The Fast I Keep Failing
Pope Leo XIV asked us to give up hurtful words for Lent. I couldn't make it through a single day.
Dear friends —
Letters from Leo is publishing daily Lenten reflections through Easter, available exclusively to paid subscribers.
If you haven’t started yet — good.
Lent is the season that was made for people who start late, fall behind, and try again. God never tires of welcoming us back, especially the procrastinators.
Each meditation explores 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.
It is not too late to walk this forty-day road. I hope you will join me — as your brother and fellow procrastinator — 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.
Thank you for reading. I’ll see you on the road.
“Whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave. Just so, the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” — (Matthew 20:26–28)
We are a people who speak before we listen.
We speak at press conferences, school board meetings, and Sunday panels. We speak in op-eds, in group chats, in fundraising emails that arrive six times a day. We speak over one another in Congress.
We speak past one another on cable news. We have made speech the supreme American sacrament — and we have almost entirely forgotten what it is for.
Today’s First Reading reveals our vulnerabilities.
The enemies of Jeremiah don’t plot to silence him with a sword. They plot something more cunning: “Let us destroy him by his own tongue; let us carefully note his every word.” They will weaponize language itself against the prophet. They will twist his speech, mine it for ammunition, and use his own words to build the case for his destruction.
Yesterday, we reflected on how Jesus dismantles the architecture of titles and status. Today’s readings go deeper. They dismantle the weapon we reach for most instinctively: the word itself.
Pope Leo XIV, in his message for this Lent, proposed a fast that should unsettle every American Christian: a fast from hurtful words. Not just food. Not just comfort. Our speech.
He called us to refrain from harsh words and rash judgment, from slander and speaking ill of those who are not present — and to cultivate kindness and respect in our families, at work, on social media, in political debates.
Read that list again slowly. It is a map of exactly where I have failed.
I am writing this reflection as someone who sins against it daily.
