Will the Young Catholic Surge Find Ephesus — or the City of Man? by Kevin Wells

This past Sunday’s first reading from the Acts of the Apostles brought back the memory of an image from a book of stories I used to pull from the blue bookshelf in my childhood bedroom.

It covered two pages, showing a small village in a valley, hemmed in by a cashmere blanket of green mountains. A handful of shops, a white-steepled church, and a dozen or so homes rested by a lake fed by a brook that zigzagged down a mountain. On a hill in the distance, a locomotive chugged along, passing by a few tidy homes that clung to the mountainside.

But it was the children and adults, lingering beneath that wide blue sky, who drew me in. I remember longing to be them, to belong to that peaceful place. In my imagination, I had already chosen my home on a hillside—where I had become the boy waving at the passing train. …

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