Realities Are Greater Than Ideas
The masks we wear are what keep us blind. We mistake our frameworks for faith itself, and then we defend them long past the point where they have stopped serving us.
Dear friends —
Letters from Leo is publishing daily Lenten reflections through Easter, available exclusively to paid subscribers.
Each meditation will explore what it means to follow Jesus more faithfully in the midst of American civic and political life — not as partisans first, but as Christians whose consciences are shaped by the Cross.
Lent is a season of repentance, renewal, and resolve.
It is a time to confront our idols, strip away our illusions, and allow the light of God’s redeeming love to search and purify our hearts.
I hope you will walk this forty-day road with me — as your brother and fellow sinner — embracing prayer, sacrifice, and deeper conversion, and allowing the God of liberation to claim every corner of our lives and our public witness in an age of creeping authoritarianism.
“Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.” — (Ephesians 5:14)
There is something almost offensive about what Jesus does in today’s Gospel.
He does not lay hands on the blind man and speak a word of healing. He spits on the ground, makes mud, and smears it across the man’s eyes. The Son of God, kneeling in the dirt, working saliva into earth with his fingers — and then telling the man to go wash in a pool across town, still blind, face caked with grime.
We would never design a miracle this way.
God saves by getting his hands dirty. The Word became flesh — something far messier than a metaphor or a set of principles safe enough for a bumper sticker. Flesh. Clay. The same material from which Adam was formed in Genesis, now pressed against blind eyes by the one who formed Adam in the first place.
Today is the Fourth Sunday of Lent — Laetare Sunday, the Church’s invitation to rejoice at the midpoint of our Lenten journey. The rose vestments replace the purple.
But the joy the Church offers today is not an escape from difficulty. It’s something all together different-in-kind.
