Holy Week is invasive. It’s meant to be. It’s meant to take away all our defenses against our God, who comes to us in ways that we, because we are his disciples, cannot resist. But that’s what we see in the Gospel of John. I feel it in me as I prepare for Holy Week.…

Every year, on Ash Wednesday, in a way that feels both fresh and familiar, I remember again that the receiving of the ashes is always described in the liturgy not as a sign of our fasting, but as a mark of our mortal nature. The ashes are given to us to remind us of the…