It’s the shortest month of the year, but at least in Chicago, all the cold and snowy weather can make it feel like one of the longest. That’s why I like to spend these frigid days building Lego sets with my son, who just happened to get a fun new set for his birthday this month. See what we built and check out some of the new projects Spirit Juice Studios has tackled this month.

This month we are producing a project for Mundelein Seminary to showcase a new element of their formation for future parish priests. Working with experts in the field of medical simulation, Mundelein is giving their seminarians an experience of hyper-realistic pastoral situations – suicide, end-of-life issues, miscarriages and more – so they will be better prepared to help their future parishioners who are really going through such tragedies and seeking the spiritual support of their priests.

We are also working with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops on its three-year National Eucharistic Revival to showcase the vital importance of the Eucharist as the source and summit of our faith. We are producing several narrative pieces for the campaign, which are a little bit different from producing a documentary because we get to tell the story and control every detail of the production.

In this month of the Super Bowl, we also produced some videos exploring the unique and inspiring stories of priests who serve as chaplains for NFL teams. Some of them even have Super Bowl rings!

As we look ahead, Ash Wednesday is this week, so be sure to check out the Poco a Poco podcast for their series of episodes based on a Lenten book written by one of the podcast hosts, Father Innocent Montgomery, called “Born of Fire.” I hope these episodes help you enter more deeply into this holy season with the always inspiring wisdom of the Franciscan Friars.

Thanks for your continued support of our work, and please let us know if you ever want to collaborate with Spirit Juice Studios on a project. We are always looking for more great stories to tell!