By John Kass

April 13, 2025

Today is Palm Sunday for the Christian world. It is the beginning of Holy Week, and it builds to Easter Sunday, when we celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

It is the time of new life in the world, the time trees are budding. In the Midwest, the magnolia trees are in bloom. It is the time of faith, but also, the time of questions.

Years ago, when I was still working at “the paper,” I wrote an Easter column titled “What do we talk about during Lent if not Lent?”

One of my subscribers here at johnkassnews.com recently mentioned that old column in a note to me. He said he keeps that column and returns to it throughout the year.

I don’t work there anymore. I had to leave for sanity’s sake. I work here now, writing for you. So, I used that old one to build this new one.

But my questions remain.

It happens every year when the ground is cold and wet in March, when polite talk involves pepper and egg sandwiches, and later, chocolate bunnies and those sugary Peeps. And when the franchise burger places dramatically cut their prices for cheeseburgers to get us to eat meat during Lent, when for many the consumption of meat and cheese are prohibited.

It’s the time when I ask questions of myself that I really can’t quite answer, and this one comes back at me again and again:

As a Christian, how can I reconcile writing a column where tart words and worse fly off my keyboard with Lent and preparation for Easter?

I really can’t reconcile it. I wish I could, but I can’t. Writing a column is by definition about putting yourself forward.

It is not about sitting quietly and humbly in the back pew, your head down, like the tax collector begging God’s mercy.

Perhaps it should be about sitting humbly and quietly, reflecting on your sins. But it doesn’t work that way. Your name is on it.

It is a column.

In a news column, you could call a politician a coward one day and mock a crook the next day, return to the cowardly politician for the weekend. And jeer at a chumbolone who’s got a mocking coming.

The sin here is pride. I know this.

You might wish you were in the pew in the farthest back row of the church, head down like the Publican, but the columnist puts his name on the column and hopes many others will read it. And he tells himself that pride is a sin, leading him away from the Lenten journey.

So, I look out at the gray sky and quietly, rightly, pronounce myself a failure.

That’s what I do during Lent. The only difference is that this year, I’ve told you about it. Years ago, when I wrote the original, earlier version of this column, I offended a man I don’t even know. I didn’t mean to at first, but things escalated as they often do on social media, and then I offended with relish.

He wanted to make a life in politics and running for office. It was his dream. And I arrogantly told him that it was a bad idea, that life of politics, even one on the far edges of the game of thrones, could be fascinating and compelling, yes but ultimately it is brutalizing.

You think you can survive intact, but ultimately the successful politicians I know have sold pieces of themselves. Sold them off.

I told him that to survive in politics, he’d need a thick skin, I said, but once he jumped into the game, his skin would just keep on getting thicker, and eventually, the man he had once been might become unrecognizable.

We all grow armor of some kind to survive emotionally in the world. But a life in politics, with all its spin and lies, is especially brutalizing. And the most effective politicians are the silky ones. They use empathy and reason as their weapons. They don’t crawl forth on their bellies, but they are snakes just the same.

I told the man who wanted to go into politics that politics was a brutalizing business, and he became angry, as if I was trying to deny him his prize, his destiny. Then I became angry and said some stupid things, and we insulted each other.

Under most circumstances, I would have forgotten it and moved on.

But as I remember it was around the day some good and trusted friends and I recorded “The Chicago Way” podcast, and it was almost by accident that the issue bubbled up again when I mentioned that it was Lent. And that has stuck with me for years.

Why? I can’t say.  If you know an angel, please ask him.

Kristen McQueary, the columnist and Tribune Editorial Board member, joined us, and editorial cartoonist Scott Stantis, and my friend Jeff Carlin, of course, the WGN producer who handles the heavy work of the podcast.

These are good and thoughtful people.

Journalists don’t talk about Lent, as a rule. Perhaps that’s because to talk about Lent is to inevitably cast yourself as some kind of wild-eyed heretic in the journalism world, a Christian. In Chicago journalism that veers wildly left, Christianity is a sin.

So, I asked Kristen, who was with her daughter, Ellie, and Scott and Jeff, whether it’s possible to write a column where you call people out and reconcile that with the spiritual preparation required of Lent.

“It’s a question I’ve asked myself a million times, and as a cartoonist, my job is to be even meaner than you are,” Stantis joked. “I’ve asked a number of priests this question, that we’re supposed to be forgiving and kind, and yet in my faith, every priest I’ve asked said, “I think God understands.”

“I think it’s hard to reconcile what we do with that idea of forgiveness,” said McQueary, “with turning the other cheek and being humble and not putting yourself out there.”

For Christians, there’s probably no more challenging season than Lent. It’s the time when many ask questions of themselves.

One-third of the world’s population considers itself Christian, with more than 2 billion adherents. Yet the 40 days of Lent—when many prepare themselves for the resurrection of Christ from the dead—is all but an unknown subject for public discussion. You might say it is taboo.

You’d think that something affecting more than 2 billion people might be a subject of discussion.

Not about peeps and rabbits, real or chocolate ones, and butter lambs and candy. But what we find on the Lenten journey and are too self-conscious to say out loud.

And with so much happening in the Christian world, at a time when so many are falling away, too, and older Christians all but hide their faith, or soften it, pounding it into previously unrecognizable forms rather than be mocked in an increasingly militant secular world loudly professes a tolerance of diverse views.

So, what do we talk about when we don’t talk about Lent?

We talk safely of corned beef on St. Patrick’s Day, and later of chocolate bunnies and Peeps. And these last two are props—whether we acknowledge this or not—for the fertility rites of earth worship. That’s how Easter becomes safe.

But Lent isn’t about sugar. Lent isn’t safe. Ultimately, for many Christians, Lent is difficult, a struggle, like a war, and every year I fail.

I wish I had some glib answers, but I don’t. Outside as dawn breaks there is a gray sky and black limbs of trees. Closing my eyes, I can see the places where I fall, and I ask for mercy.

It is not easy to be a Christian, is it?

Our Holy Fathers understood that it was not meant to be easy.

It’s not a Sunday drive through the country. It isn’t a sip of lemonade.

It is a difficult journey to strengthen the soul.

Sunday is Palm Sunday, one of those rare occurrences in the religious calendars where the Greek and Eastern Orthodox churches celebrate along with Protestants and Roman Catholics.

We’re together this year.

Now comes Holy Week and many of us are on our knees in church, asking those questions and many of us whispering to ourselves the Jesus Prayer of the Orthodox:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

And next Sunday is Easter, as spring begins, and new life comes to the world. We gather and turn toward the light.

Kali Anastasi.

(Copyright 2025 John Kass)

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About the author: John Kass spent decades as a political writer and news columnist in Chicago working at a major metropolitan newspaper. He is co-host of The Chicago Way podcast. And he just loves his “No Chumbolone” hat, because johnkassnews.com is a “No Chumbolone” Zone where you can always get a cup of common sense.

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