“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.”

There could hardly have been a more fitting day than the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary to celebrate the Mass of Religious Professions for the Legionaries of Christ. Seven Legionary novices made their First Profession of Vows and eight Legionary humanists renewed their vows at the Legionaries of Christ Novitiate and College of Humanities in Cheshire, Connecticut.

In his homily at the Professions Mass, Fr. John Bartunek, LC, Territorial Director of the Legionaries and President of the Regnum Christi Territorial Directive College, reflected on the reason for the joy that filled the chapel that day. The Assumption, he explained, celebrates the extraordinary conclusion of what he called the “partnership of faithfulness between Mary and God.” God spoke, Mary listened and said yes, and she continued saying yes throughout her life. At the end of her earthly mission, God fulfilled His promise and brought her home to Heaven.

That partnership began in a particularly profound way at the Annunciation. Mary heard God’s call and responded with her fiat without knowing exactly where that yes would lead her. “She heard it, and she said yes,” Fr. Bartunek said. And on that same day in Cheshire, we witnessed seven young men publicly offer their own fiat as they professed the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience as Legionaries of Christ, and eight brothers renew their vows – and their fiat.

Fr. Bartunek shared several reasons for rejoicing.

The first is powerful: God is still speaking.

“He hasn’t given up on us,” Fr. Bartunek said. “He keeps speaking…calling us to follow Him.” The young men making their professions that day were visible evidence of that reality. As Fr. Bartunek put it, there was no way they would be standing there if they had not first heard God calling them.

And He is still calling each one of us.

The second reason for rejoicing is just as compelling: people are still listening and saying yes. That yes is not a one-time response. Mary’s fiat at the Annunciation began a lifetime of fidelity. Likewise, the Profession of Vows is not the completion of these young men’s journeys, but another yes along the way. “You’re still in the middle,” Fr. Bartunek reminded the newly professed brothers. “Not done yet.” He continued, “We wonder, ‘How am I going to continue to grow, to deepen my faithfulness, my ability to hear God’s voice, continue to say yes?'”

And there is a third reason for our rejoicing: God’s grace.

The Blessed Mother is our special source of grace through her intercession. Fr. Bartunek reminded us that “the light comes from God through Mary, but from God.” Saying yes is not easy. And when the enemy attacks and we rely on our own strength to overcome adversity, we become disconnected from God. We can reconnect to God through gratitude. Fr. Bartunek advised, “Whenever you find yourself in the darkness, whenever you find yourself having fallen, whenever you find yourself confused, go back to gratitude.” Fr. Bartunek concluded, “So that’s what we’re doing today: rejoicing and celebrating. God speaking. People saying yes. Celebrating Mary’s partnership of fidelity. And asking the Lord, humbly but confidently, to give us the grace we need to become the saints that He called us to become.”

The chapel was filled with men at many different stages of formation who have faced and will continue to face opportunities to say “yes”: those who have just entered the Novitiate to continue discerning God’s call; others who had just knelt before God and publicly professed their first vows; still others who had completed their time in Cheshire and left for Rome to continue their formation; brothers carrying their formation into apostolate; and priests who traveled that same road before them.

Here we follow five men at five different stages of the journey – and five continuing responses to the

same invitation: to listen for the voice of God and have the courage to say yes.

The First Yes

Br. Nicholas Reddy, LC, is from Atlanta, Georgia, the oldest of three children. He and his siblings were raised in the Catholic faith by their mother, even though their father was not a baptized Christian. He entered Duke University focused on achieving the kind of success he believed would bring him happiness and fulfillment. After graduation, he accepted a highly esteemed job at McKinsey & Company and had already been accepted to the Wharton School as a deferred-MBA student. Despite this scholastic and professional success, he increasingly realized that achievement was leaving him restless rather than fulfilled. At this low point in his senior year, he joined Hallow’s Lent Pray40 challenge based on Fr. Walter Ciszek’s He Leadeth Me, an experience that taught him to pray in a new way and deepened his relationship with Christ. Inspired by the lives of St. Francis of Assisi and St. Ignatius of Loyola, he began considering religious life. This desire for Catholic community eventually led him to the Legionaries of Christ and Regnum Christi in Atlanta. “God put many invitations in my path to grow deeper in my faith and spiritual life, and each ‘yes’ I gave led me closer and closer to what and who my heart truly desired,” he said. After a year and a half in the workforce, he left McKinsey to enter Candidacy with the Legionaries in Cheshire and, after two months of growing closer to Christ and further discernment, he has entered the Novitiate. “Jesus alone is my treasure and by loving God first, I trust He will continue leading me on the path of His will for my life,” he concluded.

The Public Yes

Br. Joseph Cox, LC, is from Ave Maria, Florida, and graduated from Ave Maria University with a degree in economics. He was engaged to be married when, as his wedding approached, he began questioningwhether marriage was truly what God was asking of him. He found himself thinking increasingly about those who do not know Christ and “who are thirsty for the message of the Gospel.” He began to sense that the Lord had another mission for him. After ending his engagement, he met Fr. Edward Hopkins, LC, while running a young men’s apostolic group at AMU. Fr. Hopkins invited him to visit Cheshire for Advent Spiritual Exercises, where he had a profound encounter with Our Lord in the silence. He was also immediately struck by the charity he encountered and by the Legion’s charism of forming apostles for the. New Evangelization.

Br. Joseph entered the seminary two weeks after graduating from AMU in 2024. Now, after completing his second year of Novitiate and making his First Profession of Vows, he is particularly drawn to college ministry. During his Novitiate, he helped organize large retreats in Cheshire for male college students to experience religious life and, also important, to experience silence. “I’m super passionate about college ministry because I want to help accompany kids who are making their first independent decisions in life,” he explained. With the many temptations confronting young adults on college campuses, he hopes to help students turn their attention to Christ, “who ultimately fulfills the deepest desires of our heart.”

The Continuing Yes

Br. Vinh Le, LC, grew up Catholic, but by the time he reached college, he says Jesus was largely relegated to the “Sunday shelf.” God, however, had not given up on him. During a Holy Week retreat at the Legionaries’ seminary in Cheshire, a priest helped him understand Christ’s love through a surprisingly simple analogy involving Ava, his eight-month-old Husky. When Br. Vinh asked why Christ would endure suffering and death for us, the priest asked why he continued caring for his puppy despite the messes, stress – and even the fact that he was allergic to her. His immediate response was, “Because I love her.” Suddenly, the reality of God’s love for him became deeply personal. “I lived my whole life in black and white, but for the first time at 20 years old, God allowed me to see color,” he recalled. That encounter left him wanting his friends and family to know the same joy and love he had discovered in Christ and ultimately led him to the Legionaries of Christ.

Looking back on his four years of formation in Cheshire, Br. Vinh reflected on what those years taught him: “Cheshire taught me the greatest language I could have ever learned. Currently, I am intensively learning Spanish and Italian, and surely, it’s not easy. However, all these languages do not match the language of charity. My four years at Cheshire taught me how to love, how to give of myself, and how to be more like Christ.”

Now, having completed his humanities studies in Cheshire, he has left for Rome to continue his formation toward the priesthood.

The Apostolic Yes

Br. Juan Pablo Alarcón, LC, first heard God’s call when he was ten years old. Growing up in a Catholic family and school, faith was natural to him, and somehow, when God spoke, he recognized His voice.It happened during Holy Week, on a mission to a small town. After Holy Saturday Mass, he knelt before the Lord in a little portable tabernacle and tried contemplative prayer for the first time. In the silence, he experienced an indescribable joy and fullness. Then one word came clearly to his heart: priest. Years later, after many moments of doubt and even considering leaving the seminary, he discovered something deeper: his vocation was not simply to priesthood. His vocation was to a Person – to Jesus. He was called to follow Him wherever He went. At nineteen, during his novitiate in Monterrey, he understood this more deeply. Later, studying the humanities in the United States and philosophy in Rome, God continued to lead him through different experiences. In Rome, He taught him that vocation cannot exist without freedom: “If you want to follow

Me, you need to love Me. And there is no love without freedom.”

Br. Juan Pablo chose to follow Christ freely, with all that he is and all that he has.

Today, he serves in Chile, working in a school with children. He never expected this mission, but through them he has discovered their wisdom, the power of their prayers, and the beauty of helping them grow with the same natural familiarity with God that he received as a child.

“God never fails.”

The Priestly Yes

Fr. John Kenny, LC, was born and raised in Houston, Texas, one of seven children in a Catholic family. Around the age of 13, after going to confession, he experienced what he describes as an interior movement or voice in his heart: “John, I want you to be my priest.” That call eventually led him through years of Legionary formation in several countries and, ultimately, to the priesthood. He has said that his great aspiration as a priest and religious is to be an instrument of God’s mercy for others, as God was merciful to him.

For me, one of Fr. Kenny’s most lasting impacts came not from the story of how he reached the priesthood, but rather from his homily during his First Mass in Rome after being ordained in 2025. He told a beautiful story that I will never forget. As I remember it, he was working in Mexico City and brought a group of young people to spend a weekend with patients with severe psychiatric disorders who resided in a psychiatric ward. He shared this story as one of the experiences that most helped prepare him for his priesthood.

At a Mass being celebrated for the patients, during the Consecration, at the most solemn moment when the priest elevated the Host, a woman who was a patient shouted at the top of her lungs, “Tengo hambre!” meaning “I am hungry!” Fr. Kenny observed that there could hardly have been a more adequate instant and appropriate words to shout at the moment of Consecration. He realized that physical hunger and the deep hunger of the heart are the most fundamental human experiences, and that only Christ can fill that hunger of the heart. In turn, through the “Daily Bread” that God gives us, we can feed Jesus’ sheep by being their daily bread.

Those words from Fr. Kenny’s homily became even more meaningful to me through a separate conversation I had with Steve Auth that same trip to Rome. We discussed a work of art from the book Visions of the Divine, which Steve wrote with his wife, Evelyn. The piece, Jacopo Pontormo’s The Deposition from the Cross, currently in the Chiesa di Santa Felicita in Florence, has a “mysterious void” at the center of the painting. This is unusual as the viewer’s eye is typically focused on the center of the canvas. Because the work was created as an altarpiece, Steve and Evelyn connected that empty space with the Eucharistic action taking place before it: as the priest elevates the Host to behold, the Eucharist, Christ, fills the void.

These two images have stayed together in my mind ever since. Now, at the Consecration, when the priest lifts the Host, in addition to praying, “My Lord and my God,” I find myself adding: “I am hungry. You fill the void.” Fr. Kenny’s homily and Steve Auth’s reflection have become part of the way I encounter Christ at Mass. Perhaps this is one of the significant fruits of a priest’s yes: words spoken in a homily can take root in another person’s faith and remain there, resonating again and again throughout their faith journey.

The Yes Continues

From the first stirrings of a vocation, to public vows, to continued formation and apostolic service, to the priesthood, the yes is never simply finished. It is renewed. It deepens. It is tested. And, sustained by grace, it bears fruit in ways the person saying yes may never see. God is still calling. People are still responding. And through every stage of the journey, with Our Blessed Mother’s intercession, He continues to give us the grace to say “yes” and to trust in the fulfillment of His promises.