“So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet Him, crying out, ‘Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!’”
–– John 12:13.
“But Palm Sunday tells us that it is the cross that is the true tree of life.”
-– Pope Benedict XVI.
“Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the Lord!”
-– Psalm 31:24.
On Palm Sunday, Jesus entered the city of Jerusalem to the cheers of the city’s residents. Before another 5 days passed, those same residents would be calling for his crucifixion.
Today begins the most intense week of the Christian year. On Palm Sunday, we enter into the very mystery of our salvation: Our Lord’s passion, death and resurrection. The Epistle, from S. Paul’s letter to the Christians at Philippi, speaks to the centrality of this mystery. Here S. Paul emphasizes Our Lord’s humility as He undertakes the work of man’s salvation:
Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
We might find it somewhat challenging to understand S. Paul’s intent of this passage from the Authorized Version of the Bible (King James I authorized version of 1611). Even scholars are divided as to S. Paul’s purpose in using so obscure a term translated as “robbery.” The Revised Standard Version translates verse six as: though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped… Used rarely in the Hebrew scriptures and only once in the New Testament, the verb harpagmos suggests “taking what one does not have.”
S. Paul seems to have in mind Christ as the new Adam. Whereas the first Adam grasped for what he did not possess, that is bring equal to God, the new Adam who is “very God of very God” (the incarnate Christ) does the opposite. He exercises profound humility by embracing our human nature, even choosing to die the ignoble death of crucifixion. Where the first Adam sought to raise himself to the level of his Creator, it is God who exalts the second Adam and enthrones Him in heaven precisely because of His willingness to humble Himself for our sake.
This is the mind that we are to have as followers of Christ. Meditating upon Our Lord as servant should inspire us to serve one another.
As we reflect upon Our Lord’s passion, in particular His Via Dolorosa, we see a concrete expression of His humility. Bearing the weight of the cross, Our Lord stumbles and falls to the ground. Simon of Cyrene is pressed into service by the Roman soldiers. There is no doubt that Our Lord, in His divinity, could have carried the cross. But precisely in His humility He needs Simon to share the burden of the cross. As S. Paul writes to the Christians in Galatia: Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.
To be servants one of another is to be willing to bear another’s burden. How often do we resist reaching out to others because we value too much our own time or comfort!
This week we have the opportunity to walk with Our Lord from the Antonia Fortress (the “judgement seat”) to Mount Calvary. As we stand with him during the Triduum – Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday – we witness the law of Christ revealed on the cross.
In His humility, He bears our sins. But in so doing, He is exalted to the glory of the Father. By dying to self in imitation of Our Lord, and by our willingness to take on the burdens of others we too will be glorified and raised up into the eternal realm of the Blessed Trinity!
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Jews and Christians: United We Stand, Divided We Fall
The overlap of Passover and Easter is no accident of the calendar — it’s a call for solidarity.
BY: Josh Hammer, The American Spectator (March 27, 2026).
For a brief window this coming week, Passover and Holy Week, the sacred observances of Jews and Christians, respectively, will overlap. Jews around the world will gather this Wednesday and Thursday evenings for the Seder, which recounts the Exodus from Egypt and God’s redemptive hand in history. And after Good Friday and Holy Saturday, on Sunday, April 5, Christians will celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the promise of eternal salvation. Two biblical traditions, distinct but from the same Abrahamic family tree, will thus find themselves marking holy seasons at the same time.
In this fraught moment, this calendar convergence feels like quite a bit more than mere serendipity. It is a visceral reminder of the shared moral and theological inheritance that undergirds Judaism and Christianity — the common foundation that has molded and shaped what we know today as Western civilization.
At their core, both holidays tell a story of redemption. For Jews, Passover is the story of a people delivered from bondage, divine justice meted out against tyranny, and covenantal purpose eventually forged after national liberation. Likewise for Christians, Easter is a story of redemption — of sin confronted and overcome, of sacrifice and renewal, of life triumphing over death. The theological particulars certainly differ, and Judaism’s heavier emphasis on particularism contrasts with Christianity’s universalist orientation, but the underlying message is still strikingly similar: Hope springs eternal.
These shared values — redemption, repentance, moral accountability — help constitute the bedrock of Western civilization today.
Equally central to both traditions, and both springtime holidays, is the idea of repentance. In Judaism, the concept of teshuvah — returning to God through repentance and righteous action — is a cornerstone of religious life. Jewish tradition teaches that in addition to the fall High Holiday season’s well-known focus on repentance, the springtime season of Passover is also a perfect occasion to atone and confidently step closer to God. Christianity, of course, also places repentance at the heart of spiritual renewal, calling believers to turn away from sin and toward charity and grace. The searing imagery of Christ’s crucifixion is ensconced in the West’s collective memory, perhaps more than anything else, for its emphasis on atonement for mankind’s sins.
These shared values — redemption, repentance, moral accountability — help constitute the bedrock of Western civilization today. Zooming out from the overarching themes of this season’s calendrical overlap, consider some of the West’s other defining principles: the rule of law, the dignity of the individual, the sanctity of life, the pursuit of justice. The fingerprints of the ecumenical biblical inheritance are ubiquitous. This is our common inheritance. This is who we are.
And yet, at this very moment when the alignment of Passover and Easter should prompt reflection on that shared inheritance, bad-faith actors on the home front are seeking to tear Jews and Christians apart at the seams. The timing of this subversion could not possibly be worse. The West finds itself under unprecedented strain. The threats are multifaceted and very real.
There is the challenge of Islamism — a totalitarian political ideology, historically beyond America’s borders but increasingly also found within, which seeks not peaceful coexistence but dominance. There is the rot of woke neo-Marxism, which rejects objective truth, undermines meritocracy, and seeks to replace individual responsibility with collective grievance and a debilitating victimhood culture. And there is the ever-insidious force of globalism, which threatens to erode national sovereignty, dilute cultural identity, and promote homogenized technocratic governance over the democratic accountability that only the nation-state can provide.
Against these challenges, Jews and Christians must not stand apart. We simply cannot afford to. The symbolic overlap of Passover and Easter this year should serve as a moment of reflection that, despite real theological differences, we are bound together by an overwhelming common inheritance and an inescapable common destiny.
This does not mean erasing distinctions. But it does mean acknowledging that we are allies in a broader civilizational struggle. It means recognizing the values we share are far more significant, at this juncture in history, than the doctrines that divide us. Loud provocateurs notwithstanding, the Judeo-Christian tradition has long been a powerful unifying force in the United States — a framework that transcends denominational lines.
Now is the time to build on that foundation. As families gather around the Seder table and for Easter services, there is an opportunity to reflect not only on the past but also on the future. What kind of civilization do we want to preserve and leave to our children? What values, customs, and ways of life are worth defending? And who will stand together in that defense?
The story of the West is, in many ways, a shared story. It is a story rooted in the belief that man is made in God’s image, redemption is possible, repentance is necessary, and human beings are called to something higher. It’s up to us, ultimately, to take that message seriously — and to lock arms and stand shoulder to shoulder like never before to preserve our inheritance for many more generations to come.
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Hegseth’s prayer for our troops echoed centuries of U.S. wartime prayers
But both America’s proud history and the Bible are offensive to the left, who expressed pearl-clutching outrage over Hegseth’s prayer.
BY: Andrea Widburg, The American Thinker (March 28, 2026).
On March 25, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth spoke at a Christian Prayer and Worship Service held at the Pentagon. He prayed for American success and for the enemy’s defeat, quoted directly from a WWII-era, Psalm-based prayer. The pearl-clutchers on the left were outraged. How dare an American leader ask God to smite the enemy and preserve our troops! Indeed, how dare an American leader even publicly address God!
In fact, Hegseth’s prayer was entirely consistent with the prayers that political and military leaders have been making since the American Revolution. They, too, have called for God to protect and support American troops while bringing his wrath to America’s enemies.
Hegseth specifically anchored his prayer in history, reminding the audience that he was quoting what was said to the troops preparing for a brutal raid on Iwo Jima, one those men knew was likely to leave many or most of them dead:
It wasn’t just during WWII that troops went into battle with the Biblical God at their back. It was a constant throughout American history:
On March 16, 1776, the Continental Congress issued a proclamation recommending a day of prayer across the colonies. In it, Congress beseeched God to give
his assistance to frustrate the cruel purposes of our unnatural enemies… But if continuing deaf to the voice of reason and humanity, and inflexibly bent on desolation and war, they constrain us to repel their hostile invasions by open resistance, it may please the Lord of Hosts, the God of Armies, to animate our Officers and Soldiers with invincible to guard and protect them in the day of battle, and to crown the Continental arms by sea and land with victory and success.
There was nothing unusual about this. Throughout the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress issued proclamations asking God to destroy Britain and lead the Patriots to victory.
Abraham Lincoln, the American leader Democrats admire so much that they insist he was one of them, frequently turned to God, asking him to provide strength to the righteous side (which he believed was the Union side) during the Civil War.
Franklin D. Roosevelt famously broadcast a prayer regarding D-Day that ended with these stirring words:
And, O Lord, give us Faith. Give us Faith in Thee; Faith in our sons; Faith in each other; Faith in our united crusade. Let not the keenness of our spirit ever be dulled. Let not the impacts of temporary events, of temporal matters of but fleeting moment let not these deter us in our unconquerable purpose.
With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogancies. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister Nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.
While political leaders offered prayers focused on peace and justice, people closer to the battlefield prayed for the complete military subjugation of their enemies. The Iwo Jima prayer that Hegseth recited is a great example of this.
Another famous invocation occurred ahead of the Battle of the Bulge, when rain was blocking the Allied advance. General Patton asked Chaplain James H. O’Neill to compose a “weather prayer,” which was printed on 250,000 wallet-size cards and distributed to every soldier in the U.S. Third Army. It was not an ecumenical, politically correct prayer:
Almighty and most merciful Father, we humbly beseech Thee, of Thy great goodness, to restrain these immoderate rains with which we have had to contend. Grant us fair weather for Battle. Graciously hearken to us as soldiers who call upon Thee that, armed with Thy power, we may advance from victory to victory, and crush the oppression and wickedness of our enemies and establish Thy justice among men and nations. Amen.
When the weather cleared, Patton and others believed that the power of prayer had made the difference. Patton awarded a Bronze Star to Msgr. O’Neill because of the prayer’s efficacy (and that’s true whether you believe it brought God to the battle on America’s side or because it psychologically aided the troops). No one objected.
O’Neill also issued a training letter to military chaplains urging them to have troops pray for “the defeat of our wicked enemy whose banner is injustice and whose good is oppression. Pray for victory.”
This wasn’t just a WWII phenomenon. Military prayers looking to the Psalms for powerful images of enemy defeat abounded during American Wars. Here’s what Rev. Samuel Webster told New Hampshire troops during the American Revolution:
[H]edge up their way and not suffer them to proceed and prosper. But put them to flight speedily… make them run fast as a wheel downward, or as fast as stubble and chaff is driven before the furious whirlwind. As the fire consumes the wood… so let them be laid waste and consumed… and so return to their own lands, covered with shame and confusion.
You can easily find other, similar examples.
But for America’s leftists, who hate God, hate American military victory, and desperately want to deny America’s troops the consolation of faith in battle, Hegseth’s prayer was a grave offense. The Guardian summarizes this attitude well, doing its own pearl-clutching about a Secretary of War daring to call for “violence” against a wartime enemy:
Hegseth’s insertion of his Christian faith into his role has drawn criticism and legal complaints.
Military veterans previously told the Guardian that Hegseth’s use of religion in the department was causing division and could weaken the military.
“We’re gonna see a lot of Christian nationalists join the military,” Kristofer Goldsmith, an Iraq war veteran and the CEO of non-profit watchdog Task Force Butler, told the Guardian last year. “They’re not gonna perform very well, and our national security will suffer for a generation for it, because those that don’t wash out will be toxic leaders.”
Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed lawsuits against the defense and labor departments this week to access public records about prayer services at the departments, including invited speakers, recordings of prayers and any complaints from employees about the services. The records will help the organization understand whether the departments are staying neutral on religion and respecting workers’ religious freedom, the group said.
American history shows that all these claims are rote leftist bull fecal matter. War and Biblically-based prayer have always been a part of America.
The usual suspects on social media made the same outraged claims. Grok assembled some of the replies to the video (above) of Hegseth’s prayer:
Martina Navratilova (@Martina): “Hegseth is one sick man , hiding his psychopathy behind his version of Christianity.”
@Eva_eva_P: “This is absolutely, unequivocally batshit crazy… By quoting violent imprecatory Psalms and demanding ‘no mercy,’ Hegseth is framing the Iran war as a Christian Holy War against Islam.”
@DANKCHAINS: “Call me old fashioned, but I’d rather the head of my military not speak in this overtly religious and sanctimonious manner. As if our bombs are dolling out divine justice by default.”
@holly___xxx___: “Why is there a prayer service at the Pentagon in the first place? Whatever happened to separation of church and state?”
@WatcherUpNorth: “Jesus didn’t pray for violence, he told people to love their enemies… ‘Those who deserve no mercy’ is the tell. The moment you think you get to decide that, you’ve left faith behind in favour of power.”
@TheChefTrevor: “Save it drunk Pete. Jesus isn’t returning your calls bro!” (with a meme image).
@Frank_Giustra: “Looks like we are sliding back to the Old Testament. No more love, just the wrath of God. Nuts.”
@jh336405: “Pete and the Trump Administration absolutely sound no different than the Mullahs. Crazy Jihadists.”
Other replies called it “blasphemy,” “insane,” “Goofy ass televangelist shit,” or accused it of turning the military into a “Christian Holy War.”
Here’s what these leftists don’t want to acknowledge: America is and always has been a Christian nation, deeply grounded not just in the New Testament, but in the Old, as well.
And the Old is very explicit about God taking a side in war.
Moreover, whether the left likes it or not, this is a religious war—because Iran has made it a religious war. For the Secretary of War to seek God’s help against both God’s and America’s avowed and genocidal enemies is appropriate and entirely consistent with every aspect of American history.
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Christianity collapsing, Islam rising (Again)?
The collapse of Christendom has been rapid and dramatic.
BY: Eric Utter, The American Thinker (March 28, 2026).
Strange days are these.
Trump is in the White House, but traitors are everywhere.
Crime rates are allegedly down, but that claim doesn’t “feel” right to many of us in many areas.
There is no doubt, however, that rates of idiocy, insanity and disingenuousness are at all-time highs.
One of the two major political parties in the United States actually detests U.S. citizens and incessantly woos illegal aliens … and the other party doesn’t really do much about it.
And a country that has deep, profound — and almost ubiquitous — ties to Christianity seems to eschew religion in favor of an anything goes hyper-secularism, yet welcomes, tolerates, and defends Islam, a pseudo-religion that considers women as property, stones gays and adulterers, and whose “bylaws” state that infidels must be converted, enslaved, or exterminated. Weird, wild, wacky stuff. And deeply disturbing.
So, an Austrian Catholic diocese hosts pro-LGBT Stations of the Cross, “reinterpreted” stations intended to reflect the supposed experiences of queer refugees.
Lovely.
And we learn that California Gov. Gavin “Slick” Newsom’s wife Jennifer, in a 2022 interview, stated that traditional Christians are “just pulling us back as a country to a time and a place where we don’t deserve to be and we’re not gonna be.”
And that Canada’s House of Commons just passed a bill that would criminalize quoting numerous passages of the Bible, particularly those pertaining to homosexuality and gender. This after all debate on the bill was successfully shut down by Liberal MPs while it was in committee stage. It now heads to the Canadian Senate where it is expected to pass.
Moreover, by God, an allegedly Christian school in (formerly) Great Britain allegedly encouraged its students to practice Islamic prayer. A short video, recently circulating on social media, shows rows of schoolkids neatly arranged on prayer rugs, prostrating themselves before Allah. This is not your grandfather’s Christianity.
Meanwhile, an Austrian boy, the only Christian in his class, was bullied for just that reason.
The collapse of Christendom has been rapid and dramatic. The Christian Church, at least as formerly constituted, has become virtually extinct in the Netherlands and is on life support in several other European nations.
It is no coincidence that this has corresponded to the rapid rise of Islam in the West, and the consequent explosion in the number of mosques. And it has happened because progressives have infiltrated the Church and bastardized its main themes. The now hyper-tolerant practitioners of the Christian religion are all but demanding that the stupendously intolerant practitioners of Islam replace them on the world stage … which, of course, they planned to do anyway. They are giddily incredulous that their global task has been made infinitely easier by the very infidels they seek to destroy.
And yet the West sleepwalks on, accommodating, defending — and aiding and abetting — the invasion that will ultimately lead to its demise.
Ironically, the U.S. will fight Islam elsewhere, but never here at home where it is capable of doing the most damage. Capable, in fact, of eventually effectively annexing the nation in a mass convert or enslave operation. Mindboggling. Everywhere Muslims gain a solid foothold, they eventually take over institutions and governments and institute Sharia law.
So, rapes are covered up because “Muslim boys are already under enough police scrutiny.” Really? Wonder why?
What’s more, a repeat sexual offender, labeled ‘devious and manipulative,’ successfully blocked his deportation from Britain by citing his right to a ‘family and private life’ under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
What about the multiple victims’ right to family, privacy, and safety? And that of their families? Victims whose parents will never be the same?
Yet, an English immigration tribunal has ruled that an Albanian criminal should be allowed to remain in Britain in part because his son doesn’t care for the chicken nuggets elsewhere.
In fact, the tribunal found that it would be ‘unduly harsh’ for the 10-year-old boy to be forced to move back with his father given his dislike of the home country’s cuisine.
Sometimes, ladies and gentlemen, you just have to shake your head and wonder what caused so many people to lose their minds.
Nonetheless, schools in northern England have been advised to ban drawing, dancing, and music that Muslims deem idolatrous and not halal. And they’ll probably do just that … instead of issuing the proper rejoinder, which would be, “No bleeping way. We will continue to teach the Western canon. The ungrateful invading Muslim hordes can go to hell.”
Not that things are different in Sweden lately, but that country’s sheep farmers are locking their sheep inside pens and shelters at night to prevent them from being slaughtered by Muslims observing the dictates of Eid. Slaughtered or shagged? Either way, it should not be tolerated.
Strange days are these. It is indeed a wild and wooly world in which we live. Just don’t slaughter the wool bearers. Or shag them.
And—pro tip!– never tolerate those that seek to convert, enslave, or kill you.
Because they will do so. If your own government doesn’t beat them to it.
GFK
Observations From The Fifth Estate 