This is an excerpt from Remembering Your Baptism: A Sinner Saint Devotional (1517 Publishing, 2025) by Kathy Morales, pgs 74-77.
“The Church exists to tell anyone and everyone who knocks on her door wondering what’s inside: Come and see” (pg. 58). Such reminders make The Church a worthwhile read.
The way of the cross is the actual way of victory. Jesus absorbs the worst of what humanity and even the devil can do to him, and he spurns the shame of it all.

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It was during one of these garbage burns, however, that I was bathed in a fresh remembrance of grace.
This creed is no mere squabble over words. Salvation is on the line.
I’d like to offer a short reflection on the theme of “worldliness” as it appears in his later work and how that’s connected to an item of his Lutheran heritage: the theology of the cross.
[This text] describes a journey to a foreign region where Jesus engages in a confrontational conversation with a legion of demons, performs a violent and scandalous exorcism, and leaves behind a community gripped by terror. Apparently, the only thing more frightening than a naked, graveyard-dwelling demoniac is this visitor from Nazareth who reigns over everything.
Baptism demolishes all boasting, for it is passively received and all that is received is pure gift. No one can, therefore, boast a better salvation than another.
Perhaps best known for his “wager,” Pascal is often associated with this curious argument for the existence of God and eternal blessedness.
Naturally each individual forgets the beam in his own eye and perceives only the mote in his neighbor’s. One will not bear with the faults of the other; each requires perfection of his fellow.
When we brag about what Jesus does for us, we win the battle.
On Holy Trinity Sunday, God draws our attention, not to the inner workings of the Trinity, but the outer workings of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
They cannot know that I am already a father, but, this side of eternity, I won’t ever meet my child because of a miscarriage.
Shame is shameful. That may seem obvious but ponder this observation from the authors of Scenes of Shame: “Shame, indeed, covers shame itself—it is shameful to express shame.”
The Holy Spirit keeps us in faith and pours us out into the world so others may also hear and believe.