On the first day of June, in a city with diverse faith traditions, a young Roman Catholic who attends a Presbyterian church was commissioned by an Episcopal priest during Evensong with a group of people he calls “siblings in Christ.”
“By the grace of God, you have lived the life to which you have been called,” said the Very Rev. Dr. Patrick Malloy, dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan. “He who has begun a good work in you shall bring it to completion.”
The man in charge of the mother church of the Diocese of New York was speaking to Quentin Frere-Carossio and 11 other young men and women, all under 35, as they graduated from a ten-month ecumenical program called Community at the Crossing.
Described as the first of its kind in the country, the program takes its name from the area of a cross-shaped cathedral where the two axes meet. It is organized by the cathedral in collaboration with the Chemin Neuf Community, a Roman Catholic group with an ecumenical membership.
The initiative’s programming and structure are modeled after intentional contemplative communities like the Community of St. Anselm at Lambeth Palace. Members in New York spend much time in prayer, silence, and reflection throughout a program that emphasizes ecumenical and interfaith dialogue. They meet at least weekly, embark on retreats, and receive mentoring and insights from faith leaders across traditions, including from Fr. Jean-Sébastien Laurent, a Catholic member of Chemin Neuf.
Malloy has been envisioning Community at the Crossing since 2017. Five years later, in September 2022, it was inaugurated with the late pontiff Pope Francis and former Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby delivering special greetings and homilies. The first cohort was welcomed in the fall of 2023.
Like the first, the second cohort that graduated on June 1 comes from various Christian traditions. There are local members who take part in the programs while living and working in New York, and four full-time or resident members who live at the cathedral. Frere-Carossio was working as a sales professional for a financial technology company when he joined. He and fellow cohort member Caleb Parker, a cradle Episcopalian from the Diocese of Texas, participated in the optional second year of the program.
“One of the blessings of this community is … they come from all across the Christian spectrum and … make a commitment to actually live and talk to one another,” Malloy told TLC. He added that the members’ willingness to “live together, despite their differences” offers a “sign of hope,” especially “when people have ceased to be able to speak to one another about most things.”
He expressed disappointment that some “people who seem least able to speak to one another are Christians.” But of the young group he just commissioned, Malloy said, “perhaps it is possible to talk and work across the boundaries that right now seem insurmountable.”
Fruit of a Promise
In meeting the community members, Malloy was struck by how almost all of them came with some kind of crisis or wound in their lives. “It wasn’t just idle curiosity … almost everyone found themselves either knowing that they were coming with something that needed to be healed or quickly discovering it,” Malloy said. “I didn’t imagine that.”
Parker was seeking stillness and renewal when he joined the group as a resident member after earning his Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2023.
“I had let a lot of my identity get wrapped up in my work as a poet,” he told TLC. “I was also grieving my father’s death,” which occurred in 2018. Although coming to New York saved him “from the humiliation of moving in with my mom after going to grad school,” he had no idea of the profound effect the community would have on him.
During the first seven-day retreat of spiritual exercises—those of St. Ignatius of Loyola—he realized how his sin separated him from the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ. “My sin had been closing myself off to God,” he said. It was, for him, a moment of spiritual renewal.
Benedite Dieujuste, a New Yorker who worships at Trinity Church in downtown Manhattan, describes being part of the community as “a fruit of a promise.”
“As soon as I made the decision to do the program, I told myself I have to make a promise,” Dieujuste said in a testimony during Evensong. Pointing to a cross she was wearing, she said it was a daily reminder of the promise she made to herself: “that I need to commit this year to God in the ways that I can grow in God’s love.”
She had felt deep frustration and anger because of things that had happened in her life, and “just being a young adult in general.” But through her relationships with the cohort and the members of Chemin Neuf who guided them throughout the year, she discovered that she had the ability to “learn how much God loves me, and I’m understanding more and more what it means to give back.”
“Going forward, I have a better idea of what it means to make a promise to God and what it truly means to make a commitment,” Dieujuste said.
Sr. Hannah Spiers, the program coordinator and a Chemin Neuf member, told TLC there was a real sense of fraternity within the cohort, “who have become brothers and sisters based on their mutual belief in the person of Jesus Christ.” She’s convinced the members’ experience throughout the year and their relationships with one another are firm enough to overcome “what the world might say otherwise … to divide them.”
Frere-Carossio’s uncle is a Chemin Neuf priest. The beige and white colors worn by members of the Catholic community, born out of the charismatic renewal movement, have always resonated with him. He shared that he only came to faith three years ago. He recently began attending St. James’ Presbyterian Church in Harlem, part of the Presbyterian Church (USA), though he continues to identify as a Roman Catholic.
“Inherently in Christianity, you have different churches. But all of them are rooted in the Christian faith,” Frere-Carossio said.
“I think the unity of churches is something that I would hope everyone will pursue … we’re on the same rock, we might as well live together,” he added, referring to Matthew 16:18.
In what feels like a natural progression after his second year—and which Spiers clarified is neither expected nor required of those who join the program—Frere-Carossio will become a member of Chemin Neuf.
“I really do believe that a lot of the things that are meant for us, we’ll probably respond to in that way where it’s like, ‘but of course,’” Frere-Carossio said. “But we’ll really answer the call because it feels right.”
Caleb Maglaya Galaraga is The Living Church’s Episcopal Church reporter. His work has also appeared in Christianity Today, Broadview Magazine, and Presbyterian Outlook, among other publications.
