An Outward and Visible Sign of an Inward and Spiritual Grace
The Fourth Sunday in Lent | March 15, 2026 Opening Thought We rely so heavily on what we can see, and in our modern world, that surface-level vision is constantly amplified. We live so much of our lives through other people's eyes. We scroll through the curated highlight reels of Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, letting a feed of carefully edited moments determine our own self-worth. We are constantly haunted by the fear of missing out—anxiously measuring our real, messy lives against the impossible, filtered illusions of everyone else. And this relentless influence doesn't just cause us to judge ourselves; it causes us to judge others unjustly, too. Based on a single post or a fleeting image, we make snap assumptions about who people are, what they value, and what they are worth. But the truth is, none of that actually matters. It is just our human nature getting stuck on the surface. This Sunday, the halfway point of our Lenten journey, the liturgy completely upends how we vi...