LETTER FROM KATIE • April 15, 2026

Nancy Holt (American, 1938–2014), Sun Tunnels, 1973–76. Concrete, steel, and earth, each cylinder 18 feet long and 9 feet in diameter. Great Basin Desert, Utah. Owned by the Dia Art Foundation. Photo: Will Thompson. Via Art & Theology

Dear Holy Comforter,

Thanks be to God that Easter isn’t just one day but an entire season in the life of the Church; an entire season between Easter Sunday and Pentecost in which we get to contemplate all the dimensions of what Jesus’ death and resurrection mean for us as his followers.

One of the images that comes to us from the two books authored by Luke the physician, his gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, is of Christians being “followers of the Way” of Jesus. (Acts 9:2, 22:4, and 24:14) This image of Christians being people of the Way conveys a sense of movement, of progress toward a goal. And from the very beginning, being people of the Way of Jesus has put his followers on a collision course with the ruling authorities, but also with family and friends who found the way of the cross to be foolish, subversive, and disloyal. As the Letter to Diognetus, an early Christian writing, observed of these early Christians,

“There is something extraordinary about their lives. They live in their own countries as though they were only passing through. They play their full role as citizens, but labor under all the disabilities of aliens. Any country can be their homeland, but for them their homeland, wherever it may be, is a foreign country. 

This week I’ve been thinking a lot about the image of Christians as people “on the Way”—on a journey with God and toward God who are never really at home in this broken but beloved world. That idea has stayed with me especially because this Sunday’s gospel tells of Jesus meeting two travelers on the road to Emmaus, and because I was in Minneapolis last week, where I heard stories about the empty spaces left in the community by the absence of their immigrant neighbors.

And those combined reflections reminded me how the Augustinian scholar, James K.A. Smith says in his book, On the Road with Saint Augustine, that Christians aren’t so much pilgrims on a sightseeing tour, but migrants on a dangerous and arduous journey to a homeland we’ve only caught glimpses of. But once we step into this unfamiliar place, this foreign land, we discover that it is actually home. At last we can breathe freely, because in God’s care we are secure and safe. To paraphrase Augustine, our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God.

To be people of the Way means that we are held together by different social bonds and different obligations than those that govern earthly kingdoms. The restless migrant people of God call others to join “their migrant caravan”, and care for each other along the Way of Jesus, through sacrifice and humility not domination and pride. 

As our reading from First Peter chapter 1 for this coming Sunday says,

“But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy. For the Scriptures say, “You must be holy because I am holy.”

And remember that the heavenly Father to whom you pray has no favorites. He will judge or reward you according to what you do. So you must live in reverent fear of him during your time here as foreigners. For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors. And it was not paid with mere gold or silver, which lose their value. It was the precious blood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God. 

May we, the people of Holy Comforter, who are people of the Way of Jesus, be known by our sincere and deep love for each other and all people because we know just how much it cost Jesus to rescue each and all of us.

With my prayers for you,

Katie