April 17, 2022 | by Aliénor Manteau H’23

Bells ring from Jerusalem’s church spires in the evenings. If you stand on tiptoe on the shower ledge of a hotel bathroom and look through the half-open skylight, or push open an unlocked door on the top floor of a restaurant and lean against an air vent on the roof, you can hear them ringing all over the city.

April 15, 2022 | By Jadan Anderson MC’22

On that Friday, we looked at Jesus on the cross and were appalled. From what did we avert our eyes?

With guilty relief and a strange sense of injustice, we try to grasp how in God’s just world this perfect Man would die our deaths. How could we look? How could we look away?

April 14, 2022 | By Katherine Matsukawa BK’23

“You did this to yourself.”

If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of this phrase, you likely know that this is the last thing anyone in a tough situation wants to hear.

April 13, 2022 | By Yoska Guta TD’25

Why do bad things happen to good people? Why does God allow evil? Where is God in the midst of suffering?

Growing up, my parents always taught me that it was okay, and even good, to ask questions about and of God. And although I wanted to believe them, I was convinced that if I questioned God’s character or His decisions, He would either meet me with wrath or be deeply disappointed. So, I made a subconscious decision to never question.

April 13, 2022 | By Katie Painter TD’23

Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto

Sicut erat in principio

Et nunc, et semper

Et in sæcula saeculorum

April 13, 2022 | By Owen Sughrue H’23

Protection is a powerful thing. The harbor in my hometown of Marion, MA is incredibly well protected from Buzzards Bay and the larger Atlantic Ocean. Though we get our fair share of hurricanes, most days are calm thanks to the protection of the peninsulas on both sides of our outer harbor.

April 8, 2022 | By TJ Dulac H ‘23

How often have I found myself in the place of the disciples in today’s Gospel reading, where they do not understand Jesus when He foretells His death for the third time: “He will be handed over to the Gentiles; and he will be mocked and insulted and spat upon. After they have flogged him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise again” (Luke 18:34). How often have I lost sight of the final parts of our Lenten journey, when Jesus is stripped, scourged, mocked, crucified, and killed.

April 5, 2022 | By Nathan Moran BF ‘24

Why do we mourn? Has God not conquered death? Why do we fast? Has God not filled the hungry with good things? Why, when Christ has overcome the grave, when the morning stars sing together and all the sons and daughters of God shout for joy, do we sing a funeral dirge?

April 5, 2022 | By Iman Dancy MC ‘23

In Isaiah 43, Yahweh instructs the people of Israel to serve as “witnesses” to the world that He alone is God. A few millennia later, the Jesus followers of today have inherited that same responsibility. I’ve walked with Jesus for several years, but it wasn’t until last spring that I began to actively explore what being a “witness” to God’s goodness and holiness could look like in my life.

April 3, 2022 | By Sarah Henkel

Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert (Isaiah 43:18-19). 

March 31, 2022 | By Sharla Moody BK’22

Since coming to college, I’ve noticed an emphasis on self-care, which I understand to mean the actions one takes to preserve one’s own health and well-being. Especially since the beginning of the pandemic, I have adopted habits to keep me grounded and healthy, like taking walks and baking to de-stress. Encouraging people to take stock of their mental health and build healthy habits has clear, unambiguous good effects. But at times, our understanding of self-care can become a complete prioritization of the self in a way that overlooks the fundamentals of living as a person in community. If I am prioritizing myself in all situations, this will come into tension with how I prioritize the communities of which I am a part. While I have responsibilities to myself, I also have responsibilities to others.

March 30, 2022 | By Michael Kielstra H’22

I first heard the story of the widow’s oil in Sunday school. Found in 2 Kings 4:1-7, it’s an astounding, heartwarming story of divine grace: a widow, utterly helpless and heavily indebted, appeals to Elisha and is miraculously given enough oil to pay off her creditors. What Sunday school teachers tend to gloss over, however, is the depth not only of the widow’s hopelessness but also of the cruelty of her creditors and of the society in which she lives.

March 28, 2022 | By Valerie Pavilonis MC ‘22

When I realized this, I felt a cosmic shock. I have always been able to imagine God behind me, His hand on my shoulder. When I realized I felt an absence instead, another layer of panic, deeper and stronger than ever before, added itself to my existing anxieties.

March 27, 2022 | By Sarah Newbury HLS

“All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.” Corinthians 5:18-19 NRSV

March 25, 2022 | By Marcella VillaGomez DC ‘24

This past Valentine’s Day, my Mom gave me a bouquet of tulips that had yet to blossom. After picking them up from the Whole Foods courier, I found a mason jar, filled it with water, and placed the tulips by my windowsill. Day after day, I watched them bloom, slowly but surely, reaching towards the sun as if they were straining their necks. What I soon noticed, however, was that the tulips positioned further away from the window received almost no sunlight. Under the shadow cast by the other tulips, they wilted and died.

March 24, 2022 | By Emma Kate Price H‘25

“Wow, I didn’t know palm trees were that small!” Approaching the palm tree soaking up sun from atop the bedside table, my best friend marveled at the fact that it was approximately a foot and a half tall.

March 21, 2022 | By Maddie Soule PC ‘25

In the thick of my second, and definitively more challenging, semester at Yale, I am becoming increasingly more aware of the temptation to run on autopilot—to exist in a sort of survival mode, doing what needs to be done without paying much attention to anything else. […] After a few weeks of trying not to fall into bad academic habits, I realized I had instead fallen into a detrimental lack of rest, release, and joy.

March 20, 2022 | By Paul Georgoulis H‘22

I had a nice fresh fig the other day—fresh, not dried, which is always a treat for me. It reminded me a bit of a passage from the Gospel of Luke, wherein Jesus gives a parable about a barren fig tree. In the parable, a landowner tells his gardener to chop down a fig tree because it has yet to bear fruit. The gardener replies that he thinks that the owner should wait one more year, and allow him to water and fertilize the tree. If the tree still does not bear fruit next year, the gardener says, he will cut it down.

March 18, 2022 | By Sharmaine Koh SM ‘22

“I cling to you; your right hand upholds me” (Psalm 63:8)

My fist is clenched, knuckles white, around a glass marble. I can feel the curve of my nails making indents like crescents on the palm of my hand. The tension rides up to my shoulders. I’m clinging to the marble as if my life depends on it, and somehow, in the strange logic of this nightmare, it does, because —

March 16, 2022 | By Ethan Hooper H’25

Luke 13:30 “And behold, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.”

In our modern, consumption-based culture, the idea that we are not defined by our social status, economic situation, or even self-image seems impossible. Who are “the last” that Jesus is talking about? The term “last,” I believe, is vague for a reason. Each person has their own individual idea of who the last in the world are: for some, it is the lonely, for some the poor, for some the sick, and for all these, Jesus promises that they will be first in Heaven.

March 14, 2022 | By Karis Ryu YDS’23

To believe in Jesus Christ is to believe in the God-man sent to die for the healing and renewal of the Creator’s world: to believe in suffering and healing, hand in hand. We must feel sorrow in order to also feel the necessity, impact, and joy of Jesus Christ’s act of ultimate and utter service when it comes—over and over again.

March 13, 2022 | By Felix Perez Diener H’23

Over and over in the Scriptures is a call to a specific verb––believe. As Christians, God calls us to love one another, to care for the poor, to make disciples––but no action seems as closely tied to salvation as belief.

March 11, 2022 | By Jonathan Chan

Forty days. That’s the length of time Christ spent in the Judaean Desert, fasting and praying in solitude. In the accounts contained in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the devil appears, bearing temptations that cut to the very heart of Jesus’ desires – to turn stones to bread to relieve His physical hunger, to summon angels to break His fall if He jumps from a cliff, and to worship the tempter in return for dominion over the kingdoms of the world. 

March 10, 2022 | By Joseph McDonough H’23

Reading from the book of Job, I can’t help but think of my Uncle Tom. As I write, he is fighting to recover from a serious brain surgery. He is foggy, distant; from what my Aunt Dorie tells us, it is as if he has been half asleep since the surgery. We are all praying for him, none more than my aunt, who has waited at his bedside now for a month. How do you pray at such a time? What do you say to God?

March 7, 2022 | By Daniel Yen TD ‘22

While the sighs in Schumann’s music help us to understand what human love feels like, I believe the gospel accounts of Jesus’s crucifixion suggest that the experience of exhalation also helps us to better appreciate the love of God. 

March 6, 2022 | By Elizabeth Propst H’23

When I close my eyes to pray, I find myself standing alone in the desert outside of Jerusalem. I am looking up at Christ’s body on the Cross. It is dark; the air is still and hot, and the world is silent except for Christ’s agonized, labored breath.

March 4, 2022 | By Stephen McNulty PM ‘25

There is something about the desert — as a site of temptation, but also as one of opportunity — that pervades Biblical literature. After all, after the Lord delivers the Israelites from Egypt, their story isn’t one of “milk and honey,” per se. Instead, it’s a story of wandering.

March 2, 2022 | By Angela Eichhorst H’22

TW: eating disorders

If your fasting strategy is to pray to be filled with God’s supernatural energy, regardless of your calories consumed or minutes slept so that you can go about your day as normal, I wish you luck. But maybe Lent is better seen as an invitation to accept inconvenience.

March 1, 2022 | By Hannah Turner BK ‘23+1

Lent is more than a cultural phenomenon, and it is more than a tradition. It is a powerful time for intentional spiritual reflection. It prepares our hearts for more completely perceiving and celebrating the shared resurrection we have in Christ.