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With each passing year, I have found that Palm Sunday touches me deeply, body and soul. As Christ enters through the gates of Jerusalem to fulfill the Old Testament prophecies, riding on the foal of an ass, the crowds gather along the way, strewing palm branches to honor him.

The glory of Palm Sunday is that we ride with him, through our own gates into the city of Jerusalem, for we believe his promises.

And with each passing year, I wonder at the Gospel for today. It is not Matthew’s account of Christ’s entry (which we heard on the First Sunday in Advent), but Matthew’s account of Christ’s trial and crucifixion.

But instead of hearing about the entry into Jerusalem today, we act out the story, waving our palms and processing around the church, singing “All glory, laud, and honor/ To thee, Redeemer, King!/ To whom the lips of children/ Made sweet hosannas ring!” Often, the procession follows the cross into the neighborhood, then returns to the church’s closed front door. The leader knocks, and the door is opened. We enter.

We sing the good news of salvation, that our King has come, as prophesied (Zechariah 9:9). Salvation? Saved from what? From the effects of sin, death. We ride with our King who holds us close on our own journey on Earth, so that we may enter the gates of the New Jerusalem in Heaven. Today we acted out our own life journey in time.

It has been said that Christian time is linear time, comprising past, present, and future. We do not go in circles, or stay in one place. We are not reincarnated. We were and are created to create, to use the gifts given by our Creator to magnify beauty, truth, and goodness. We learn in time what virtues to don and what sins to deny. We learn what is lawful and what is not lawful, what is moral and what is immoral, in God’s sight. In this way we travel the path to Jerusalem. In this way, when we knock on the gates, they will open for us.

We are told the way is narrow, and we must be small to enter, and I’ve often thought this is a clue to the necessary need for humility, to see outside ourselves, to not be drowned in the quicksand of self and pride. For if we cannot see outside our own personal universe, we are blind to the love of God. So we confess where we have sinned, are absolved, and are redeemed. We return to the path of humility for we have repented.

And in the end, at the closing of our days, it will be the love of God that opens the gates. It will be the love of God that teaches us the path to take. It will be the love of God that reveals his love shining through others, or not, revealing how each one of us is infinitely unique and beloved by him. This is what Christians celebrate, as they ride with Jesus the Christ, the Messiah, through the gates of Jerusalem, singing songs of praise.

This coming Holy Week and the victory of Easter resurrection are the heart of Christianity, and to observe these days as the Church has done for centuries, is to hear the other Gospel accounts, those written by Mark (Monday and Tuesday), Luke (Wednesday and Thursday), and John (Friday).

Today we enter the gates of Holy Week, humbly alongside Our Lord. We journey with him in his last days on Earth, to understand better who he is and who we are. There will be moneychanger tables overturned. There will be a last Seder supper in which the passing over of death in Egypt is remembered, and Christ becomes the fourth cup, offering himself in the bread and wine. There will be anguish in the Garden of Gethsemane, betrayal, trial, and the Way of the Cross. There will be crucifixion, death, and burial in Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb.

The women will weep and the disciples will scatter, but as foretold, there will be resurrection on Easter morning.

And we will rise too. With him.

I received a powerful endorsement for my new novel (to be published one day…), The Music of the Mountain:

“How do four extraordinary Americans – an elderly Anglican priest, a fired UC Berkeley professor and two of her former students who lost jobs for standing up to the Left – execute a plan to beat the authoritarian, book-burning California regime? The four characters are richly described and have diverse life experiences. They all love freedom and recognize they must stand together against the tyranny of the state. The development of their Christian faith is a key part of the tale. Gripping in places, it is the kind of a book you will be sorry to leave when it is finished… a compelling story, beautifully written…”

—Michelle Easton, Chairman of the Board, Clare Boothe Luce Center for Conservative Women

Each endorsement is unique, reflecting the insight and life of that particular reader, one of the themes of the novel. For we are all uniquely different, and are blessed with talents that no one else has. It is our job to discover them, to journey through this life in the light of God the Creator of all. And so we say with the Psalmist, “show us the light of thy countenance upon us and bless us.” For without that light we wander in the dark.

The seasons of the Church, the Bride of Christ, sing to us with the light of Christ. We enter each unique season to discover who we are and who we are meant to be. We follow the days and weeks of the Church Year and try to be faithful stewards of the light we have been given, sharing that light with others to show them the path to joy.

Along the way, we learn to love.

And the challenges we face, the sufferings we endure, we offer up, as they say, knowing we do not need to face these difficulties alone. For He is alongside, always, transforming, enlightening, redeeming.

Recently we faced a challenge in our home: rats in our attic. I mean, literally, a major infestation of rats. For two days professionals climbed into the space, cleaned it out, disinfected it, and replaced all the insulation (yes, the rats made nests of the insulation). The workers wore what looked like space suits and goggles. Yikes.

It’s a metaphor I cannot resist: we too are infested; our spiritual attics need cleaning. Lent is a good reminder to shine a spotlight on the soul – to take stock, clean, and disinfect with confession, repentance, absolution, and the love of God.

So this endorsement came at a good time, amidst the chaos of our home. And now today, on this Laetare (Rejoice) Sunday, we sing with the Gregorian introit: “Rejoice ye with Jerusalem and be glad for her, all ye that delight in her…”

Within the artistic beauty and poetic rhythms of the Church we prepare for our redemption on Easter’s Resurrection Day, moving into Passiontide and Palm Sunday and Holy Week. We sing and we dance the liturgies and tell the story once again, the story of who we are and who we are meant to be, children of the Father. We read the poetry of the Gospels and the Psalms and we place the words in the baskets of our hearts, tender and beautiful words that render Eternity in our moment in Time.

For you and I are works of art too. We are poems, plays, and melodies, notes of that heavenly music, each one given a part, to sing with our lives. We endorse one another with ourselves, stepping through our own time given.

Every word counts. Every note counts. Every life counts as we near the promised pinnacle, the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ, and our own resurrections too.

I’m pleased to announce that American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW) has published my Ash Wednesday post, “Visible Virtues: Tangible Temperance”, how Christian fiction writers give life to dry bones, telling our human story with tangible characters forging faith with temperance. Many thanks, ACFW!

It’s a curious thing to submit a manuscript to a publisher, rather like sending your child out into the real world. My desk is mourning the characters and the mischief they get into, the hearts they break, the loves they discover, the lessons they learn, the past they confess. Stories grow with the telling and I’ve learned to use a period occasionally, a save button, or a send button. Takes courage to stop.

I fuss over the words like a mother fussing over packing, taking out, adding, then realizing it was better before the fussing. The storyline becomes convoluted and loses its natural rhythm, weaving in circles and landing in all the wrong places.

So I’ve learned to tell myself to stop fussing and send the book through the air to an office (a phone?) where strangers will examine and pass judgment. Then it’s on to another publisher, another submission.

I tell myself the times are changing, and our culture is finally admitting it needs serious literature that may not follow a formula, may not check all the boxes, may not virtue signal, but falls into the category of… could it be… art?

After all, companies are now disbanding DEI and ESG and other letters that live together in a strange manner. They are no longer terrified there will be protests/riots outside their offices or stores. Fear continues in blue states (here in California to be sure) but many national producers, be they be books or groceries or clothing, are not as concerned as they were before the election of President Trump, our common sense hero (CSH).

Nevertheless, I understand products need to sell, and literary novels generally do not, but fall into the loss category, the top of the pyramid, the fewer the better for the bottom line. The broad base of the pyramid is largely formula fiction, or nonfiction written by famous folks with platforms, which has its place among readers and will sell, given promotion by other stars with large fan clubs. This broad base does indeed support the more eccentric and literary endeavors at the top.

At the same time, there has been a great deal of wailing and gnashing of teeth over the cultural decline of America and what happened and can we change course? Is it too late?

So I offer my little novels celebrating the Judeo-Christian tradition and its moral demands to create a civil civilization, to live together peacefully. Heroes and heroines desire virtue and work to achieve some semblance of such. Responsibility and hard work and honesty are lauded: ideals I grew up with in the fifties, fictional accounts that examine the human condition, the nature of love and suffering and sacrifice. 

I do believe I have a calling to write; what happens to the resulting novels (my talkative children out there in the world) is up to others. I’m a good soldier or try to be, and seek the will of God, hoping/praying I hear the right answer. I think I hear his voice, feel his angels nudge me one way or another. One day I will find out for sure when I enter the gates of the New Jerusalem.

In the meantime, that is, in Earth time, Father Seraphim of Nazareth House Apostolate read a recent draft and gave me an endorsement:

“Thank you, thank you. This book cannot be read apart from wonderment and awe couched in the liminality of Love. You have told the truth that has brought forth freedom out of the quarrel and quandary of this present age. You told the truth, you have told the truth… In The Music of the Mountain there are no stop gaps, only the ongoing flow of Love that leads us and holds us into a Reality beyond, in our midst. Again and again, thank you.”

Fr. Seraphim, Elder Nazareth House Apostolate, Taylorsville, Kentucky

And two professional editors have had a go with the book, tweaking and suggesting, and I have taken (most) of their advice to heart. A fourth reader/writer is still out there… and we shall see what he thinks.

So God holds me in his palm. Can’t get better than that, as we enter Lent and travel to Jerusalem with Our Lord. Saint Joseph of Arimathea, the Apostle to England, planted his staff in Glastonbury and set in motion Western Civilization. Today we do the same, planting our staffs to save our world, one word at a time, one story at a time.

Deo gratias.

Today is the beginning of Pre-Lent, three Sundays that prepare us for Lent, which of course, prepares us for Easter and Resurrection Day.

In the wisdom of the Church we are ushered in slowly, as if we could not enter suddenly, jumping from one major feast day to another. And I have found that this slower pace allows us to live and breathe the season, to let the seriousness of the moment in our own time penetrate our souls, planting seeds we do not notice. The seasons of the Church Year thus live within us so that we can live them out together as Christians.

One could call it God’s marketing plan, soaking the faithful with profound truths too deep to absorb in one rain, then watering the seeds planted with care and prayer to blossom on that great festival. 

And so we allow Our Lord to garden within us, and part of that gardening is weeding, rooting out the weeds – the tares (last week’s lesson) – so that the good seeds will grow and flourish.

Today we learn that the tares are our sins, those times when we have not loved enough, as my bishop of blessed memory used to say. The Church gives us a list, however, which is most helpful for those of us who tend to wander from the path. We learn of virtues and vices; the Ten Commandments; the Summary of the Law. We have lists to check off as we examine the state of our souls. We are sorry and we repent, promising or at least trying to love more, enough, to exercise virtue and repel vice.

Pre-Lent thus prepares our souls to prepare our bodies during Lent. We consider in these weeks how to run the race, as St. Paul writes in his letter to the Corinthians, our Epistle today. We want that incorruptible crown by disciplining our bodies with our minds, taming our flesh with our spirits so that we may control what we do (or what we do not do) not only to ourselves but to others. And in the end, we learn to love.

Christians are like athletes in this sense. We repent in Pre-Lent so that we can fast and abstain in Lent, not for the purpose of losing weight or toning our physique, but to exercise our minds/spirits/souls to command our bodies, our flesh, our appetites.

I believe it was the Anglican writer Evelyn Underhill who said that the greatest fast or discipline is to face the full will of God in your life, and we can see how the taming of the soul in Pre-Lent and the subjection of the body in Lent would leave us in a better position to face that full will of God, to even know or recognize his will. I keep this in mind as fasting becomes more difficult in the senior years, as the body is frail and constantly under subjection.

But it is good to remember these things, and the seasons remind us of Heaven and who we are meant to be. Human beings need reminding, and rituals do this. Sunday rituals are the more obvious, attending Church regularly, keeping the Sabbath holy. Seasonal rituals sneak up on us, and yet arrive on time, given we have been faithful with the daily and weekly ones. 

God is building us. Making us. Recreating us. Clothing us with his garments of glory so that we will be ready for the wedding feast in Heaven. In the meantime, on this little planet Earth, we glimpse those glories, if we keep the law, repent breaking it, tame our passions, learn to love enough.

We call this growing in grace and it is a delightful mystery. If we have been blessed to begin this growing up-ward early in our time we experience more and more grace, glimpse greater and greater glory right here and now. If we begin this growing late in life, as the workers in today’s Gospel parable did, we are still welcomed into the Kingdom of Heaven.

But isn’t it better to begin at once, now, if not yesterday? Isn’t it better to experience Christ daily, hourly, with each breath? Bathe me in your love, your glory, O Lord. We need only ask.

So we are reminded today to confess our faults. The big one is pride, for it is the root of all evil (not money) and begets the others. We are a proud people for we reflect our Creator, made in his image. We are royalty and demand obeisance. We are reminded today to put such pride away, to realize we are nothing without God, can do nothing without him. We are sorry, for pride has metastasized and has produced other evils separating us from God.

And so we take those baby steps toward our Maker. With each confession, with each repenting and turning away from the dark toward the light we grow in grace, in fullness, becoming who we are meant to be, fully human, fully children of God.

And we might love enough to enter the gates of the New Jerusalem and the Kingdom of Heaven. 

• The Seven Deadly Sins: Pride, Covetousness, Envy, Anger, Sloth, Gluttony, Lust
• The Theological Virtues: Faith, Hope, Charity (Love)
• The Cardinal Virtues: Justice, Prudence, Temperance, Fortitude

It has been said, and I believe it to be true, that sports reflect human passions, both good and bad, and in a sense the playing field hosts the drama of life acted out as if on a stage. Two teams play today on this Super Bowl Sunday. They will work together in tandem to defeat the other, to tackle the other, to make that point. They are as fleet of foot as dancers, playing out their rehearsed moves to best the other.

Competition. There was a time when I thought competing wasn’t fair, since one side loses, and with the wokesters of the last few years we saw what happens when everyone gets a prize and no one wins by merit. (It is curious that sports still exist, and even more curious that all-male teams exist.) And so we hail football, where talent can still claim the day.

Watching the opening ceremonies just now in New Orleans, I realized how powerful the game has become, a national anthem in itself. Patriotic anthems were sung, and flags flown, and the drama of the players running out from the dark tunnel and into the bright stadium pulled us together as one nation. We grieved together too, as we remembered the fourteen recently slain. We play together. We compete together. We celebrate our nation together. And we mourn together.

In some ways the entire game is framed with ceremonial pageantry, rituals in which we act out our human yearning for order and grace and brotherhood. These men have trained their bodies and their minds to perform this dance. They disciplined their flesh to achieve what you and I cannot, and they disciplined their spirits to honor one another by honoring the rules of the game. We see mankind at its best.

Competition is a great motivator. It discourages sloth, appeases anger, celebrates something greater than what was before. To be the best, to achieve that one step that to the crowd in the bleachers seems impossible, is to celebrate humanity, body and soul.

We can see that here, on this field, and even when they pile upon one another like grade schoolers on the playground, we know they will soon stand back and follow the rules. As a mother and grandmother of boys, I wince, hoping no one is hurt, and yet I realize sometimes the stakes must be real, and we the watchers are pulled in as well.

And so the game mirrors our nation’s teams of citizens as they battle with ballots or in halls of Congress. It mirrors our nation’s military, our national team ready to fight other nations, to protect Americans, to keep us safe. For there will always be combat in this world, whether for power, or land, or food, or survival. It is “survival of the fittest” we are told by evolutionary theory. That is the human condition.

Into this world of charge and tackle enters the Prince of Peace. He does not do battle (although there were some tables overturned in the temple as I recall) but tells us to forgive seventy times seven. He says we don’t need to worry about tomorrow. He says to love one another.

This revolutionary messiah did not bring revolution, as we know, and yet the seeds of order and brotherly love were planted in the rich soil of Judaism, already honoring a code of civility. And thus in that first century came a new way of living together. The Way, as it was first called, would flower in Western Europe and the Mediterranean basin, scribbled by monks and taught on Sundays in sermons. This Way became Christianity, the child of Judaism, and built a culture of freedom and civility, protecting the weakest among us, women and children, honoring God and obeying civil authority. Parliaments grew and became true “talking institutions”, and these forms became congresses made up of elected citizens. Structures of civility forged democracies of thought and action and law and order.

America, like its mother, England, has beaten the odds of survival in our warring world. It is indeed an exceptional country, a city on a hill, a shining light. America says, “See, we did it. We did the impossible. We formed ways of living together, and while we fight one another, we honor the code. Our justice isn’t perfect. We are human. But we try and we do not lose sight of the ball as it travels down the field. We hold our flag high and honor our code of Mosaic mores and Christ’s commands. When we break those rules we expect punishment, for our country is one nation, all judged the same by our blind Lady Justice.

The players are now in a huddle, a bit like Congress, I suppose. They plan the next move. Now they are lined up ready for action. And after the action, we see the replay in slow motion, a ballet on grass. The ball is in the air after much scuffling and grabbing and halting and trying, again reminding me of the playground and perhaps Congress or our local school board.

And it is a playground after all. All of life is a playground not unlike this football game. We play our positions, keeping the goal in mind, following the rules. We hope the referee doesn’t whistle and judge us. It is our national sport and it provides catharsis as we see our own human condition civilized by order and design, a dance of body and soul.

This morning we heard about the wheat and the tares. Christ says he will burn the tares and collect the wheat. In the Epistle we are told to love and forgive one another. Just like football.