The video features clergy, staff, volunteers, and program beneficiaries from the Catholic Diocese of Charlotte describing the diocese’s holistic mission to care for the whole person from birth to death. Speakers explain how the diocese’s ministries—youth programs such as Totus Tuus and Life Teen, seminary formation that prepares priests for lifelong pastoral care, and a burial program that provides dignified funerals for families lacking resources—serve this mission. Personal testimonies illustrate the impact: a young adult recounts how the burial program allowed her to give her brother a proper funeral despite financial hardship. The video concludes with a persuasive invitation to support the Diocesan Support Association (DSA) through service or financial gifts, emphasizing that such support enables mental‑health crisis aid, youth formation, and other essential ministries.
Chapters
As a body is one, though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also Christ.
If they were all one part, where would the body be?
The Church, at her core, at her mission, has always been concerned about whole person. The Church isn't just this coagulate of good initiatives that people kind of come together and be like, oh, well, I kind of want to do this, or I kind of want to do that. No, it's about taking care of the whole person from birth until death.
With our 1st and 2nd graders, it's It's so fun because they're just so childlike, and it reminds me that that's what this is about. It's about being childlike and depending on God's will, because God is going to be the one who's going to move these kids' hearts. It's not me, it's not my team, it's God's work through us.
I was a Totus Tuus missionary. Through that experience, I felt the call that maybe youth ministry was something that was for me. And I don't think I would have ever anticipated at the time that I would come back and lead Life Teen, but it's sort of been a beautiful full circle of the adults that showed me who Jesus is I've been able to come back and serve their children and hopefully show them who Jesus is.
The formation in seminary takes care of the whole person. You read the Gospels and our Lord, you know, when he saw people hungry, he said he pitied them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And that's what the diocesan priest does. He baptizes, but he also anoints preparers. You know, he rejoices when people get married. But also mourns when people, you know, when somebody, a loved one, has passed away. So that's what the diocesan priest is really trained to do, to be with the person their whole life and to be in a community resembling family. I think the diocese has done just a fantastic job of having great priests surrounding the seminary and great priests forming in general that take care of the whole person. Because really our faith is one that takes all that into consideration.
Of all the programs I oversee, the burial program is very dear to my heart. The program helps to provide dignified burial for families that otherwise won't be able to provide that for their loved one.
So when my brother died, I didn't know what I was going to do.
I didn't—
he didn't have insurance. I'm poor. I don't have money to bury him with. And it means a lot that I was able to bury my brother and be able to go and put flowers on his grave. The Catholic Diocese was able to help my brother. My brother and I was in need of a place like this, and the Catholic Diocese came through for us.
Whether you support by serving or financially, however you're supporting the DSA, it affects lots of lives from the very base level, right? Whether you're helping somebody in a mental health crisis that you have no idea what they're going through, or making things possible that are bringing families and youth to Jesus in the Eucharist.
Anything from schools to parishes to housing priests to doing more for the faithful and catechetical work to reaching more people, you know, with their needs, their bodily needs that they may have. We have a lot of growth in this diocese, so the DSA of Support of Peel really helps us work towards that.
