Lent is not only about fasting from food.

It is about fasting from distortion.

This week’s liturgy brings us through three movements:

• Genesis – The distortion of God’s word

• St. Paul – The superabundance of Christ’s redemption

• The Gospel – Christ answering the tempter with precision

At the center of all three is a single battlefield:

The Word.

Friendship is one of life’s greatest gifts — but also one of the most subtle spiritual battlegrounds. We don’t often think of relationships as something that can lift us closer to God or quietly pull us away. Yet St. Teresa of Ávila, one of the great doctors of prayer, devotes an entire chapter of The Way of Perfection to warning her nuns about dangerous friendships. Her teaching is surprisingly modern. In an age where we’re surrounded by connections but starving for depth, she reminds us that not every friendship is healthy for the soul. Here’s the heart of her message.

There is a question that keeps surfacing in Catholic circles today. It comes up in debates, online arguments, YouTube sermons, and whispered conversations after Mass:

“If the new Mass is invalid, how can the Church still produce saints?”

It is a fair question.
And it is one we can no longer avoid.

Because when we look honestly at the last sixty years of the Church — not through social media commentary, but through the lives of the saints — a contradiction appears between accusation and reality.

And reality always wins.

In recent years, Stoicism has enjoyed a cultural revival. Popular authors and thinkers present it as a complete “way of life”: disciplined, rational, emotionally controlled, and free from fear — even fear of death. Figures like Ryan Holiday have helped bring Stoic texts and ideas into the mainstream, often framing them as a sufficient replacement for religious belief.

This formation is offered as a response — not as an attack on discipline, productivity, or philosophy — but as a clarification. Stoicism is not false because it is immoral or shallow. It falls short because it stops where the religious life begins.

The Church asks us to bow at the Incarnation every Sunday.
But on Christmas and the Annunciation, she asks more.

She asks us to kneel.

Why?

When Catholics speak about the Trinity, we often say, “It is a mystery.”
That is true—but the Church never means confusing or unknowable.

The Church Fathers consistently turn to the angels to clarify how the Trinity can be

I want to share something personal—not as a rebuke, but as formation. Over time, I’ve learned that how we hear the Word of God matters just as much as that we hear it. And the Church, in her wisdom, does not leave us to figure this out on our own.

Like many Catholics, I’ve spent seasons searching for clarity, reassurance, and certainty. I’ve listened to gifted speakers, powerful testimonies, emotional experiences, and compelling explanations of faith from outside the Catholic Church. Some of it sounded beautiful. Some of it felt convincing.

But what I slowly realized is this: I was looking outside the Church for confirmation of what Christ had already given me inside her. That realization changed everything.