Dear friends,

Each Sunday, Letters from Leo published a Scripture reflection series.

This series is exclusively available to paid subscribers.

Each meditation explores what it means to follow Jesus more faithfully — not as partisans first, but as Christians whose consciences are shaped by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.

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, I hope you’ll consider making a one-time gift to support our work.

I invite you to walk with us throughout these fifty days of Easter as we experience the joy of the risen Jesus.

PS — I created a Spotify playlist for your Easter season reflection. It comes directly from recommendations made by this community. I hope it helps as you rest in the peace of Easter.

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Today’s Readings

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. — John 10:10

Most of what runs the world rewards the climber — the person who scales the wall, takes what is on the other side, and is celebrated for when they’re done.

We have built our economy around it. Our politics. Most of our institutions. Even, increasingly, our churches.

Today’s gospel is Jesus’s quiet evisceration of that arrangement.

“Anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit.”

A sheepfold in first-century Judea was a stone enclosure with a single low opening, no door, the shepherd lying across the gap at night so nothing could get in or out without crossing his body. There were two ways to come to the sheep.

You could enter through the shepherd, who knew them, called them by name, and had nothing to hide. Or you could climb the wall.

Pope Leo XIV ordained ten new priests in St. Peter’s Basilica this morning and preached on this gospel. The line that has not left me all afternoon was not the most quotable one. It was simpler. “You belong to everyone and are for everyone.”

He told the new priests that today, especially when statistics suggest a growing distance between the Church and ordinary people, the answer is not to pull the gate tighter. “Keep the door open. Let people in, and be prepared to go out. You are a channel, not a filter.”

That is the whole homily for me. The whole season, maybe.

I write this as someone who has spent the last few years watching almost every institution I belong to become a filter.