“Holiness is within reach.” I stare at his black-and-white photograph, and he stares straight back at me, confident. He is almost smiling, earnest, yet no stranger to suffering. He is a real man, who was born less than a hundred years before I was, and who died less than a hundred years ago. But he is not just a real man, he is also a saint, soon to be canonized, and he conveys with assurance, as he said to his friends while on earth, “Holiness is within reach.”

On the day after Pentecost, a merry band of 12 Marian seminarians, along with our formator, Fr. Thaddaeus Lancton, MIC, set out on an 1,800-mile road trip from Steubenville, Ohio, to the Moab desert in Utah…

Cooper Eitel, one of the seminarian backpackers, says that “this experience of challenge and brotherhood, encapsulated by the incredible beauty of the Wind River Range, brought us closer than anything else throughout the year. I think our class is going to have a uniquely special and lasting bond that will endure to ordination and beyond because of this experience.”