
Renew within me a steadfast spirit.
Psalm 51:12 (Ash Wednesday)
“Our call to love [is] one that transcends all prejudices,
all historical and cultural barriers, all petty interests.”
Fratelli Tutti 83
During Lent, in these turbulent times, how can we persevere in our work for justice with a steadfast spirit, rooted in love?
Join writers from the Jesuit and broader Catholic network as we seek to answer this question, renewing each day throughout Lent our commitment to care for both our fellow human beings and our common home.
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Easter Monday: Back to Our Why
Today’s readings call us back to our roots, to our why. What is your why? Where did it all begin for you? God is waiting for us there. Read more →
Easter Sunday: To a Life Well Lived
Life: short, precarious, real, needs us to make every day count as together we build God’s dream. Read more →
Holy Saturday: Listening to the Silent Voice of Creation
How can today's silence of the tomb remind us to listen to the silent voice of creation, keeping an eye on the horizon? Read more →
Good Friday: The Price of Integrity
On that first Good Friday, Jesus could act in no other way without betraying himself. The cross is the price of integrity. Read more →
Holy Thursday: Hope in the Uncertainty
Holy Thursday is particularly helpful for our times, when we are challenged to find new ways to show love and care for others. Read more →
Wednesday of Holy Week: Our Need for God’s Mercy
We don’t get to Easter Sunday without dragging through this most difficult part of the story: the weight of sinfulness and our need for God’s mercy. Read more →
Tuesday of Holy Week: Caring for and Carrying Each Other
We cannot care for or carry each other at a distance—we know that the only way to sustain the long journey towards justice is in community. Read more →
Monday of Holy Week: Witnesses to a God Who Weeps
Let our hope sustain us in the fight for justice as we join to create a world post-coronavirus that is more compassionate and filled with love than the one we had before. Read more →
Palm Sunday: God’s Love as Compassionate Solidarity
In the Passion story, we witness a God whose love for us is steadfast—a reminder and a resource for us as we seek to embody that compassionate solidarity with with our lives. Read more →
Day 39: Listening for the Spirit’s Movement
Are our hearts open to the disruption the Spirit may cause as we discern the changes we must make to transform our lives and our world? Read more →
Day 38: Armor of Peace and Justice
We must be bold enough to call for action, fight against injustice, and uphold what we know to be right according to the Gospel. It may not always feel good while we are going through it, but the glory comes in doing the work. Read more →
Day 37: Our Vacillating Hearts and Minds
We all have the capacity vacillate between the “yes” of Mary and the “no” of Ahaz in our work for justice. But, if we look there, in the rawness of our lives, we might find God faithfully offering us steadfast love for our journey. Read more →
Day 36: No Matter the Cost
In the Gospels, Jesus clearly illustrates the commitment we are invited to make, the example we are called to live by, no matter the cost. Read more →
Day 35: What Are We Willing to Look At?
Deliverance is bound up with coming face to face with that which is afflicted in this world, and to see this pain and brokenness not as someone else’s problem or responsibility, but as very much our own. Read more →
Day 34: No Future for the Church Without Women
Too many women, both in the Church and in society, are victims of a structural injustice and exclusion that seems to have no end. Read more →
Fifth Sunday of Lent: Caminamos Juntos, We Walk Together
For some in our nation it was easy to turn a blind eye to those waiting in tents in Mexico to seek asylum in the U.S., as these families were not within their view. But how could we not cross the bridge to reach out to them? Read more →
Day 32: A Different Path
There will come a time when you have to choose a path. Will you go your own way? Or will you choose to follow the calling from God? Read more →
Day 31: Steadfast and Showing Up
The story of justice needs us like it needed Joseph, too—in over our heads, steadfast and showing up to do our bit. Read more →
Day 30: The Ancestors We Are Called to Be
May we be the ancestors grounded in trust, truth, and justice. May we never lose faith in something that we have yet to see. Read more →
Day 29: The Power of Relationships
We have the power to respond to this moment of collective trauma, to bear witness of God’s steadfast love for us, through remembering our kinship to one another. Read more →
Day 28: The Last Shall Be First
The man in today’s Gospel represents the majority in our world. He can’t get to the front of the line for an essential need. Read more →
Day 27: A God Who Breathes New Life into Us
During this Lent, today, we are invited to breathe and stand in solidarity with all of America, to help her give birth to something new. Read more →
Fourth Sunday of Lent: “Let my tongue be silenced, if I ever forget you.”
"Those enslaved in America did not let go of the God of Moses, who would come to 'let His people go!' And nor can I stop bringing to light what this country has tried to bury in the dark." Read more →
Day 25: Lenten Halftime
If our Lenten practices cause false righteousness, and if our work for justice flows solely from a determination of self and not a downward gaze of surrender—this Lenten halftime pep talk is for us. Read more →
Day 24: Beloved by God
By linking love of self, love of neighbor, and love for God, Jesus calls us to refuse a self-love that is rooted in supremacy, but rather one that finds its deepest expression in a desire for community and kinship that is radically inclusive. Read more →
Day 23: Bridging Divides
It is easy to point fingers at things that we find uncomfortable—to start shouting “demons”—but, as Jesus points out, that cuts everyone off from communion. Read more →
Day 22: Lest We Forget
Remembering injustice is important to sustain the long-term struggle to eliminate atrocities from our lives and our world—and to remember God's steadfast love that we witness in the long history of work for justice. Read more →
Day 21: Grace, Mercy, & Forgiveness Rooted in Accountability
During this Lenten season, may we repent, reflect, and renew our commitment to speaking-up, standing-up, and showing-up for justice and liberation. Read more →
Day 20: Kindness and Justice
Although justice necessitates action to actively dismantle systems of privilege and oppression, we can begin our work towards justice by showing kindness specifically to those most vulnerable to injustice around us. Read more →
Third Sunday of Lent: Relationships of Love
When Jesus throws the money changers out of the Temple, he distinguishes between our relationship of love with God and the transactional relationships in the marketplace. How can each of us promote relationships of love in our communities and around the world? Read more →
Day 18: Tending Our Inheritance
How can we tend our inheritance, and leave our descendants an even richer treasure than we received? Read more →
Day 17: The Cornerstone
Maybe rejection is only a Gospel necessity because we haven’t yet been courageous enough to dream up a world, to act on behalf of a world, where everyone is welcome. Read more →
Day 16: This Is How We Begin to Heal
Today’s Gospel calls us to be bridges over the chasms of our word, tending our own wounds with compassion so that we can approach the chasm as the threshold of possibility and transformation. This is how we begin to heal. Read more →
Day 15: Worry less. Care more.
These are concerning times. But worry is a waste. Better to live in concern and with care. As Jesus often said: We’re not here to lose our life. We’re here to give it. Read more →
Day 14: Lamentation, Fury, and Hope
How can hope lead us to action in times of lamentation and fury, particularly surrounding grave, ongoing racial injustice? Read more →
Day 13: Accountability and Mercy
Anti-racist work is an ongoing journey. I must hold myself and others accountable. However, I must do so with love and compassion, supporting others in our collective journey toward an anti-racist identity. Read more →
Second Sunday of Lent: Coming Down from the Mountain
Jesus asks us to take the fruits of our time with God to others. To come down off the mountain. And to do the hard—and rewarding—work of being an apostle for social justice. Read more →
Day 11: Revolutionary Grace
It takes revolutionary grace to accept the invitation of Ignatian spirituality to openness and receptivity, welcoming even our "enemy" in their complexity and brokenness. Read more →
Day 10: Turning from Our Evil Ways
As we look ahead to the Easter season and the end of the pandemic, how will we "turn from our evil ways" to build a world founded on love and justice? Read more →
Day 9: From Self-Preservation to Vulnerability
Self-preservation closes us off to our deepest selves and to each other. Vulnerability opens us to different pathways forward. We must risk opening doors to others in order to have our own deepest needs met. Read more →
Day 8: Listen and Respond
We must listen and respond to those who are crying for justice, fighting for a place at the table, challenging us to act justly. Read more →
Day 7: Abundant, Steadfast Love
How can you use this day to help other people experience God’s abundant, steadfast love—and to labor for a world that more fully honors the dignity and rights of all God’s children? Read more →
Day 6: May Justice Take Root
Witnessing both suffering and work for peace in Isreal-Palestine leads to questions of witness and solidarity, and a prayer that justice might take root. Read more →
First Sunday of Lent: Seeing Things Differently
Repent. It means “to move beyond the mind you have.” It doesn’t mean “do good and avoid evil.” It is about seeing things differently. Read more →
Day 4: Reorienting Toward Love
Small inner and outer turnings lead to real change. This is what Lent is about: letting love reorient our lives. Who do you love? Read more →
Day 3: Fasting as an Invitation
The practice of fasting is an invitation to be more fully present to others—to build meaningful, authentic relationships with those around us. Read more →
Day 2: Space at the Table
Bound together by a commitment to "a faith that does justice," may we seek to promote justice in a way that creates space at the table for everyone. Read more →
Ash Wednesday: A Call for Justice
We begin this Lenten season in our now normalized cycle of suffering. During such turbulent times, how can we persevere in our work for justice while also remembering the power of Christ on the cross? Read more →
Featured Contributors:

Fr. Greg Boyle, S.J.
Homeboy Industries

Marcia Chatelain, Ph.D.
Georgetown University

Cecilia González-Andrieu, Ph.D.
Loyola Marymount University

Danielle Harrison, M.A., J.D.
Slavery, History, Memory, and Reconciliation Project

Fr. James Martin, S.J.
America Magazine

Fr. Bryan Massingale
Fordham University

Rev. Michael-Ray Mathews
Faith in Action

Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy
Catholic Mobilizing Network

Sr. Norma Pimentel, M.J.
Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley

Joan Rosenhauer
Jesuit Refugee Service/USA

Olga Segura
Writer

Mary Wardell-Ghirarduzzi, Ph.D.
University of San Francisco