NASHVILLE | Sarah Kroger’s music has the power to stir the soul, to make you unafraid to look at your brokenness, to encounter God where you are. It is her Eucharist offered to others, in love.
The singer for the morning “Encounter” track impact sessions at Lucas Oil Stadium, Kroger and her band led attendees of the 2024 National Eucharistic Congress in praise and worship. The crowd’s response was palpable joy. Kroger said she felt a real hunger for Jesus from everyone in the room, “like everyone was ready to go, ready to pray, ready to enter in and excited to be there.”
“Whenever I’m leading people in worship, I’m really trying to make Sarah Kroger disappear as much as possible and make room for people to encounter God. That’s the goal. It’s less of me and more of Him,” Kroger said. “I’m just praying and inviting people into that prayer.” She noted her desire of “setting the stage for what God wants to do, for God to meet people wherever they are, in whatever situation they find themselves in. That we’re able to create an environment for encounter, with love.”
Perhaps her music strikes a chord for so many because it is transparent, reflecting the facets of her deep relationship with Christ, one which came to life at a Steubenville conference as a youth, and was nourished by her hometown community at Holy Name of Jesus Parish in Indialantic. Although she and husband Dom Quaglia now live in Nashville, TN the couple met at the parish youth group. She also grew up in music ministry there – her vocals accompanying her mother who led the choir, her sister on piano, and her brother on guitar. “For me it was a training ground, a safe space to learn how to lead prayer and worship,” Kroger said. “It was a community that poured into me, that believed in me, and championed me and continues to do so every time I go back and visit.”
Kroger said music ministry also taught her “the power of saying yes to God, that it’s important and the beauty of that.” “Whatever was happening there and whatever is continuing to happen in my ministry is beyond me. I believe God gave me this voice and it isn’t about me. It’s about his glory and His kingdom,” she said.
Bullied as a child in elementary school, she was terrified about performing at first. Gradually, the Holy Name community’s reassurance and love built her confidence. “I’m so grateful for them and how they loved me into a life of ministry that went beyond those four walls. I will never take for granted that I was formed in a community like that,” she said.
She recognized the exceptional gift this was, noting her encounters with many people who were hurt by the Church. “Many people have experienced broken people rather than who Jesus is. None of us can represent Him in a perfect way, but there is a way to love people and to love others and be a missionary of love. I think we’re all called to that,” Kroger said. Calling to mind the phrase – “the Church is supposed to be a hospital for sinners, not a museum of saints,” she said, “We need to be missionaries of love and learn how to do that well. Where that starts is repentance and self-awareness, knowing we are broken and where we need to be healed. We don’t need to be afraid of entering into the darkness because that’s how the Lord brings His light, shines it and brings His freedom.
“We need not be afraid of being people of repentance and self-awareness – continually realizing we are broken and in need of a Savior for the rest of our lives,” she said.
Kroger speaks from experience, noting in recent years a dryness in her spiritual life. “Connection with God always came easy to me. Now I’m realizing that’s not a given,” she said. Although the feeling of being in a spiritual desert the last few years is ongoing, she continues to lean on music as Eucharist for herself and her audience. In her latest album, “A New Reality”, many of the songs center around this experience. She said she is learning “to live out of (her) belovedness.” “It’s a daily choice to say I am beloved to God and that is enough for me.”
“One of the things I’ve learned in this season, is faith is beyond feelings,” she said. “Faith is a relationship just like any other relationship. Sometimes there are good days and bad days. Some days you feel it and some days you don’t. That doesn’t mean that God isn’t real. I’m learning how to navigate faith beyond feelings. I’m learning how to navigate a relationship with God where the questions I have are real and big, but I’m learning how to surrender to the mystery of God. And that, in and of itself, is an answer. I’m learning to find Him in other ways, and unexpected ways.”
One of those is going out into nature. The more breathtaking the location, the more of God’s splendor is revealed to her. She said the grandness reminds her of her smallness, and the smallness of her problems. It reminds her, “We’re all living our lives on this giant ball, hurling through space and somehow the Lord is making it all happen and keeping it all afloat. He’s providing every breath that I take. And every breath that I have in my lungs is a gift. Every day that I wake up is another miracle. I am living in that reality right now and letting that be enough.”
Kroger believes God has invited her into the desert for a reason, even when she hates it, when it’s really hard. “On days when I’ve really grieved my faith as it was, I’m learning that there’s new fruit to be found here I would never have gotten to otherwise.”
In a recent post about the National Eucharistic Congress, she quoted Isaiah 43:19, “Remember not the events of the past…See, I am doing something new! Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? In the wilderness I make a way.” Having experienced a profound sense of unity among the diverse peoples attending the congress, from various ethnic backgrounds, spiritual traditionalists and progressives, young and old, she said she found something different happening, unlike other conferences or even World Youth Days where she sang. “It was revival. It was something new,” she said. “I think we are going to see the ripples of this event for years to come.”
By Glenda Meekins of the Florida Catholic staff, August 15, 2024