Reflection Lent March 3, 2025

Dear university community,

As Christian-Catholics, we all know the basics of Lent, expressly, Lent is a 40-day season of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, beginning on Ash Wednesday and ending on Holy Thursday. This grace-filled time emphasizes the importance of inner conversion, self-discipline, and the renewal of our baptismal commitments. It also highlights the significance of time as a gift from God and encourages us to make the most of it through loving service and good stewardship. But this year is not like any other year. This year is a Jubilee Year, a special year of forgiveness, renewal, and mercy so how does Lent look like through the lens of the jubilee year’s theme, “Pilgrims of Hope”?

According to St. Thomas Aquinas, hope is both the emotion that imagines a future good, as in, “I hope there will be whole wheat pasta for lunch at the cafeteria today,” as well as the theological virtue that looks toward union with God as the goal of life, while leaning on God’s assistance to attain it. The grace of God that makes union with God possible has a concrete name: Jesus Christ, The Incarnate Word. In other words, it is through the Incarnation of Jesus Christ and his Passion, Death, and Resurrection that we can achieve union with God. The symbol of that hope is Jesus’ Cross, as expressed in an old hymn, “O Crux ave! Spes unica!”— “Hail, Cross, our only hope.”

Our Lenten practices of prayer (forgiveness), fasting (renewal), and almsgiving (mercy) then are expressions of our loving gratitude for the grace received. They are external signs of our hope in the realization of God’s reign already here through Jesus Christ and not yet complete for we still await the full realization and ultimate glory of God’s reign in the parusia.

Let us pray that our Lenten practices, rooted in faith and charity, bring renewed hope into our suffering world. Let us echo the words of the hymn I mentioned before: