BIO
Anthony Jewett is a writer, teacher, and theologian based out of Utah. Originally from West Texas, he studied Theology at the University of Dallas. He is currently the Director of Evangelization at St. Mary of the Assumption Catholic Church in Park City.
FROM THE WEST
“From the west I will gather you.” - Isaiah 43:5
My life is characterized by the American West. My parents met in the small village of Cuba, New Mexico. I was born and raised in the deserts of West Texas. After college in Dallas, I returned to the West, moving to Utah to teach. My passion to share my experiences through teaching, writing, and my love for God and His creation all stem from the environment in which God placed me. Throughout my life, I have been surrounded by expansive spaces, wild lands, and the potential to develop moments and areas of emptiness into ones with meaning.
Rio Grande near El Paso, Texas by Laura Gilpin - 1945I was born in El Paso, Texas, in 1995. As the youngest of four and with three sisters, I was showered with love and affection by a wonderful family who spoiled me from my earliest years. My fondest memories of my childhood are the road trips we took as a family every year from Texas to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota where my mom is from. What matters most to me about those trips in hindsight was the opportunity to retrace the movement of my family, the places in which they lived, and the journey it took for me to come into this world.
In Pine Ridge, I experienced the world of my mother. Driving down the straight and flat roads of Nebraska past the endless farmland showed me the world of my parents as they navigated their first few years establishing their life together. Passing through Denver, where my parents lived before moving to Texas, I fell in love with the city and the potential for plentiful life in the middle of such a beautiful and awe-inspiring place in the world. Through the Land of Enchantment of New Mexico, I saw the place where my parents fell in love and I always thought how the beauty of our environments can help us see the beauty in each other. Though these trips were so simple, I realize looking back how formative they were on shaping the way I saw the world.
Dunes, Hazy Sun, White Sands National Monument by Ansel Adams - 1941That world I saw was a world of beauty, because the American West is one of the most beautiful places in the world. When you are in the midst of such beauty, you don’t need unnecessary words of distractions to guide you. You can sit, take things in, and remain in silence. As a child, I was a very interior thinker, as well as an occasional troublemaker. But in the waning days of my mischievous youth, I discovered a new world of beauty, fascination, and wonder that enabled me to embrace and to dive deeper into the solitude and interior life in which I thrived - the Catholic Church.
When I entered middle school, I fell in love with my religion class. My teacher, Br. Philip Oswald, was a very wise and experienced Franciscan who had been teaching religion at Catholic schools for 50 years. The very first assignment he gave us in 6th grade was to recreate a map of the Holy Land. This assignment had a profound effect on the way I took in and later approached Theology; I was someone so affected and so formed by the space and land I occupied in my youth. Through the copying of a simple map, it became clear to me that God formed His own people based on a very specific and very real place in the world. The American West was my own personal Holy Land, and Jerusalem was God’s homeland on Earth.
Despite the simplicity of a single assignment and a class, it still made me hungry to learn more about God’s relationship with humanity and how it developed over time. I was fascinated by the story of the Israelites, the construction of the Temple, the sanctity of the Ark of the Covenant. As a lifelong Catholic, I took for granted the person of Jesus Christ. In my studies, I came to the realization that he was a real person with a real personality and a real body; I became a follower, not of a concept or idea, but of a person, specifically God Incarnate. My faith became my own specifically because of the curiosity and the deep desire to learn more about the Church that I developed in those middle school religion classes.
El Capitan Peak, Guadalupe Mountains National Park, Texas by Ansel Adams - 1947As I was leaving high school under the guidance and direction of the Lasallian Christian Brothers, I became a Gates Millennium Scholar which allowed me to choose anywhere and anything to study for college. In high school, I developed a love for the arts, music, and especially writing, and I considered going somewhere to study Creative Writing. By some strange movement of the Holy Spirit, I instead decided to follow in the footsteps of my sister and join her at the University of Dallas. To this day, I cannot recall why I made this decision, but I have always been someone who has made life-altering decisions in a single moment simply because it felt like the right thing to do. To attend the University of Dallas and to enter undecided on a major was one of these decisions.
What a sincere and serendipitous blessing it was to make this choice. For the first time in my life, I felt like I was learning how to learn in the Core classes I took at UD. I never took a creative writing class, but instead learned valuable techniques and rules on writing in general, which was infinitely more valuable than the niche study of a specific type of writing. Most importantly, though, I fell back into the curious and fascinating world of Scripture and Catholicism in a class called “Understanding the Bible”, a class required of all UD students. After my Freshman year, I knew that I was meant to study Theology, which became a decision for which I thank God daily.
I was so moved and inspired by the wonderful Theology professors I had in college that I wanted to share the study of the Faith in the same way they shared it with me. I knew I wanted to teach Theology, and decided to move to Utah in order to do so. Utah was a place I had never been before. I did not know anyone who lived there, what living in such a non-Catholic place would be like, or if I would feel like I ever found a home. However, it was a decision that felt right, so I went for it. I returned to the American West, albeit through an entirely new experience. Salt Lake City became my new home, Judge Memorial Catholic High School became the place where I could instill the fascinating world of God’s relationship with His people with others, and my students became dear to me.
Salt Flats near Wendover, Utah by Ansel Adams - c. 1948I left Utah in 2020, originally so that I could continue my Theological studies at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome. As was the case for so many others, the Covid-19 pandemic derailed my plans. In the hope that the pandemic would not last too long, I returned to Texas to wait for what I wanted to be only a few months. Instead, the wait turned into a year and the prospect of going back to Rome quickly diminished. My time back in Texas was not entirely wasted; I was able to begin writing diligently for the first time in my life, and I found immense joy in expressing myself through the creative practice I so cherished back when I was in grade school and high school. As the pandemic lasted much longer than anyone thought, I chose to return to work in America to start my life again and to prepare to establish roots for my future.
Though I had the ability to move anywhere, I felt that same nagging sensation to return to Utah. I began working as a writer, teacher, and minister at the beautiful and wonderful St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Park City as their Director of Evangelization. Through this position, I became much more aware of the situation of the Church in Utah and the duty I had to do whatever I could to help it grow. Unlike other places in the United States where cultural Catholicism is the norm, Catholicism is relatively unknown in Utah. I, and my fellow Catholics in this state, have found a blank canvas on which we can build up a sincere, faithful, and strong Catholic community to pass on to the next generation and the growing number of Catholics moving here.
My formative years were filled with moments in which I looked out into the vast, empty, yet beautiful spaces of the American West, and I saw potential. I saw potential for my life, for community, for God to speak to His creation through His creation. I don’t believe in coincidences; He placed me in this area of the world so that I might be formed by it and that I might in turn form it into something that glorifies Him. No matter where I live or where I end up, He wanted me to be formed by this place so that, when the time comes and I am ready, He will gather me into His loving embrace from this place.