How Did You Discover Mary?

My love for Mary began with a seed of gratitude. Because of her faith, we have faith. We have people throughout history and today all around us who model that faith.

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Embracing The Mystery of Life, Like Mary

When Mary said yes to the vocation of becoming Jesus' mother, she taught us a valuable lesson. She taught us what it means to embrace the mysteriousness of life.

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Our Lady of Listening

Listening is love becausse it calls us out of our ego-drama. Listening flows our consciousness outwards towards others. Mary is the icon of this perfect other-centredness.

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Lady of Victory

The success of Mary at the Battle of Lepanto is so much more than a military conquest. It is the victory of people who through Mary's example had chosen the ways of Jesus, who wanted to contnue on that journey.

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Mary's Holy Family

Mary, Joseph, and Jesus are the perfect little community which has so much to teach us about how to grow in holiness as we are, on the words of Saint John of the Cross "fashioned and tried" by others.

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"Do Whatever He Tells You"

Devotion to Mary wraps inevitably and inserprably into devotion to Jesus. To ask for Mary's intercession in our lives is, in the end, to go to Jesus - hand in hand with Mary - for his help and guidance.

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Becoming a Father

The Church offers us a perfect model for fatherhood. That model is Saint Joseph, the foster father of Jesus. He’s the perfect counterpart to Mary, the model of motherhood. The fruitful creativity of Joseph’s fatherhood is a major theme in Pope Francis’ apostolic letter, Patris Corde.

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A Working Father

St. Joseph teaches us God’s idea of work. Joseph shows us a model of work that is sacred, ordered towards God, affirming the dignity of every person. A work whose end is our families and communities—and building God’s Kingdom on earth.

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A Father Without Work

But despite the Holy Family’s modest means, Joseph was a great father. His selflessness and service to his family are testified to by the love of his son and his wife. “Love God and love thy neighbour as thyself,” Christ told us. By these measures, St. Joseph—the just man—led a rich life indeed.

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Ordinary Man, Ordinary People

It is ordinary people, going unnoticed, who are the heroes of the pandemic. And they suffer for their heroism. We see the inequality of human dignity in who can stay at home, and who must go into work. Who is called an “essential worker” and who is not. Who must risk more than others in a moment of profound danger.

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Protector of the Poor

Joseph challenges us to embrace a way of life that accepts God’s request of us that we take care of people in trouble—especially when it comes to caring for our neighbours and others we meet along the journey.

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Devotion to St. Joseph

This is Joseph’s time. For hundreds of years, devotion to Joseph has grown slowly and steadily. And devotion to this saint—“the most exalted human person after Mary,” as another saint described him—has produced hundreds of saints more.

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Meet Brendan Steven

Brendan Steven has worked as a professional writer and communicator for nearly a decade, a career which includes founding a student newspaper at his alma mater, McGill University; serving as a speechwriter for a former federal Finance Minister, along with other leaders in Canadian politics; and working as a senior creative writer at Hill+Knowlton Strategies and GCI Canada, one of our country's foremost communications agency families. 

Today Brendan is Chief Writer at UJA Federation of Greater Toronto, a leading Canadian charity, ranked by Maclean’s and MoneySense magazines as one of Canada’s best charities in 2020.

Outside the office he is an active member of Toronto’s Catholic community, volunteering with several Catholic ministries in the city including as a director of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul Greater Toronto Central Council and Catholic Family Services of Toronto Foundation. For nearly four years, Brendan served as volunteer Executive Director of Catholic Conscience, a dynamic apostolate focused on growing Catholic civic and political engagement through education in Catholic social teaching. During his tenure, the organization’s activities expanded to

reach a national audience, engaging thousands of Canadians through innovative new programs and strategic partnerships with dioceses and Catholic organizations across Canada.

In 2020, Brendan married the love of his life, Catherine, who he met at St. Basil’s Catholic Parish in downtown Toronto, where they continue to worship and serve together as a couple. He is an alumnus of the Cardus NextGEN Fellowship, the CivicAction DiverseCity Fellowship, and the CJPAC Fellowship programs, as well as a recipient of McGill University’s Scarlet Key Award.

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