Dear friends,

Letters from Leo is publishing Easter reflections through Pentecost, available exclusively to paid subscribers. This is the final essay in the Easter Reflection Series. Next week, we’ll continue our Sunday Reflection Series.

New yearly subscribers and one-time donors of $80 or more receive a free copy of Elise Ann Allen’s historic new biography on Pope Leo XIV — and the extended deadline to claim yours is tomorrow at midnight PT.

These reflections are personal writing: vulnerable, searching, and grounded in the conviction that repentance, renewal, and resolve are not abstract concepts but daily choices.

If they’ve meant something to you this Easter season, I hope you’ll consider making a one-time gift to support our work.

I invite you to walk with us today, the birthday of the Church.

PS — I created a Spotify playlist for your Pentecost reflection. It comes directly from recommendations made by this community.

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“Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’ When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side… And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” — John 20:19, 22

The first Pentecost begins behind a locked door. John tells us the disciples shut themselves in the upper room because they were afraid. They had seen their friend killed and then deserted him when it mattered. Now they were waiting for the next knock at the door. Into that silence the risen Christ steps through walls.

This is the scene Pope Leo XIV chose for his homily at St. Peter’s this morning. The Easter season, he said in his Pentecost homily, “reaches its fulfillment today.” Fifty days of preparation, and the Spirit is poured out where the doors are closed. That detail matters. Pentecost does not arrive at a synod, a procession, or a public square. The Spirit comes first to a room that does not want to be entered.

Leo built his homily around three aspects of that gift. The Spirit of the risen Lord is the Spirit of peace, of mission, and of truth. None of those three words means what we have made them mean.

Begin with peace. In our political vocabulary, peace has become a posture — the absence of friction, the polite tolerance of disagreement, a brokered pause between rounds of fighting. Christ’s peace is much heavier than that.

Here’s what I mean.