Last month, Will and I stumbled into Fr. Paul and the St. Joseph’s coffee run completely by accident, so this time Mario (on his very first outing!) and I went looking for it! After a week of ninety-degree days, Sunday morning dropped into the low forties, and we joined Fr. Paul and two others from St. Joe’s at a very poor bus stop where many people experiencing homelessness wait. Between the five of us, we handed out somewhere between sixty and ninety coffees, every last bag of snacks, warm winter jackets (I even gave away the one I’d brought), more than twenty rosaries, and about twenty St. Benedict and Miraculous Medals.

Mario was doing a much better job than I was of actually running the coffee run (ha!), and as he handed out cups, people kept asking him for rosaries before he could even offer one. “The Holy Spirit was definitely at work,” he told the team afterward. What a first outing!

The cold made deep conversation hard, since it’s tough to stay focused on anything spiritual when you’re shivering, but near the end of the morning Mario realized he had exactly three rosaries left, and right then we came across three young men who truly wanted prayer. Jay, very tall and clearly freezing, soaked up every word. Ivan wanted it too, but at one point he ducked away, more ashamed than anything, which was sad to see, because we weren’t there to judge anyone. All three walked away with a rosary and a St. Benedict medal, but it’s the third, a young man whose name I think was Cordarius, who has stayed with me.

After we prayed for him, he shook my hand and said, “Thank you so much, I really needed that.” When I gave him his St. Benedict medal and reminded him that it’s no superstitious charm, but powerful when paired with faith, he looked right at me and declared, almost defiantly in the best possible way, “I have faith!” He was genuinely excited when I handed him a few extras to give to others. Before we parted, I told him I’m not out on the street because I’m super holy, but because the Lord healed me of my own mental health struggles and healed my wife of an incurable illness, and I believe He can do the same for him. We encouraged him not to walk that road alone and invited him to St. Joseph’s for support.

Looking back, I wish I’d invited him to pray himself. Cordarius seemed ready to accept Jesus as his Lord and Savior right there on the spot, something I’ve honestly never seen before, and walking him through it might have opened him to a powerful encounter with the Holy Spirit and made our invitation to St. Joe’s that much more likely to stick. It’s a lesson I’m carrying into every outing from here on.

Please pray for Cordarius, Jay, and Ivan, and join Mario in praying “that those seeds that were planted may grow by the power of our Lord.” And if you’ve been waiting for warmer weather to come out with us, don’t! Come see what the Lord can do with a cup of coffee, a rosary, or literally nothing at all!