Bishop Erik Varden explores humility, corruption, and redemption in his sixth Lenten reflection, “The Fall of Thousands,” at the Vatican retreat.
Newsroom (25/02/2026 Gaudium Press ) In the hushed corridors of the Vatican, under the prayerful stillness of the annual Lenten retreat, Bishop Erik Varden delivered his sixth reflection—a meditation titled “The Fall of Thousands.” Before Pope Leo XIV, the cardinals of Rome, and the heads of Dicasteries, Varden confronted the fragility of the human spirit and the dual nature of spiritual struggle with a candor that pierced both intellect and conscience.
He began by exploring the paradox at the heart of all human “falls.” Some, he said, are humbling—moments that strip away pride and reveal divine mercy. These collapses can become milestones, reminders of God’s saving power and of our ongoing need for grace. Yet, not all falls end in illumination. Others, he warned, reek of hellish decay, spreading ruin not just to the guilty but also to those caught in their wake. “We must approach,” he quoted Bernard of Clairvaux, “the verse of Psalm 90: ‘A thousand shall fall at your side, ten thousand at your right,’” with steadfast courage and discernment.
From there, the bishop turned unflinchingly to the Church herself. “Nothing,” he declared, “has done the Church more tragic harm than corruption within our own house.” He recognized that the deepest wounds to Christian witness have been self-inflicted, not the result of secular opposition but of moral failure on sacred ground. Healing, he insisted, will demand both justice and tears.
Bishop Varden acknowledged the temptation to trace corruption to its roots—to hunt for early signs of disease or systemic failure. Yet, the truth is often more complex. Some communities once radiant with spiritual vitality have later become synonymous with scandal. “We cannot presume hypocrisy from the start,” he said. “We must reckon with beginnings suffused with genuine inspiration—and with later deformities that defy easy diagnosis.”
Against the modern tendency to separate the world into villains and victims, Varden recalled the Church’s richer vocabulary for confronting evil and human weakness. Drawing on Bernard’s reading of the Psalm Qui habitat, he explained that spiritual leaders often face the fiercest assaults precisely because they engage the highest stakes of the soul. “The spiritual men of the Church,” Bernard wrote, “are attacked more terribly than those who are carnal.” On the spiritual battlefield, casualties mount on the right hand—where the fight for integrity rages not against flesh but spirit.
Still, neither Bernard nor Varden gave the devil too much credit. Both insisted on human responsibility and freedom. As Varden observed, delving deeper into the soul inevitably exposes our vulnerabilities—our hunger, loneliness, and desire for comfort. These longings, if unguarded, can twist into self-deception, cloaked in false spirituality. “Progress requires reconfiguring the physical and emotional self,” he said, “so that spiritual life does not seek release in unholy ways.”
Integrity, therefore, is tested not only in the pulpit or the confessional but in the ordinary rhythms of life. A teacher’s holiness must be seen “in his conversation, his online habits, his comportment at table or the bar,” Varden noted, challenging clerics to transparency rooted in the Incarnation itself.
The bishop concluded with a plea against dualism—the ancient error of separating the spiritual from the corporeal. “The Word became flesh,” he reminded his listeners, “so that our flesh might be imbued with Logos.” The Christian journey, then, demands vigilance in both body and soul, lest we mistake light for shadow or vice versa. Only when both are reconciled under Christ’s governance can the Church walk steadily, even through the field of a thousand falls.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from Vatican News
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