The Gospels’ accounts of Jesus’ final days share a remarkable continuity. But the unique features of each Gospel also give us much to consider during Holy Week.
Re-imagining Palm Sunday: Jesus – and Pilate – enter Jerusalem
Imagine that on Palm Sunday, both Jesus and Pilate, enter Jerusalem from the same gate. The tension created in this imaginary scene introduces us to the underlying tension of Holy Week. And we must decide which parade we will attend.
It’s not too late, even for extroverts like me, to cultivate silence as a Lenten practice
Fortunately, God has not called me to be a monk. But, by cultivating the discipline of silence during Lent, I see ways God is doing a new work in me.
Midway through Lent, I am pondering my ‘negligences’ as I seek to watch with Jesus
The Rule of St. Benedict urges us during the season of Lent “to wash away . . .the negligences of other times.” I have been pondering the areas I neglect as routinized behavior scurries past attentiveness and contemplation.
‘To love is to suffer.’ Saints like Julian and Hildegard point us to Jesus’ way of suffering love
To love and to care for others – indeed, to be fully alive – entails suffering in all its forms. Lent is an opportunity to enter afresh into the paschal mystery.
A Lenten reflection about repentance, reparations and resistance
An appeal to my white Baptist sisters and brothers: when it comes to talk about the issue of reparations, I hope you will embrace and maintain a penitent silence during the remaining days of Lent.
Lent is a good time to unlearn some things we think we know from scripture – and to listen anew
This season of quiet reflection, introspection and contrition may be the best time to consider our misunderstandings and to seek repentance, receive forgiveness and start anew. And to hear again the words of Jesus: “You have heard that it was said, but I say to you…”
Hunting for the divine spark in ourselves and others
On the night of Ash Wednesday, somebody sitting at the bar yelled out, “Hey! You got something black on your face!” Without thinking, I yelled back, “Hey! It’s my skin!”
Lent has come amid a moment of moral reckoning for American culture and the Church
The Bible says that we have this treasure in earthen vessels, but moments of moral reckoning, such as the one we are enduring now, remind us just how fragile earthen vessels really are.