Kat Armas

"The question before us is not whether protest belongs in church, but whether the church still belongs to the Gospel it proclaims," writes Kat Armas.

Advent peace is not the peace of sanitized images, writes Kat Armas. It is the peace of God-with-us in our flesh, our struggle, our vulnerability. A peace that does not hide from the world's pain but inhabits it.

"Collective Heritage: Honoring the Past, Inspiring the Future" is the theme for this year's Latino Heritage Month. While our communities continue to be surveilled, detained and disappeared, we remember. 

Political violence rises when grievance and hopelessness converge; these forces are present and intensifying in the United States today. But Kat Armas says despair is not the only path.

Famine is never only about empty stomachs. It is about choices; about power, about whose bodies are allowed to wither. In Scripture, famine was often linked not to drought alone but to injustice.

Kat Armas reviews the two latest books on the new pontiff: Matthew Bunson's Portrait of the First American Pope: Leo XIV and Christopher White's Pope Leo XIV: Inside the Conclave, Dawn of a New Papacy.

This isn't just a parade. It's political theater. It's the gospel of empire made visible: power dressed in patriotism, dominance masquerading as peace, writes Kat Armas. The parade with real purpose happened long ago.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement's raids and deportations are cruelty in legal disguise. This is what dictators do: disappear people through loopholes, evading responsibility while pretending their conscience is clean.

It is the nature of kings and conquerors to offer belonging and purpose in exchange for obedience. It is the nature of a people to believe them.

As Trump's comments about taking over the Gaza Strip show, the words change but empire's logic of domination does not. But if we are to follow Jesus, our lives must bear witness to a different kingdom.

In sacred Scripture, God's people are often on the move. The Bible shows us migration isn't just about survival, it's about grace and divine reciprocity between people and the land. 

In a viral Fox News interview, the vice president suggested that it is more Christian to prioritize your family over a stranger, but Jesus wanted us to demolish the categories that keep us from seeing each other as worthy of love in the first place.

The world moves and the world shifts and life happens beyond our door even if we don't take the time to notice. But imagine if we did?

Our world has so much to grieve: the injustice toward her inhabitants, the eradication of her kin. We kill not only each other but also the very place we call home. But we are not alone in our lament. God mourns with us. The earth is groaning alongside of us. What is our truest response but to grieve?

No created thing was void of value or purpose for Christ. Observe the birds, Jesus advised, notice the lilies of the field. What if we took him seriously in our daily routines and did just that? What if we truly considered what wisdom might be found in all created things?

It is through the dirt that we are bound together in a sacred belonging. Reflect on the last time you felt like you belonged to a web of life larger than yourself. What cultivates belonging in your life? What can you nurture with your own hands that connects you to our ecosystem?