By grace we have been saved by faith, Saint Paul declares. We do well to hear these words, especially when being a Christian can seem at times like such a struggle—to believe in God and in the church that is supposed to show and lead us to God; to understand our faith rightly and find the strength to live it out;...

John’s gospel talks about Jesus as the light that came into the world, but people preferred darkness to the light.

To speak of faith as an activity may sound strange. Most of the time it seems like such a passive commodity. We make professions of faith, reciting lists of doctrinal statements that someone else wrote long ago.

Many survivors of the Holocaust recount how they were brutally taken from their homes to the horrific concentration camps where so many died. For some the journey to the camp was itself a living hell.

Most of us have been there—that zombie state from working too many hours for too many days in a row. You say to yourself, “Just one more week, as soon as I finish this one project.”

Grandma was in her glory because her grandchildren were circled all around her. She gloried in their presence, looking at each fresh-scrubbed face, peering, it seemed, deep down into each of their souls.

As we prepare ourselves to celebrate the Easter mysteries, let us pray to the God who will go to any length to love us.

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from you; it is the gift of God; it is not from works. Saint Paul’s emphasis on the primacy of justification by faith recalls the 1999 joint declaration between the Catholic Church and the churches of the Lutheran World Federation on the doctrine of justification, one of the most divisive issues of the Protestant Reformation.

Although we praise our common Lord for all kinds of reasons, we praise and glorify him above all for the cross. . . . It is this death for people like ourselves that Paul constantly regards as the sign of Christ’s love for us. —Saint John Chrysostom (c. 347-407)