Fr. Paul D. Scalia: The Limits of Salvation
Fall in the Garden, Victory in the Desert: First Sunday of Lent, by Gayle Somers
February 21, 2026
Praying Before St. Francis’ Bones: Thousands Convene in Assisi on First Day of Historic Viewing, by Veronica Giacometti
February 23, 2026
We live in a culture that rejects limits and embraces the demonic concept of freedom. We think that to be free we must shed the limits even of our human nature. For us, freedom requires that husband and wife be released from their union, a mother be liberated from her unborn child, a boy become a girl, and our souls be uploaded into machines. In the desert, the Incarnate Lord shows us the true path. By humbling – limiting – Himself in our human nature and trusting in His Father, He overcomes the Devil’s temptations. He has done so not for His own sake, but for us. So that we can humbly follow in the path He has traced for us and come to the “glorious freedom of the children of God.” (Romans 8:21)
By Fr. Paul D. Scalia, The Catholic Thing, Feb. 23, 2026
Fr. Paul Scalia is a priest of the Diocese of Arlington, VA, where he serves as Episcopal Vicar for Clergy and Pastor of Saint James in Falls Church. He is the author of That Nothing May Be Lost: Reflections on Catholic Doctrine and Devotion and the editor of Sermons in Times of Crisis: Twelve Homilies to Stir Your Soul.
If God didn’t want them to eat of the tree, why did He put it there? That question is not as adolescent and petulant as it might sound. God is not haphazard in His Creation. He must have had a reason to place that one forbidden tree in the garden. The Catechism explains it nicely: that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil “evokes the insurmountable limits that man, being a creature, must freely recognize and respect with trust.” (CCC 396)