It was winter in Italy, eight hundred years ago, & Assisi’s poverello had an idea.1 Francis of Assisi had become obsessed with the words & deeds of Jesus Christ, his rustic parables & simple gestures that, despite (or perhaps because of) their lowliness, communicated divine majesty & awe. According to an early biographer,2 “so thoroughly did the humility of the incarnation & the charity of the passion occupy his memory that he scarcely wanted to think of anything else.

I admire the aim in Elizabeth Johnson’s Creation and the Cross: The Mercy of God for a Planet in Peril: to produce a theology that considers how Jesus’s life, death, & resurrection are good news for the whole cosmos, particularly in the context of ecological crisis. & while I don’t disagree with some of the conclusions (presented chiefly in book 6), ironically the particularity of Jesus’s life (natal & risen) & his death don’t seem to determine the conclusions as much as the work’s title might lead one to expect.

Walter Kasper on kingdom of God: But when the ultimate source of all reality, God’s love, re-establishes itself and comes to power, the world is restored to order and salvation. Because each individual can feel himself accepted and approved without reserve, he becomes free to live with others. The coming of the Kingdom of God’s love therefore means the salvation of the world as a whole and the salvation of every individual.

Holy Week of any year—that week of prayer & fasting ordered to the cross and, eventually, the empty tomb—always has a nearness to the first Holy Week, as the drama of the liturgy moves modern-day Christians through the drama of the passion. Holy Week 2020, however, seemed especially near. The reality of coronavirus was setting in, along with the bitter realization it would be a long time before we could safely gather with family, friends, & religious communities.

Good & gracious God, you who are power & wisdom & goodness— Bless this tree, a sign of life & freshness & perseverance in our midst. May it stand as a reminder of light in the dark of night, and of life in the dead of winter. May its supple branches & sharp, sweet scent keep fresh in our minds & our hands the mercy & generosity you show in all your dealings with your beloved people.

Dear C—,1 This past Sunday, on a cool & bright New York day with the edges of autumn just beginning to creep into the last days of summer, you were baptized. Like autumn into summer, you may find the fact of your baptism—something in which you had no say & of which you have no memory—creeping into your life in strange & unexpected ways; you may not know quite why you were baptized; you may wonder what the point of your baptism was at all.