In the shadow of Vesuvius, in a town more famous for its ruins, there is a great basilica built on a single, ordinary promise: that no one who prays the rosary with persistence will be left without an answer.
The shrine was the work of one man, Blessed Bartolo Longo, a 19th-century lawyer who, in his university years, had drifted into spiritualism and even been ordained a “priest” in a satanic sect. Years of darkness followed. A confessor finally told him, “You who tried to be a priest of Satan, give your life to Mary, and you will find peace.” He did. He moved to Pompeii, then a poor, ignorant town, and began teaching the rosary to anyone who would listen. He bought, for almost nothing, a worn old painting of Our Lady of the Rosary and placed it in a small chapel. Miracles began.
Out of that little painting grew a great basilica, an orphanage, and the Pompeii Novena, the so-called Impossible Novena: fifty-four days of the rosary, twenty-seven in petition and twenty-seven in thanksgiving, made before the request is granted. Countless people have prayed it. Countless have brought their hard, impossible needs and walked away changed.
And this very week, Pope Leo XIV travelled to Pompeii to mark his first anniversary as Pope with a Marian pilgrimage. At the Mass there, he prayed that God would “calm fratricidal hatred and enlighten world leaders.” A pope, on the most meaningful day of his year so far, choosing to lay it at the feet of the Madonna of Pompeii. Not a small thing.
“You who tried to be a priest of Satan, give your life to Mary, and you will find peace.”
, a Dominican priest to Bartolo Longo, who became Blessed Bartolo, apostle of the rosary
And from the other side of the world, Our Lady of Luján
On Friday, May 8, the Church in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia kept the feast of their patroness, Nuestra Señora de Luján, Our Lady of Luján. The Basilica of Luján is one of the largest Marian shrines in all of South America, and the long pilgrim road that leads to her, from Buenos Aires, on foot, sixty kilometres through the night, is walked by more than a million people every October. Few sights in the Catholic world are like it.
The story goes back to 1630. A Portuguese settler in the Argentine pampas wanted a small image of the Immaculate Conception for the chapel he was building, and ordered two terracotta figures from Brazil. The ox cart carrying them across the country stopped one evening on the banks of the Luján river, and would not move. The drivers tried everything. They unloaded the cargo piece by piece. Only when they removed the small figure of the Immaculate Conception did the oxen walk on. The people understood at once: she had chosen this place. She wanted to stay.
And so a chapel was built around her on that very spot, then a larger one, then the great neo-gothic basilica that stands there today. The image herself is tiny, only thirty-eight centimetres tall, depicted as the Immaculate Conception with hands joined in prayer, robed in the same light blue and white that would one day become the colours of the Argentine flag. There is a beautiful saying among the people who go there:
“Ella siempre nos espera.”, She always waits for us.
Whatever hour you arrive, however broken or weary or far from God you feel, she has been waiting. She is not in a hurry. She has all the time in the world for her children.
From the Holy Father this week
A few notes from Rome, small windows into the universal Church.
- Pilgrimage to Pompeii. Marking the first anniversary of his pontificate, Pope Leo XIV made a Marian pilgrimage to the Shrine of the Holy Rosary of Pompeii, praying for peace and for world leaders.
- Wednesday audience. A reflection from Lumen Gentium 6, that the Church has the mission “to speak out against all that mortifies life,” to defend the weak, and to be unafraid in proclaiming truth.
- Four new bishops for Rome. Pope Leo XIV ordained four auxiliary bishops for the Diocese of Rome, urging them to be “men of peace and unity.”
- Regina Caeli: anticipate heaven. In his Sunday Regina Caeli address, the Holy Father invited Christians to “anticipate heaven on earth”, through small acts of charity, mercy, and joy.
This Sunday at Mass, Sixth Sunday of Easter
This week’s gospel is from John 14, the night before Jesus dies. He is comforting his frightened friends, speaking of the Holy Spirit who will come, and giving them a peace that is not like the world’s peace. Quieter. Surer. The kind that does not depend on circumstances.
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”
, John 14:27
A line worth carrying through the week.
For the little ones
Three new games went live this week in the Kids’ Corner, and a great many new coloring pages.
- In Order, The Prayers: drag the lines of the Hail Mary, the Our Father, the Memorare, even Tantum Ergo into the right order. Sixteen prayers in all.
- Match the Verse: ninety-two famous Bible verses, matched to where they come from and who said them.
- Bedtime, A quiet story: twenty short Catholic stories to read at the end of the day. The night-sky background is on purpose, to help wind a small heart down.
- Eighty-two new coloring pages, twenty-nine famous saints and fifty-three scenes of saints having joy in heaven (basketball, baking bread, picnicking with Mother Teresa).
Until next Sunday, walking with you,
Ivana
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