Jimmy Mitchell
My story can be summed up by a simple phrase: God is faithful. In every season of my life, He has been faithful in spite of my fears and insecurities. He has led me in word and in power amidst countless obstacles. At the every major juncture and decision point, He has provided clarity and courage that can only be explained by the light of grace. From my parent’s divorce to my brother’s untimely death, He has carried me through every storm and brought good out of every evil.
Like all of us, I am a work in progress. I am learning to trust in the Lord’s fidelity and be led by Him more intensely and completely every day. I stumble and fall. The Lord picks me up and surprises me with His mercy again and again. My life up until this point has been a whirling adventure, yet I believe the best is yet to come.
I enjoyed a somewhat idyllic childhood. White picket fence and all. As a family, we went to Mass on Sundays and prayed before meals. We moved around quite a bit until I was in middle school, and I learned how to adapt quickly as the middle of three children. My older brother and I got along well until adolescence hit, which initiated a slow drift between us and a quick escalation of friendship between me and my younger sister. I attended Catholic schools from sixth grade on, and thanks to great youth ministry at my parish, I had several profound encounters with the Lord beginning with Adoration on a retreat in early high school. However, the fullness of the faith did not run deep in my soul until college.
As a freshman at Vanderbilt University, I was suddenly surrounded by evangelicals and atheists. I fell more in love with Christ through many of these friendships but barely hung onto my Catholic roots given the deficit of Catholic community around me. By sophomore year, I was reading Scott Hahn and G.K. Chesterton in all my free time. These brilliant intellects (among others) kept me from leaving the Church and ultimately played a huge part in my decision to spend a summer in Honduras as a missionary and a semester in London as a study abroad student. These two life-changing experiences were like rites of passage that laid the final cornerstones in the foundation of my faith and opened me up to discerning God’s will for my vocation.
I went straight from college into seminary and found myself in the most formative season of my life. I studied intensely and prayed fervently every day while surrounded by some of the most impressive men discerning the priesthood across the country. Though my time at seminary was brief, it was a season of intense growth and healing as my parents went through a divorce during that same year. It was also when I first discovered the life and writings of St. John Bosco, who has inspired my lifelong mission of mentoring and forming young people in the faith ever since.
After one year at seminary, I became a full-time missionary with an apostolate called Fraternus, whose mission is to form boys into virtuous, Catholic men. Two years later, I became an itinerant missionary as opportunities to travel and speak opened up all over the country. The spirit of St. John Bosco deepened in my soul every passing day. I was ready to go anywhere if it meant convincing one more young person of God’s infinite, intimate love for them.
In 2010, I founded a company called Mysterium which eventually gave rise to Love Good, the movement dedicated to evangelization through beauty which I spent most of the last ten years leading. At the very end of 2011, my older brother passed away suddenly in his sleep. This tragedy brought our family together like never before, and amazingly, it brought a deepening of conversion to all of us. My parents became friends again through their shared grief, my faith-filled sister found her husband (to whom she’s now married with four kids), and I experienced a radical confirmation of my calling to go and be an older brother in the lives of young people.
The next decade was spent circumnavigating the globe. I was a man on a mission, eager to travel to any continent as long as it was English-speaking and open to the Gospel. I’ve seen countless conversions unfold and vocations discerned in young people all over the world. There has been no greater privilege in my life up until this point than helping others fall more in love with the Lord Jesus Christ and His Church.
As we all know, the year 2020 brought the world (including my missionary and entrepreneurial endeavors) to a screeching halt. COVID-19 lockdowns gave me just enough time to consider leaving my favorite city in the world (Nashville) for an opportunity to work full-time at the finest all-boys school in the world (Tampa Jesuit). It also gave me enough time to write my first book entitled Let Beauty Speak: The Art of Being Human in a Culture of Noise, releasing exclusively through Ignatius Press this week. You can find it on Amazon and everywhere books are sold.
I’m now in Catholic education for the long haul, a life transition that I could have never seen coming. Love Good continues to grow, especially now that we have an oceanfront studio in a family home just outside of Tampa. God is good, and God is faithful. In ways I could have never anticipated, life is more joyful and fruitful now than it’s ever been. And thanks to God’s fidelity, I trust that I’ll be able to say the same in every season of life as He continues to call me out of myself into deeper and deeper waters.
All glory and honor to the One who is faithful to the end. In Him alone do I place all my hope!