There is a particular kind of peace that settles over a room full of people who know, without apology, exactly who they are. I felt it the moment my daughter and I walked into the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast on Thursday morning, the Solemnity of St. Joseph — a college freshman on spring break, and her mother, both of us invigorated by what the morning had in store for us.

Washington is loud with ambition and thick with maneuvering. But for a few hours on the feast of the man God chose to protect his own family, that ballroom was something else. It was a gathering of people who had come not to posture, but to pray.

Jonathan Roumie — the actor who portrays Jesus in The Chosen — led the Divine Mercy Chaplet, and the room went still. At one point, I leaned toward my daughter and whispered, “We are praying with Jesus!” Written down, it sounds sentimental. In the moment, it was simply true.

A statement from Pope Leo XIV was read by Archbishop emeritus Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, Kansas. An American Pope, offering pastoral accompaniment to Catholics gathered at the heart of American civic life — the first bishop of Rome to speak to his own countrymen.  

A representative of the Trump administration followed, highlighting the many events planned in Washington and across the country for the nation’s 250th anniversary and underscoring, refreshingly, the call to prayer and fasting that will also accompany them.

Then Claire Lai rose to speak on behalf of her father Jimmy, imprisoned in China for believing in freedom and refusing to stop saying so. Her earnest composure was of the kind that comes from formation, from parents who taught her that Jesus is worth suffering for. Watching her was its own form of evangelization.

Brad Birzer of Hillsdale College and Michael Knowles of the Daily Wire made the case that Catholics should approach the nation's 250th anniversary not as grateful guests, but as people who helped build the house. The Catholic intellectual and moral tradition was woven into the American founding. Recovering that truth is not nostalgia. It is a gift we owe the next generation.

The morning also brought a moment of genuine delight. The three founders of the Hallow App, a Catholic app that harnesses technology in service of the interior life by helping users deepen their prayer life and grow in faith, were presented with the annual event’s Christifideles Laici Award. Their acceptance was marked by gratitude and humility, and by a clear-eyed observation that moved the room: friendship — with each other and with Christ — made their success possible. They were also quick to credit their parents, whose support had made the leap of faith possible. One founder drew warm laughter as he expressed gratitude for the hundreds of “quality control” texts he has received from his mother about the functioning of the App. In a culture that underestimates both young people and the families behind them, it was a quietly powerful witness.

My dear friend and a commissioner on the Commission on International Religious Freedom, Maureen Ferguson, introduced Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson, a man of sincere Christian witness.

Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, spoke of prayer in a way that made clear it costs him publicly. He dismantled, calmly and without theater, the mythology of the “wall of separation” found not in the Constitution but in Thomas Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists. Jefferson, he explained, made a promise of protection to believers, not a decree of exile from public life.

I stepped away from my table briefly to join the live EWTN broadcast and found myself speaking about precisely this. Religious freedom is indispensable for a free society and is increasingly shown to be inseparable from the rights of parents. I also spoke, with genuine joy, about the gift of being a mother of many. In a moment that treats motherhood as an unfortunate detour, I was thankful to share that it is the greatest adventure of my life.

Frequent Register contributor Mngr. Roger Landry offered the closing Benediction, and the room sang America the Beautiful with the full-throated sincerity of people who mean it.

Stepping into the bright morning light, I remarked to my daughter that it is beautiful. This country. This faith. And the wonderful interrelatedness of both.