When Becky Soltis was diagnosed with a cascading series of illnesses in 2020 — lupus, Lyme disease, a burst gallbladder, sepsis, and pancreatitis — doctors gave her only a ten-percent chance of survival. Her husband Joe and their children watched from a distance, barred from visiting the hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic, as Becky spent weeks fighting for her life. What emerged from that crucible, the family says, was a faith refined by suffering and expressed through sacrifice.

Joe Soltis, a Cleveland, Ohio marketing executive and father of six, describes his understanding of marriage in terms drawn directly from the New Testament. “Love your wife and kids the way Christ loved the Church,” he said. “Sacrifice, be willing to lay your life down.” That theology of spousal love — rooted in Ephesians 5 and echoed throughout Catholic moral teaching — was no longer abstract when Becky was hospitalized and her family could only pray.

A Teenager Builds What He Cannot Yet Fully Name

Joe and Becky’s son Jake, now 15, responded to his mother’s long recovery with something tangible: he built a sauna and an exercise room in the family’s basement to support her rehabilitation. By his own admission, his prior construction experience amounted to knowing “how to build a sub par table.” The project was an act of love translated into labor — a reminder that Christian charity is not merely sentimental but practical, embodied, and often costly.

Jake frames what he observed in his parents in terms that echo the ancient understanding of love as a deliberate act of the will rather than a passing feeling. “My dad and mom have always shown what love is,” he said. “It’s a choice. You choose to love others, to love your enemy.” The Catholic tradition, from Augustine through Aquinas to Familiaris Consortio, has consistently taught that conjugal and familial love is not primarily an emotion but a free and faithful commitment — the kind of love that holds when survival odds are ten percent and hospital doors are closed.

From Family Crisis to Ecumenical Mission

The year that nearly took Becky’s life also became the year Joe committed himself to a broader apostolate. On July 4, 2020, while Becky was still recovering, Joe drafted the initial plan for what would become Prayer At The Heart, an ecumenical Catholic-Protestant initiative with a straightforward and ambitious goal: one million Christians praying for one million friends to come to know Christ.

Joe came to the project through an unlikely connection. Tom Phillips, a vice president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, introduced him to Doug Small, a Pentecostal leader based in Ohio. The collaboration across confessional lines reflects a form of spiritual solidarity that popes from John Paul II through Francis have encouraged — not a blurring of doctrinal distinctions, but a recognition that Christians share a common witness to the Lordship of Christ and a common responsibility for evangelization. Joe now serves on the board of Prayer At The Heart, which operates a twenty-four-hour prayer request line.

In developing the organization’s outreach model, Joe drew on an unlikely source: Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, studying its community-organizing principles and adapting them to the work of prayer and mission. The use of secular organizing frameworks for evangelization has precedent in Catholic practice — the Church has long distinguished between methods that are neutral or positive and ends that are ordered toward the good.

A Household Shaped by Daily Prayer

The Soltis home in Cleveland is grounded in structured Catholic devotion. The family prays each night together — the Seven Sorrows of Mary, the Prayer to Saint Michael, and the Angel of God prayer. The rosary is prayed once a week and during long car trips, a domestic church rhythm that mirrors what the Church consistently recommends for families seeking to pass faith to the next generation.

Becky survived. Jake built the room. Joe founded the ministry. The ordinary facts of one Ohio Catholic family’s life — illness, isolation, a teenager with a hammer, a father at his desk on Independence Day — add up to something the Church has always recognized: grace working through the particular, the mundane, and the sacrificial.

Prayer At The Heart continues to expand its network of Catholic and Protestant participants committed to intercessory prayer for the unchurched.

Category: Family & Culture