Tuesday, April 8
Editor’s Note: We at the Catholic Artist Connection recognize that Catholics of good faith may hold diverse and even opposing perspectives regarding political issues and candidates in the US and globally. This reflection articulates one Catholic’s moral reasoning. It is not the only valid perspective for a faithful Catholic to hold, nor is it the stated position of the Catholic Artist Connection. We encourage all Catholics to reflect seriously on matters of justice and world affairs. Please use grace and discernment in your comments.
This Lent, I found myself sitting before the Blessed Sacrament, asking God what He might be inviting me to consider and practice this year. What surfaced was less a call to “give something up” and more a question: How do I remain hopeful when my Christian faith is distorted by nationalism?
In early February, an executive order titled “Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias” was issued by the White House. It framed Christianity not as a spiritual path of love, humility, and service—but as a political identity under siege. I sighed as I read it. Here we go again: Christianity wielded not as a call to witness, but as a demand for dominance. Lent, by contrast, is an invitation into the wilderness. It asks us not to grasp for control, but to surrender. Not to defend power, but to be transformed.
For Lent this year, this has meant fasting from the comfort of spiritual superiority and leaving room for the spirit of interreligious fraternity that Lutheran bishop Krister Stendahl once described as “holy envy.” My practice has been one of pilgrimage—not across borders, but across religious lines within my own city. Every week, I’ve been visiting religious spaces across San Diego with a close friend. Throughout the past weeks, we’ve prayed with Muslims at Friday Jummah, attended a vibrant Orthodox service and meal, sat in Buddhist meditation, and sang along to Willie Nelson songs at a Unitarian Universalist service.
Each encounter has stretched my understanding of God and neighbor. Each has reminded me that we do not love well what we do not truly see.
This practice of holy envy asks me to move beyond admiration from a distance and instead be unsettled—to let others’ understanding of the sacred call me deeper into my own relationship with the Divine. I am able to better develop my own theology of death through the Buddhist concept of impermanence, can reimagine my understanding of grace through the Latter-day Saint view of the Fall as a necessary step for humanity to move beyond Eden and return to God, and can be inspired towards my service to my neighbor through the Sikh practice of sewa (selfless service). In each case, I encounter truth—not the truth in totality, but refracted glimpses of God’s love that widen my theological imagination and expand my heart for all of His people.
The world feels heavy these days. In the stillness of Eucharistic adoration, I hear the invitation to fast not only from excess, but from ego. To give alms not only in money, but in attention. To pray not for comfort, but for courage. We are not called to withdraw into theological bunkers, but to break down empathy walls—to realize, as sociologist Arlie Hochschild writes, that indifference often shields us from the discomfort of difference. Lent calls us to confront that discomfort with grace.
After all, borders—both physical and religious—are places of revelation.
Julia Morrow is a writer, librarian, and theology scholar based in San Diego, California.
You can learn more about her here.