Category Archives: Commentary

Lent 2026: What Are Christians to Do with Psalms of Imprecation?

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Here is one of the best essays I’ve read on psalms of imprecation (cursing) found in the OT prayer book of the Psalms. It comes from the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible edited by Scott Hahn and Curtis Mitch, and I can wholeheartedly recommend it to you if you are serious about really studying Scripture. The essay is thorough so I don’t need to add much commentary other than to remind you that when Scripture speaks of justice, it is referring to God’s justice, not the bizarre human concoctions that are making the rounds today with their unholy notions of elevating one group of people over another. That baloney has no room in God’s economy. If you don’t know what God’s justice means, then pick up a good study bible like the NIV Study Bible or the NLT Study Bible or the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible and learn. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Modern readers are often shocked when they run across psalms in the Bible that call down curses on other people. It can be hard not to wince when a Psalmist, in the course of dialoguing with the Lord in prayer, asks the Almighty to bring frustration and ruin upon those who have wronged him (for examples, see Pss 35, 55, 59, 69, 79, 109, 137). Many find such prayers to be morally problematic. Surely psalms that invoke judgment and woe on others are unbecoming for an inspired book of praises, right? This sense of incongruity is especially acute for Christians, since Jesus taught his disciples to “love” their enemies and to “pray for” those who persecute them (Mt 5:44). How do psalms that wish ill on our foes impart lessons that are worthy of the God who reveals himself in the Bible?

This is a question that must not be sidestepped as unimportant. If Scripture is to be a foundation for our lives, then we must make some effort to understand how the Bible’s imprecatory psalms function as the Word of God. Several considerations can help us to arrive at a better understanding.

First, a word should be said about the “enemies” in view. It is clear from the Psalter that imprecations were not uttered against persons the Psalmist merely found disagreeable. Judgments are not invoked upon annoying neighbors, business rivals, or people with different religious or political views. Generally speaking, persons thought worthy of divine retribution are described as violent, malicious, and deceitful. They are likened to “lions” who ravage the weak and innocent and are guilty of moral outrage. The Psalmists who suffered at their hands had been reviled, disgraced, oppressed, betrayed, violated, robbed, and abused. Readers should be careful not to minimize the gravity of the offenses that prompted these intensely emotional pleas for justice.

Second, one should remember that righteous anger is not a sin, nor is venting frustrations to God, nor is the desire for justice in the face of evildoing. Uninhibited emotion poured out in God’s presence is not a shameful thing. Prayer is precisely where people can be fully transparent about their feelings without fear of reprimand or rejection. Pain is real, and evil is real. And God is uniquely able to heal the wounds that others inflict on our lives. The imprecatory psalms show us that one can approach the Lord even in the heat of anger and with strong desires for recompense. This is one way that faith can deal with serious wrongs committed against us. It does not follow, however, that God’s people should allow hatred to take root in their hearts. It may be that one or more of the Psalmists allowed this to happen in their own lives, but the psalms do not commend this attitude as something to emulate, even if a few prayers lead us to think their authors may have succumbed to the temptation (e.g., Ps 139:22).

Third, the imprecatory psalms do not encourage personal revenge. Just the opposite. Despite being victims of wrong, the Psalmists who utter imprecations do not call for violent or oppressive measures against offenders. Instead of yielding to the instinct to retaliate, they follow the biblical teaching that “vengeance” belongs to the Lord (Deut 32:35). They give their pain, their anger, and their yearning for justice to God. One is even tempted to see a therapeutic element at work here: anguish can be lessened just by knowing that God does not overlook wickedness or treat it lightly but holds all men accountable for their ways. Imprecatory psalms offload feelings of rage onto God, so that he, rather than the Psalmist, can shoulder the burden of responsibility for setting matters right.

Fourth, imprecatory psalms operate according to principles of justice in the Old Testament (OT). When actions bring harm to others, Israel was held to a standard of strict proportion—an “eye for eye” and a “tooth for tooth” (Ex 21:24; Deut 19:21). This legal background helps to explain why, for the Psalmists, one who commits wrong against another should be repaid in kind. In other words, those who perpetrate violence should have to face the terrors of violence for themselves, and those who make others suffer should have to suffer in turn. In layman’s terms, the Psalmists desire that evildoers should get “a taste of their own medicine”. This is the thinking—the lex talionis, or law of proportionate response—that informs the imprecatory psalms. The Lord is called upon to redress the wrong committed against the Psalmist in a way that corresponds to the nature and severity of the crime. The petitioner is simply asking God to treat the wicked as they have treated others.

Fifth, we can readily acknowledge that OT imprecatory psalms do not rise to the level of New Testament (NT) standards of morality and prayer. On the one hand, they agree with NT teaching that God’s people should not avenge themselves for personal injuries but should leave the business of retribution to God (Rom 12:19). On the other, Jesus Christ raised the bar of moral expectation above the standards of the OT by revealing the depths of divine mercy. Now, one who is mistreated by others is urged to love them and pray for their good (Mt 5:44). One who is wronged by another is implored to show charity in return (Rom 12:20). Jesus set the example when he was betrayed, reviled, assaulted, and killed, and yet he asked the Lord to forgive the sins of those responsible (Lk 23:34). The move from the Old Testament to the New is thus a move, not from the bad to the good, but from the good to the best. It is good and right to balance the scales of justice by punishing evil, but it is best to seek the good of the evildoer so that he turns from his sin and becomes reconciled to God. If punishing an offender leaves him unconverted, justice is served, but the fountain of God’s mercy is left untapped. Hence, loving and praying for enemies rather than against them is the higher road that Christians are called to travel. Disciples of Jesus are even obligated to forgive those who sin against them, lest God’s forgiveness be withheld from them (Mt 6:14-15).

Finally, none of this means that Christians can no longer pray the imprecatory psalms. It simply means that we identify our enemies differently. The Psalmists of Israel invoked judgments on ruthless men who brought hardship and anguish into their lives. The followers of Christ, however, are challenged to look at such men as capable of conversion and desperately in need of God. Just as Jesus suffered for the good of sinners, so should we. But our most determined enemies—the devil and his ranks of demons—are fixed in their opposition to God and us. They are not capable of conversion. Ancient Christians thus prayed the imprecatory psalms to call down judgment on the evil spirits who seek our demise. These unseen enemies never cease to plot our spiritual ruin, and so we should never cease to pray that God will thwart their sinister schemes and bring them to final destruction. So Christians need not shy away from the harshness of the imprecatory psalms. On the contrary, by uttering them against the powers of darkness, all their intensity and ferocity is retained and put to a more perfect use.

—From The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible, 2024

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Lent 2026: From the Sermon Archives: Family Membership: A Matter of Trust

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Sermon originally preached on Lent 2A, Sunday, March 12, 2017. As always, it will be helpful for you to read the assigned texts below by clicking on or tapping their links before reading the sermon.

For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: Genesis 12.1-4a; Psalm 121.1-8; Romans 4.1-5, 13-17; John 3.1-17.

In the name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Among the many things Jesus and Paul address in our gospel and epistle lessons is the idea of family membership and this is what I want us to look at today. How does one become a member of Abraham’s family? This is more than just an interesting rhetorical question because as our OT lesson reminds us without equivocation, it is through Abraham’s family that God intends to bless the families of the world. In other words, it is through Abraham’s family that God intends to right all the wrong in our world that human sin and the evil it unleashed has caused.

How then do we become members of this critically important family? For ethnic Jews, the answer is simple. Circumcision. This is the sign God commanded Abraham and his male descendants to perform to indicate that they were part of the covenant God made with Abraham and his family (Genesis 17.1-14). But a funny thing happened along the way. Because Israel was as broken as the people she was called to bless, God became human and entered history as Jesus of Nazareth to break the power of evil, sin, and death by dying on a cross for our sake. As John reminds us in our gospel lesson, God did this in Christ because God loves the world. God loves you and me despite who we are and wants to rescue us from the clutches of the dark powers that have enslaved us through Sin so we can be the restored image-bearing creatures God created us to be in the first place. And in doing this for us, God also reconstituted Abraham’s family around Jesus so that the entire race could be part of the family, not just ethnic Jews. This is how God always planned to bless the nations of the world, folks like you and me, thanks be to God!

And now we are back to Paul and our epistle lesson. How does one become a member of Abraham’s family reconstituted in Jesus? For the Judaizers of Paul’s day, the answer was simple. Acknowledge Jesus was God’s Messiah and agree to submit to physical circumcision and to follow the requirements of the Law. Only then could one hope to be part of Abraham’s family and the promise linked to it. One’s ability to follow the Law (the rules and regulations that had been developed over the years in addition to the Ten Commandments God gave Moses on Mt. Sinai) determined one’s standing with the family. In other words, the onus of membership was on the individual. As Paul noted elsewhere, for the Judaizers, the scandal of the cross was just too much (see, e.g., 1 Corinthians 1.18-25). They may (or may not) have believed Jesus to be the real deal, but they couldn’t get past the idea of a crucified and publicly humiliated Messiah. And so in their minds, if you were going to be a follower of Jesus, you had to do what good Jews did—agree to circumcision and to follow the Law to establish your identity in Christ.

Nonsense, scoffed Paul. If you want to be part of Abraham’s reconstituted family in Jesus, you must have faith that our Lord is who he says he is. Look at his life, death, and resurrection with eyes of faith. See that in Jesus God was putting to rights all that is wrong with this world and our lives, especially in conquering death. Believe even when it appears nothing has changed (the dead, after all, are still dead, so how can death be conquered?). Trust that in Jesus, God is being good to his word to Abraham to use him to bless the nations of the world and restore us to our right minds and place. In other words, Paul emphatically rejected the notion that the onus of proving one’s family membership rests with the children, with you and me. No chance, says Paul. This is God’s work, God’s doing, God’s initiative. And then Paul offers proof.

First he tells us to consider God’s call to Abram. But before we do that, we have to put that call in its proper context in the biblical story of God’s rescue plan for us. As we saw last week, our first human ancestors sinned in paradise and that got us kicked out of the garden and resulted in God’s curse on his good but corrupted creation and creatures. You can (and should) read about that in Genesis 3.1-24. Genesis 4.1-11.9 then recount the cascading effects of human sin. Cain murders Abel (Genesis 4.1-16). The sons of God mate with the daughters of humans (Genesis 6.1-8). Whatever that looked like, it was grievous in God’s eyes so that God spoke the terrifying words in Genesis 6.6 that he regretted making humankind because of our wickedness. This brought on the flood and its aftermath, culminating in the sad story of the tower of Babel, where humans once again tried to usurp the role of God and resulted in God scattering the families of the nations, bringing even more chaos and confusion to the human race (Genesis 6.9-11.9).

This is the reason for God’s call to Abram in our OT lesson. If you ever wondered what God is doing about all that’s wrong in God’s world, this is the beginning of the answer. God didn’t send in the tanks to defeat evil. God called Abram and his promised family, which ultimately included Jesus, to bless the world because God loves the world. And this is Paul’s point. The initiative is God’s not ours. Consider the story. When Abram was a pagan, God called him to go to Canaan. We aren’t told why God called this man. The text doesn’t say that Abram was a particularly holy guy who deserved God’s call. We simply don’t know that. We don’t know what kind of person he was. The text doesn’t tell us because the author frankly doesn’t care. It wasn’t (and isn’t) about Abram. It’s about God’s gracious and sovereign call to Abram to be a blessing to the nations. Neither does the text tell us why Abram trusted God. Apparently that wasn’t important either. The only thing that was important in the story was God’s call to Abram and Abram’s trusting response to that call. So at the tender young age of 75, this pagan packed up his bags and family and moved to a new land without any further direction or marching orders from God. Most of us would be too tired to get out of our rocking chairs at 75, let alone make a life’s journey to a strange and distant land. But Abram trusted God and obeyed, and as Paul tells us, that was pleasing to God.

One of the things we can conclude from this short story is that if God can call Abram, God can (and certainly does) call us. It’s not about our character, it’s about faith, our response to God’s goodness. From Abram’s story, we see that faith is much more multidimensional than we often think. To be sure, faith can involve an intellectual assent, as when we affirm that Jesus died for our sins. But as our OT lesson shows us, faith also involves trust and obedience. Abram’s faith would have been worthless if he had said, “I trust God, but I’m not going anywhere. I’m getting too old for that kind of nonsense, dude.” But Abram didn’t do that. Abram believed God’s promise to him and obeyed God, despite the glaring absence of details that we all crave in a massive life change like that. Simply put, what Paul is telling us is this. God invites us into his family. God initiates, we respond, not the other way around. Jesus tells us something similar in our gospel lesson when he talks about being born from above or born again. Babies don’t choose to be born into a family. Neither do adopted children choose to become part of a family. To be sure, the latter might have some say in the matter, but the fact remains that if the parents don’t decide to adopt, membership in that family doesn’t happen, despite the child’s qualities (or lack thereof). The parents have to initiate. This is why I find it highly ironic that we sometimes ask each other if we have been born again (or born from above), as if it is our choice outside of God’s gracious initiative. As Jesus reminds us, to be born again is indicative of God’s action, not ours. At best, we simply respond to God’s prevenient grace (grace that precedes belief) toward us.

And this should make sense to us because as we have talked about since Ash Wed-nesday, if it were up to us to prove we are qualified to be part of God’s family in Christ based on our own merits, we would be without a family. God gladly calls and invites us into his family because once again, God loves us just like he loved Abram. What we initially bring (or fail to bring) to the table really doesn’t matter to God. The only thing that matters is God’s love for us.

But here is where I suspect many of us are closet Judaizers. We might want to believe all this stuff about trusting in the promises of God as the criterion necessary for approval into God’s family, but at the end of the day, we secretly fear we have to do more to prove our merit so that God will want us to be part of the family. Funny thing is, God wants us to be part of the family despite who we are. God loves and accepts us as we are and has acted decisively in Jesus’ death and resurrection to free us from our slavery to Sin and death. But God loves us enough not to leave us where we are, and so God gives us his Spirit to live in us to heal and transform and shape us back into real human beings over time. This is God’s initiative and God’s power, not ours. Simply put, based on our own merits, none of us get invited into God’s family. Instead, we are called to trust God and his promise to make us part of God’s family in and through Jesus. And we are called to live out that trust.

But this is where it can get messy because like Abram, we’re not given a good deal of specificity to help us live out our faith, and this makes us anxious. How can we be certain we are getting it right? To be sure, we have the Ten Commandments and the Great Commandment to love God with all we are, and others as we love ourselves, to help guide us. But here again, this often isn’t good enough for our inner Judaizer. We feel compelled to make it all about us and our performance rather than God’s faithfulness and love for us and his world. Don’t follow the rules enough? Hell awaits. It’s all about following the rules. Must follow the rules (sound of heads exploding in the background). Where is the Good News in that way of life, my beloved?

But this is not what true faith is about. True faith knows the real character and love of the One we are called to trust. Does God judge? Of course God does. But for our good. And God is also gracious and kind and merciful. The cross is the eternal witness to this truth. Not only that, God has a track record for delivering his people. Think about the Exodus and about the times God relented from destroying his wayward and rebellious people Israel because God loved them. In other words, God gives us a reason to trust him. God created us in his image and wants us to live with him forever and enjoy him for the loving, wise, gracious, just, merciful, and generous Creator God is. And how do we show that we trust God and his promises? By being the fully human beings God created to be, our primary example being Jesus Christ. God calls us to stop trying to be God and to be his faithful creatures instead. He calls us to love others and be merciful to them, especially our enemies. God calls us to pursue justice and goodness and truth and beauty, to have our character shaped by God in the power of the Spirit and through the regular disciplines of prayer, fasting, Scripture reading and study, partaking in the eucharist, fellowship, worship, confession, and repentance (turning away from ourselves and back toward God). Is this easy or straightforward? Not a snowflake’s chance on water. We will suffer setbacks and distractions. We will take two steps forward and one step back. We will sometimes look for improvement in our character and moral life and see none. Evil still exists in this world despite the NT proclamation of its defeat. And this can be quite disconcerting, not to mention discouraging. But Jesus warned us it would be this way. The work and ways of the Spirit aren’t always so easy to identify and understand. Of course there is some clarity in the life of the Spirit, but there is also a lot we don’t get. For example, how do we know we have the Spirit in us, especially when we fail? Jesus tells us that answers to our concerns are elusive sometimes. Objective truth there is. Clear moral guidelines there are, of course. But there is also a lot of ambiguity so that we are sometimes perplexed and unsure how to proceed. Despite all this, Jesus calls us to trust him. I wouldn’t be surprised if Abram had these kinds of questions and concerns when he traveled to Canaan with only God’s promise that God would make him a blessing to the families of the world.

But Abram trusted and so must we. This is what the disciplines of Lent are all about—to help us learn to trust. This is why we must live our Christian lives together as God’s family called first through Abram and ultimately through Jesus our Lord. We need each other to remind us of the truth and reality of God’s love for us in Jesus, that God is on the move and in our lives, even when we cannot see or sense his movement or presence. To be sure, we will not have all the answers about living life in the Spirit that we desire. But as long as we are content to let God be God and trust God’s promise to heal and rescue us from all that bedevils us, both internally and externally, we can have a real and powerful faith and trust in God, a faith and trust that manifests itself in action that is consistent with that trust, despite the ambiguity that sometimes confronts us, and despite our occasional setbacks. We can trust God and God’s promises because we have read the story of Abram and seen all his desperate flaws. Despite those flaws, God remained faithful to Abram, just as God remains faithful to us. We have seen the cross and the empty tomb that testify to God’s great love for us, and we have the Spirit of the living God in us who testifies to the truth that God is good to his word and faithful in all his works.

This Lenten season, resolve to put to death, with the help of the Spirit, all that is within you that makes you want to be a closet Judaizer. Ask God to help you learn to trust him as you participate in the ordinary means of grace so that you are freed to love God for all God’s worth and to love your other family members as you love yourself. Dare to love those who are not yet part of God’s family enough to invite them to respond to God’s gracious call to them to join the family, and then dare pray for this to happen, believing it will. This is the essence of the Good News we are to live and proclaim, my beloved, during Lent and for all eternity. What an awesome privilege. To him be honor, praise, and glory forever and ever.

In the name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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Lent 2026: Abbess Egeria Describes Fasting in 4th-Century AD Jerusalem During Lent

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When the season of Lent is at hand, it is observed in the following manner. Now whereas with us the forty days preceding Easter are observed, here they observe the eight weeks before Easter. This is the reason why they observe eight weeks: On Sundays and Saturdays they do not fast, except on the one Saturday which is the vigil of Easter, when it is necessary to fast. Except on that day, there is absolutely no fasting here on Saturdays at any time during the year. And so, when eight Sundays and seven Saturdays have been deducted from the eight weeks—for it is necessary, as I have just said, to fast on one Saturday—there remain forty-one days which are spent in fasting, which are called
here “eortae,” that is to say, Lent.

This is a summary of the fasting practices here during Lent. There are some who, having eaten on Sunday after the dismissal, that is, at the fifth or the sixth hour [11:00am or noon], do not eat again for the whole week until Saturday, following the dismissal from the Anastasis [site of the cross]. These are the ones who observe the full week’s fast. Having eaten once in the morning on Saturday, they do not eat again in the evening, but only on the following day, on Sunday, that is, do they eat after the dismissal from the church at the fifth hour [11:00am] or later. Afterwards, they do not eat again until the following Saturday, as I have already said. Such is their fate during the Lenten season that they take no leavened bread (for this cannot be eaten at all), no olive oil, nothing which comes from trees, but only water and a little flour soup. And this is what is done throughout Lent.

—Pilgrimage, 27-28

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Lent 2026: Bishop Ceirion H. Dewar: The Smear, The Silence, and the Sword

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Just when you think the Church has no faithful leaders left who are not ashamed of the gospel, this appears. It reminds us not to despair like Elijah did in his days of persecution by Ahab and Jezebel, when he feared he was the only faithful Israelite left (he wasn’t—see 1 Kings 18-19 for the whole story). I don’t know the man but this bishop gets it. He gets the real stakes involved. He is not ashamed of the gospel, Christ be thanked and praised. Would that all Christ’s people, his Body, be as bold for the gospel and for their Savior. After all, we owe him everything, especially our lives. Thank you, Bishop. God bless, protect, and defend you. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

There was a time when the Church feared heresy.
Now she fears headlines.

There was a time when journalists distrusted power.
Now they manufacture it, curate it, and weaponise it.

And in this strange new age, the faithful Christian — the man or woman who simply believes what the Church has always believed — is treated not as a citizen, not even as a misguided relic, but as a threat.

Let us dispense with the euphemisms.

This is not misunderstanding.
This is not nuance.
This is not complex social evolution.

It is a coordinated cultural assault — carried out through language, through shame, through institutional intimidation — against those who refuse to bow to the gods of the age.

If you affirm biblical marriage, you are “far-right.”
If you defend unborn life, you are “extreme.”
If you confess that Christ is the only way to salvation, you are a “Christian nationalist.”

And if you dare to say that male and female are not social constructs but gifts of creation, you are treated as though you are morally unfit for public life.

The accusation is no longer theological.

It is existential.

The Weaponisation of Labels

Words have become bullets.

“Far-right.”
“Nationalist.”
“Extremist.”
“Bigot.”

These are not analytical categories. They are reputational assassination tools.

The term “Christian nationalism,” once a sociological descriptor in academic literature (see Whitehead & Perry, Taking America Back for God, Oxford University Press, 2020), has been inflated into a universal slur. In Britain — where no serious movement exists to establish a theocracy — the label is deployed against anyone who refuses to dilute Christian moral teaching.

It is lazy.
It is dishonest.
And it is deliberate.

Major outlets such as BBC and The Guardian routinely frame orthodox Christian conviction through a political extremism lens. Peaceful pro-life vigils are described as culture war flashpoints. Parents questioning gender ideology in schools are cast as agitators influenced by shadowy right-wing networks.

The narrative move is subtle but devastating.

It shifts the question from:
“Is this true?”

To:
“Is this dangerous?”

Once you achieve that shift, debate is over. Suppression becomes a civic virtue.

And the cowardly applaud.

The Church’s Rotting Spine

But if the media’s hostility were the only problem, the Church could withstand it.

The deeper wound is internal.

Within sectors of the Church of England and other Western denominations, there has been a slow-motion collapse of theological courage. Not pastoral sensitivity. Not thoughtful engagement. Collapse.

When bishops rush to clarify that they “do not share the views” of orthodox Christians — as though fidelity to Scripture requires a public disclaimer — something has decayed.

When clergy distance themselves from believers who hold historic doctrine because they fear reputational contamination, they reveal not compassion but cowardice.

The early Church faced lions.

This Church fears journalists.

The martyrs were accused of treason, cannibalism, and hatred of humanity (Tacitus, Annals 15.44). They did not issue press releases apologising for the Apostles’ Creed.

Now we see leaders scrambling to signal alignment with cultural orthodoxy lest they be accused of harbouring the wrong kind of Christian.

It is not persecution that weakens the Church.

It is appeasement.

And appeasement never satisfies an ideology that seeks surrender.

Ask history.

The Civic Religion of Woke Conformity

Let us stop pretending that this is neutral secularism.

What has emerged in the West is a civic religion.

It has its doctrine (identity absolutism).
Its original sin (privilege).
Its ritual confessions (allyship statements).
Its catechisms (diversity training modules).
Its heresy tribunals (HR investigations).
Its excommunications (deplatforming).

Sociologist Musa al-Gharbi, in We Have Never Been Woke (Princeton University Press, 2024), documents how elite institutions enforce moral consensus not through persuasion but through reputational and professional penalties.

That is not liberal pluralism.

It is moral authoritarianism dressed in inclusive language.

You may privately believe that marriage is between a man and a woman.

But if you speak it publicly, teach it, organise around it, or build institutions upon it, you will be disciplined — not by law perhaps, but by career threat, by public shaming, by professional isolation.

And the Church, in many quarters, has chosen to cooperate with this enforcement rather than resist it.

Because survival has replaced fidelity as the highest good.

Read it all.

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Lent 2026: Saint Cyril Waxes Eloquent on the Cross

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The Catholic Church[‘s]… supreme glory is the cross. Well aware of this, Paul says: “God forbid that I glory in anything but the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ!”

At Siloam, there was a sense of wonder, and rightly so. A man born blind recovered his sight. But of what importance is this, when there are so many blind people in the world? Lazarus rose from the dead, but even this only affected Lazarus. What of those countless numbers who have died because of their sins? Those five miraculous loaves fed five thousand people. Yet this is a small number compared to those all over the world who were starved by ignorance. After eighteen years a woman was freed from the bondage of Satan. But are we not all shackled by the chains of our Own sins?

For us [Christians], however, the cross is the crown of victory! It has brought light to those blinded by ignorance. It has released those enslaved by sin. Indeed, it has redeemed the whole of humankind!

Do not, then, be ashamed of the cross of Christ; rather, glory in it.

In the Mosaic law a sacrificial lamb banished the destroyer. The blood of an animal, a sheep, brought salvation. Will not the blood of the only-begotten Son bring us greater salvation?

[Jesus] did not blush at the cross for by it he was to save the world. No, it was not a lowly human being who suffered, but God incarnate.

Certainly in times of tranquillity the cross should give you joy. But maintain the same faith in times of persecution. Otherwise you will be a friend of Jesus in times of peace and his enemy during war. Now you receive the forgiveness of your sins and the generous gift of grace from your king. When war comes, fight courageously for him.

Jesus never sinned; yet he was crucified for you. Will you refuse to be crucified for him, who for your sake was nailed to the cross? You are not the one who gives the favor; you have received one first. For your sake he was crucified on Golgotha. Now you are returning his favor; you are fulfilling your debt to him.

Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem [d. 386], Catechesis 13, 1, 3, 6, 23

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Lent 2026: Elton Trueblood on Balance in the Christian’s Life

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Not bad for a Quaker. In fact in this instance Trueblood is spot on and his musing is quite appropriate for Lent. Christian piety— at its essence, the legitimate practice of godliness and holiness in its myriad forms—must always manifest itself ultimately in action or service. Otherwise, we become a bunch of navel gazers who forfeit our primary responsibility to the Father to be his faithful image-bears in making his Name known and honored in the creation. Even the Desert Fathers understood this truth. Trueblood was also a bit of a prophet because if one thing is clear in these days of lawlessness, the defining characteristic of social activists is their misguided and self-righteous anger. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Though it might be argued, theoretically, that a Christianity in which men know how to picket, but not how to pray, is bound to wither, theorizing is not required, because we can already observe the logic of events. The fact is that emphasis upon the life of outer service, without a corresponding emphasis upon the life of devotion, has already led to obviously damaging results, one of which is calculated arrogance. How different it might be if the angry activists were to heed the words found in The Imitation of Christ, “Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.”

The essence of pietism, by contrast, is the limitation: of primary interest to personal salvation. Even today, by the highways, we can see signs paid for by somebody, which urge us to “get right with God.” The evil of this well-intentioned effort lies not in what it says, but in what it so evidently omits. The assumption is that salvation is nothing more than a private transaction between the individual and God and that it can become an accomplished, dated event.

—From The New Man for Our Time by Elton Trueblood

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Lent 2026: Saint John Chrysostom on Repentance

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Are you unhappy with your life? Do you have a real hunger for something more than this world offers, for peace, for meaning, for purpose of living? It all starts with repentance, a word that describes the decision to engage in the process of turning away from ourselves and our own selfish desires and turning toward God the Father, intentionally ordering our lives to be consistent with his will and the order of creation. It’s the only thing that will ultimately satisfy our deepest human desires and needs, counterintuitive as it seems. Here, Saint John Chrysostom, one of the great Fathers of the Church, tells us how we can start to truly repent of our sins and fallen desires so that the Lord can heal us. Repentance is very hard, but the rewards are even greater. Don’t take my word for it. Learn about the testimony of millions of Christians over time and culture who testify likewise.

For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Would you like me to list also the paths of repentance? They are numerous and quite varied, and all lead to heaven.

A first path of repentance is the condemnation of your own sins… [T]hat will be enough reason for the Lord to forgive you, for if you condemn your own sins you are slower to commit them again.

…Another and no less valuable one is to put out of our minds the harm done us by our enemies, in order to master our anger, and to forgive our fellow servants’ sins against us. Then our own sins against the Lord will be forgiven us. Thus you have another way to atone for sin: ‘‘For if you forgive your debtors, your heavenly Father will forgive you.”

Do you want to know of a third path? It consists of prayer that is fervent, careful and comes from the heart.

If you want to hear of a fourth, I will mention almsgiving, whose power is great and far-reaching.

If, moreover, one lives a modest, humble life, that no less than the other things I have mentioned takes sin away. Proof of this is the tax-collector who had no good deeds to mention, but offered humility instead and was relieved of a heavy burden of sins.

Thus I have shown you five paths of repentance: condemnation of your own sins, forgiveness of our neighbor’s sins against us, prayer, almsgiving and humility.

Do not be idle, then, but walk daily in all these paths; they are easy, and you cannot plead your poverty. For, though you live out your life amid great need, you can always set aside your wrath, be humble, pray diligently and condemn your own sins; poverty is no hindrance. Poverty is not an obstacle to our carrying out the Lord’s bidding, even when it comes to that path of repentance which involves giving money (almsgiving, I mean). The widow proved that when she put her two mites into the box!

Now that we have learned how to heal those wounds of ours, let us apply the cures. Then, when we have regained genuine health, we can approach the holy table with confidence, go gloriously to meet Christ, the king of glory, and attain the eternal blessings through the grace, mercy and kindness of Jesus Christ, our Lord.

—Homily on the Devil the Tempter 2, 6

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Lent 2026: Pope Benedict XVI Muses on the Temptations of Christ

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Writing on the Temptations of Christ, specifically the Devil’s challenge to our Lord to jump from the pinnacle of the Temple in Jerusalem, Pope Benedict XVI writes [emphasis mine]:

The devil proves to be a Bible expert who can quote the Psalm exactly. The fact is that scriptural exegesis [the explanation of a biblical text] can become a tool of the Antichrist. The alleged findings of scholarly exegesis have been used to put together the most dreadful books that destroy the figure of Jesus and dismantle the faith.

The common practice today is to measure the Bible against the so-called modern worldview, whose fundamental dogma is that God cannot act in history—that everything to do with God is to be relegated to the domain of subjectivity. And so the Bible no longer speaks of God, the living God; no, now we alone speak and decide what God can do and what we will and should do. And the Antichrist, with an air of scholarly excellence, tells us that any exegesis that reads the Bible from the perspective of faith in the living God, in order to listen to what God has to say, is fundamentalism; he wants to convince us that only his kind of exegesis, the supposedly purely scientific kind, in which God says nothing and has nothing to say, is able to keep abreast of the times.

The theological debate between Jesus and the devil is a dispute over the correct interpretation of Scripture, and it is relevant to every period of history. The hermeneutical question lying at the basis of proper scriptural exegesis is this: What picture of God are we working with? The dispute about interpretation is ultimately a dispute about who God is. Yet in practice, the struggle over the image of God, which underlies the debate about valid biblical interpretation, is decided by the picture we form of Christ: Is he, who remained without worldly power, really the Son of the living God?

The point at issue is revealed in Jesus’ answer, which is also taken from Deuteronomy: “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test” (Deut 6:16), This passage from Deuteronomy alludes to the story of how Israel almost perished of thirst in the desert. Israel rebels against Moses, and in so doing rebels against God. God has to prove that he is God. The issue, then, is the one we have already encountered: God has to submit to experiment. He is “tested,” just as products are tested. He must submit to the conditions that we say are necessary if we are to reach certainty. If he doesn’t grant us now the protection he promises in Psalm 91, then he is simply not God. He will have shown his own word, and himself too, to be false.

We are dealing here with the vast question as to how we can and cannot know God, how we are related to God and how we can lose him. The arrogance that would make God an object and impose our laboratory conditions upon him is incapable of finding him. For it already implies that we deny God as God by placing ourselves above him, by discarding the whole dimension of love, of interior listening; by no longer acknowledging as real anything but what we can experimentally test and grasp. To think like that is to make oneself God. And to do that is to abase not only God, but the world and oneself, too.

From this scene on the pinnacle of the Temple, though, we can look out and see the Cross. Christ did not cast himself down from the pinnacle of the Temple. He did not leap into the abyss. He did not tempt God. But he did descend into the abyss of death, into the night of abandonment, and into the desolation of the defenseless. He ventured this leap as an act of God’s love for men.This brings to light the real meaning of Psalm 91, which has to do with the right to the ultimate and unlimited trust of which the Psalm speaks: If you follow the will of God, you know that in spite of all the terrible things that happen to you, you will never lose a final refuge. You know that the foundation of the world is love, so that even when no human being can or will help you, you may go on, trusting in the One who loves you. Yet this trust, which we cultivate on the authority of Scripture and at the invitation of the risen Lord, is something quite different from the reckless defiance of God that would make God our servant.

—Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, pp. 35-38

I cannot stress adequately enough how true this is and how wonderfully rich is Benedict’s theology and interpretation of this particular temptation of Christ. In a nutshell this is why the Church still struggles. It is burdened in part by the arrogance and pride of some scholars in the academy (and theologians within the Church), who seek to place themselves over the Word of God rather than submit to it in humility and faith. Only when the latter occurs can biblical exegesis ever be faithful, nourishing, and truly edifying. Lord have mercy on us.

For those with ears to hear, listen and understand. 

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Ash Wednesday 2026: A Gospel Passage Appropriate for Lent and Beyond

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Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. 2 And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

3 So he told them this parable: 4 “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? 5 When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. 6 And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ 7 Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance (Saint Luke 15.1-7).

Why is the above passage appropriate for Lent? Well, first we notice that it is Jesus’ response to the question about why he insists on partying with the notorious sinners (the lost sheep) of his day. We can reasonably conclude that he wouldn’t party with the lost sheep of his day if there was no hope for them.

And second, it reminds us that when we repent or turn away from our sins—behaviors that make us analogous to the lost sheep in Christ’s parable because they drive us from God’s life-giving love for us—and instead turn to prayer, fasting, and extending mercy and grace (undeserved love and forgiveness) to others along with other holy disciplines, we will encounter a merciful and kind Father who loves us. This passage reminds us we worship a God who actively pursues us and seeks us out, despite our persistent rebellion against him. How do we know this? Because God sent his Son to die for us when we were still his enemies because he wants us to live and not suffer eternal destruction by being separated from him forever. In other words, we know our puny efforts to right ourselves in response to God’s love, grace, and mercy for us are not done in vain. If that’s not Good News, I don’t know what is. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

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Ash Wednesday 2026: Rev’d Ian Paul: What Does Fasting Mean?

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A very good piece where he makes important distinctions and clarifies terms. Fasting is a proven discipline and one serious Christians should pursue inside and outside of Lent. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Today is the start of the liturgical season of Lent, and it has traditionally been a period of particular spiritual discipline for Christians. Though the Didache (from the end of the first century) recommends fasting for anyone preparing for baptism, this probably wasn’t settled as a pattern until the Council of Nicea in 325. A pattern then developed of those coming to faith using this period as a time of preparation and catechising (teaching) before baptism at Easter—an appropriate moment, since Paul reminds us in Romans 6.3–4 that we are baptised ‘into his death’—that is, as we go into the waters of baptism, we are united with Jesus in his death for us, and we ‘die’ to our old way of living, and as we come up out of the water, we start to live his new resurrection life by the power of the Spirit.

But what, exactly, does fasting mean? We need to note that our arrangement of the seasons of Lent and Easter do a rather odd thing: they stitch together the beginning and the end of Jesus’ ministry. We move from Lent to Easter, but Jesus did not go from the testing (and fasting) in the desert straight to the cross! Rather, there was an intervening period of ministry between the two, and in the gospels, Jesus’ fasting and testing was preparation for that.

It has become common to quote a saying attributed to the late Pope Francis:

Fast from hurting words and say kind words.
Fast from sadness and be filled with gratitude.
Fast from anger and be filled with patience.
Fast from pessimism and be filled with hope.
Fast from worries and have trust in God.
Fast from complaints; contemplate simplicity.
Fast from pressures and be prayerful.
Fast from bitterness; fill your hearts with joy.
Fast from selfishness and be compassionate.
Fast from grudges and be reconciled.
Fast from words; be silent and listen.

But there are two problems with this. First, like many saying attributed to Francis (and Leo), he did not say this; it was circulating on the internet for at least four years prior. (Amazingly, memes are not authoritative sources of papal statements.)

Secondly, this list is not at all what fasting is about! The things to turn from here are sins (hurting others, anger, selfishness) or negative things, and when we turn from sin, this is called ‘repentance’ not ‘fasting’.

Fasting is about stopping doing things that are good—that are good gifts from God, like food—that normally we cannot do without, for a temporary period, to signify something. But signify what?

Read it all.

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Pre-Lent 2026: The Mystery of Death

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An excellent piece from the pastoral constitution on the Church in the modern world of the Second Vatican Council and very appropriate on the eve of another Lenten season. While we do not like to talk about death and try to avoid at all costs, Death is the result of sin and is universal. Sooner or later it will claim us and all those whom we love. Death is part of the result of the curse that God our Creator placed on this world as a result of Adam and Eve’s first rebellion (Genesis 3.1-19). It is appropriate for Lent because during Lent we focus on doing our part in repairing our alienated relationship with God the Father, the Giver of Life, our life support. God, of course, has acted first on our behalf to achieve this reconciliation by becoming human to die for our sins that we might have life. The Father did this because he loves us more than we love ourselves. The excerpt below reminds us of this reality of Death and serves as a wake up call for us to get our minds right by getting our relationship with the Lord right, and that of course requires humility on our part. There is only one solution to the problem of Death and that solution is Jesus Christ because only Christ has died and conquered Death. It’s the paschal (Easter) mystery talked about below. Those who poo-poo all this are delusional and setting themselves up for the eternal destruction they fear most. Please don’t be among them or let them con you. Don’t ever be ashamed of the gospel. Ever. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

In the face of death the enigma of human existence reaches its climax. Man is not only the victim of pain and the progressive deterioration of his body; he is also, and more deeply, tormented by the fear of final extinction. But the instinctive judgment of his heart is right when he shrinks from, and rejects, the idea of a total collapse and definitive end of his own person. He carries within him the seed of eternity, which cannot be reduced to matter alone, and so he rebels against death. All efforts of technology, however useful they may be, cannot calm his anxieties; the biological extension of his life-span cannot satisfy the desire inescapably present in his heart for a life beyond this life.

Imagination is completely helpless when confronted with death. Yet the Church, instructed by divine revelation, affirms that man has been created by God for a destiny of happiness beyond the reach of earthly trials. Moreover, the Christian faith teaches that bodily death, to which man would not have been subject if he had not sinned, will be conquered; the almighty and merciful Savior will restore man to the wholeness that he had lost through his own fault. God has called man, and still calls him, to be united in his whole being in perpetual communion with himself in the immortality of the divine life. This victory has been gained for us by the risen Christ, who by his own death has freed man from death.

Faith, presented with solid arguments, offers every thinking person the answer to his questionings concerning his future destiny. At the same time, it enables him to be one in Christ with his loved ones who have been taken from him by death and gives him hope that they have entered into true life with God.

Certainly, the Christian is faced with the necessity, and the duty, of fighting against evil through many trials, and of undergoing death. But by entering into the paschal mystery and being made like Christ in death, he will look forward, strong in hope, to the resurrection.

This is true not only of Christians but also of all men of good will in whose heart grace is invisibly at work. Since Christ died for all men, and the ultimate vocation of man is in fact one, that is, a divine vocation, we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being united with this paschal mystery in a way known only to God.

Such is the great mystery of man, enlightening believers through the Christian revelation. Through Christ and in Christ light is thrown on the enigma of pain and death which overwhelms us without his Gospel to teach us. Christ has risen, destroying death by his own death; he has given us the free gift of life so that as sons in the Son we may cry out in the Spirit, saying: Abba, Father!

Gaudium et spes, nn. 18. 22

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Pre-Lent 2026: Everything About Shrove Tuesday You Wanted to Know but Were Afraid to Ask

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Culled from various sources from Logos Bible Software. The tendency to secularize Shrove Tuesday is typical of our fallen human condition and the spirit of Protestantism has done it little good. Would that we recover some of its penitential/confessional aspects for our own day and age. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Historical Background
Shrove Tuesday emerged in medieval England as a day devoted to confession of sins in preparation for the onset of Lent. The term itself derives from the Old English verb “shrive,” which refers to the practice of imparting penance and absolution.

Initially, the observance carried profound spiritual weight. Shrovetide functioned as a season for confession, absolution, and reconciliation before the solemnities of Lent and Passiontide and Easter. However, the character of the celebration shifted over time. As Lent itself became devoted to confession and repentance throughout the entire season, the specific emphasis on pre-Lenten confession diminished, and Shrove Tuesday increasingly centered on feasting and merrymaking—practices that would be restricted during the forty days ahead.

This transformation reflects a broader European pattern. Shrovetide paralleled the Continental tradition of Carnival, which also originated in the Middle Ages as a pre-Lenten period of feasting and frivolity culminating on the Tuesday before Lent. The eating of cakes, pancakes, and pastries became central to these celebrations as a practical means of consuming eggs, butter, milk, and sugar—foods historically forbidden during Lent—and Shrove Tuesday’s French designation “Mardi Gras” (Fat Tuesday) and English name “Pancake Day” both reflect this culinary history.

Beyond food consumption, Carnival evolved into a broader “farewell to flesh” involving indulgence and loosened social restrictions; Renaissance Europeans threw projectiles at one another, and by the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, masked performances and temporary role-reversals—where lower classes dressed as nobility—became common features. The Protestant Reformation later discontinued Carnival celebrations due to their tendency toward overindulgence, though the observance of Lent itself persisted.

Theological Significance
Shrove Tuesday’s theological significance centers on this penitential dimension—a structured opportunity for spiritual self-examination before the forty-day season of Lenten observance.

The practice traces back to at least 1000 A.D., when it was originally observed as a day of confession and penitence in preparation for Ash Wednesday and Lent. The custom emphasized receiving absolution through the sacrament of penance in readiness for the liturgical season ahead. This penitential focus remains theologically central: the day offers an excellent opportunity to reflect on one’s thoughts, words, deeds, and behaviors over preceding months, a valuable self-examination that fosters spiritual growth.

However, the observance has undergone significant transformation. In recent centuries, Shrove Tuesday shifted toward feasting in preparation for Lenten fasting, as people needed to consume restricted foods like sugar, leavened flour, and eggs before the fast began. Shrove Tuesday is now known as Mardi Gras in many areas and has largely lost its significance as a day of repentance. What originally involved confession gradually transformed into consuming rich foods and eventually into sports and merrymaking.

From a Protestant perspective, since the Bible does not mention Ash Wednesday or Lent, Shrove Tuesday is not a biblical observance, and these days are not required of Christians—their observance remains entirely a matter of personal conviction. Yet any day to remember Christ and His sacrifice holds spiritual value, making Shrove Tuesday potentially meaningful for those who observe it as a deliberate moment for confession, repentance, and renewed commitment before entering Lent’s contemplative season.

Shrove Tuesday Traditions
Shrove Tuesday traditions reflect a fascinating evolution from penitential observance to festive celebration. Originally observed in medieval England as a day for confessing sins before Lent began, the day’s name derives from the practice of receiving absolution. However, as the entire Lenten season became devoted to confession and repentance, Shrove Tuesday and the week preceding it shifted toward feasting and merrymaking—activities restricted during Lent itself.

The most enduring tradition involves food. In the Middle Ages, people abstained from meat and animal products during Lent, including milk, cheese, and eggs, so families prepared pancakes on Shrove Tuesday to deplete their stores of eggs, milk, butter, and fat. This practice explains both the French name “Mardi Gras” (Fat Tuesday) and the English “Pancake Day”.

Beyond pancakes, Carnival traditions—Shrove Tuesday’s European counterpart—involved consuming cakes, pastries, and other rich foods to use up ingredients prohibited during Lent. At its medieval height, Carnival included satirical performances and mask-wearing, with lower classes sometimes dressing as nobility in humorous role-reversals. People throughout Renaissance Europe threw projectiles like mud, flour, and eggs at one another. In England specifically, sports and football games were common, while nobility celebrated Shrove Tuesday evenings with plays and masques.

By the nineteenth century, wilder customs evolved into flower battles, masked balls, and parades—variations found today throughout Europe and the Americas, including New Orleans’s famous Mardi Gras celebrations. The religious dimension persists as well: Pope Benedict XIV instituted the “Forty Hours of Carnival” in 1748, during which prayers were offered before the exposed Blessed Sacrament, with a plenary indulgence granted to participants.

How Shrove Tuesday Relates to Lent
Shrove Tuesday functions as a threshold moment between ordinary time and the penitential season of Lent. The relationship between the two observances has shifted significantly over time. As Lent itself became devoted to confession and repentance throughout the entire season, the urgency to confess specifically on Shrove Tuesday diminished, and the day transformed into a period emphasizing feasting and celebration—activities that would be restricted during Lent. This reorientation reflects a practical concern: the eating of cakes, pancakes, or other pastries served as a way of consuming eggs, butter, milk, and sugar—foods once prohibited during Lent. The French name “Mardi Gras” or “Fat Tuesday,” along with England’s “Pancake Day,” both capture this history.

Lent comprises 40 days preceding Easter and recalls Jesus’s 40-day wilderness sojourn. while it serves as a time of repentance and preparation for marking Christ’s death and resurrection, marked by prayer, abstinence, and charitable acts. Shrove Tuesday thus occupies a liminal space—the final opportunity for indulgence before entering this austere period. After fulfilling the obligation to confess, the faithful were permitted to engage in amusements on the eve of Lent, creating a deliberate contrast between the revelry of Shrove Tuesday and the discipline that follows. The two observances define each other: one celebrates what Lent restricts, while Lent gives meaning to the temporary license Shrove Tuesday permits.

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