Living a life of mercy means encountering the ‘least of these’ in all of their particularity—and recognizing them in ourselves, too.

To borrow from Flannery O’Connor, The Secret History might not be Christ-centered, but it is certainly Christ-haunted. As such, the novel makes for excellent Lenten reading.

Today, it is all too common to prize self-sufficiency as a virtue—a virtue by nature inaccessible to the sick and to the disabled, to pregnant women and to the elderly, and to children of any age.