LENT: A NEW HOPE
“Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi! You’re my only hope”.
Remember that iconic line from the 1977 classic Star Wars: A New Hope? Arguably the second-best of the Star Wars movies, after The Empire Strikes Back (sorry, all you fans of the Disney sequels and prequels – none of them hold a candle to the originals).
Hope is the main theme of this first movie in the franchise. A captured Princess Leia urgently calls on the one person who can save her as she attempts to lead the small, scattered rebel alliance against the mighty galactic empire. She can’t do it alone, of course, and various parties of freedom fighters join her to defeat the forces of evil.
We aren’t fighting Emperor Palpatine but we are fighting the real and present forces of evil. It’s exhausting because it’s pervasive and persuasive, and we usually (often?) lose. From there it’s easy to lose heart, lose hope, and resign ourselves to never being able to overcome all that holds us back from God – the one Person who can save us.
Which is why, as we start the season of Lent today, we take heart in Pope Francis’ message for Lent 2025: Walking Together in Hope. During this season of repentance and renewal, while we mourn the damage our sins and failings have caused, it doesn’t mean we can’t eagerly embrace the challenge of learning to fight properly for our faith, to thank the Lord with joyful gratitude as we remember His mercies, or to rejoice that He wants to walk with us and help us transform. We have hope!
There are 3 aspects to this year’s Lenten theme: walking, walking together, and walking in hope. It might help to take a closer look at each one:
Walking The Desert Walk
Traditionally on first Sunday of Lent, the Gospel speaks of Jesus’ temptations in the desert – between His baptism and the start of His public mission, starting (in Luke’s Gospel) at Nazareth. This was His preparation for mission.
Lent is that preparation for us. It’s not a punishment for sin. It’s not meant to crush us but to prepare us. If we say we believe in Jesus Christ, we need to re-affirm our belief in all His teachings and live by all of them, so that with true hearts we can celebrate the glory of Easter. Deprived of worldly distractions, removing ourselves from secular temptations and pleasures, we’ll feel the sting of isolation and a certain loneliness. But if we hold fast, we’ll begin to clearly see where we’ve been moving away from God – maybe without even knowing – and what we’ve been making of the lives He’s given us. The desert’s an ideal retreat in which to face ourselves honestly and understand where we’re falling short in our faith and worship of God.
Today we see the Israelites camped on the plains of Moab, where Moses is instructing them on God’s covenantal way of life in the Promised Land. What Moses tells them to do is to make a public acknowledgement of God’s deliverance, mercy, and providence (Deut 26). It will always remind them of their years of being slaves in an alien land and God’s redemptive love, even to destroying nations to save them. All they have to do is keep the faith.
They didn’t always, though. They worshipped God, but they doubted.
Abraham, the Israelites, our Lord Jesus, and now us… how different are our walks in the desert?
Abraham trusted completely in God, walking to a new and unfamiliar land, strong in his hope in the Lord, even to obediently sacrificing his son, Isaac.
The Israelites walked in the desert with God Himself clearing the way, leading them through the waters, feeding them Himself. But while they believed in God, they kept doubting. Despite His actions, the proof of His presence, the minute Moses left them to go get the ten commandments, they made a golden god of their own invention. They grumbled about not having enough food, and tested God at Massah and Meribah to provide them with water.
Then came Jesus, who obediently followed the direction of the Holy Spirit and walked in the desert, deprived of food, unyielding against temptation.
Now it’s our turn. As we turn away from the world and retreat into our desert, how far will our faith hold out against temptation? How long before we long to escape and give in to what’s going on outside? How much of our belief will we really stand by? Do we believe ‘in our hearts’ and publicly confess ‘with our lips’ all of God’s teachings, as Paul tells the Romans in today’s 2nd reading? Will we help one another to get through this time of growing in holiness, or will we hinder someone by our actions or inactions?
Paul, in fact, spells this out frequently across his various letters; in Philippians, Galatians, and Romans, he argues that God offers us a divine righteousness as grace – a purely free gift, not something we earn. We have only to accept it by putting our faith in Christ. As a Jewish believer in Christ, Paul quotes Isaiah as evidence for the need to both believe and confess.
Consider those martyred for their faith, like Maximus the Confessor, who refused to verbally renounce belief in Christ. Here in Singapore, we’re blessed to have the freedom to believe in God, but if we had to defend it, how far would we go?
Walking the walk means more than just talking the talk. Here’s something we should commit to doing daily this season: examine what we profess of our faith, especially in the Creed at every Mass, and check if we’re standing by all of God’s commands – not a pick-and-mix of them.
Then how can we assess ourselves each day? Check if you’ve covered the 4Rs:
1. Reflect (how did your actions and attitudes measure up in the eyes of the Lord today?
2. Re-affirm (did you act according to what you believe the Gospel says? Are you ready to stand for God?)
3. Repent (after acknowledging where you fell short, did you desire and seek repentance?)
4. Reconcile (if your heart is penitent, are you seeking to make amends with God and those you’ve injured?)
If we fall, the good news is there’s the Sacrament of Reconciliation, prayer, fasting, almsgiving and works of charity to help us get up, dust the sand off, and walk on.
Walking Together
When Jesus walked the desert, He was filled with the Holy Spirit and led by the Spirit (Lk 4). He wasn’t alone.
We don’t have to fight alone either – we shouldn’t, in fact. Pope Francis says during Lent we should ‘all walk in the same direction, tending towards the same goal, attentive to one another in love and patience…to be synodal’. He asks us to ‘confront the reality of migrants and pilgrims, and discover what God is asking of us so that we can better advance on our journey to the house of the Father’.
Christians, he adds, are called to ‘walk at the side of others, and never as lone travelers… without shoving or stepping on others, without envy or hypocrisy, without letting anyone be left behind or excluded’.
Because we’re all in this together, we have to ask: are we, as Pope Francis puts it, ‘capable of walking together with others, listening to them, resisting the temptation to become self-absorbed and to think only of our own needs’?
Walking in the desert doesn’t mean we suddenly become hermits like Obi-Wan; we’re not secluded from family, friends, fellow parishioners, work or school mates. It might be easier if we were. But at Lent we’re going to struggle even harder with doing all the things the Pope asks of us, that Jesus asks of us, because we have to constantly fight the devil inside that tells us it’s understandable if we sin a little, break a few commandments, live as the rest of the world does, put off praying, fasting, giving alms or doing acts of charity.
So, during our Lenten journey we’re going to need some help. That’s where hope and the Holy Spirit come in.
Walking in Hope
Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer (Rom 12:12)
What actually is our hope at Lent?
No, it’s not the hope that we’ll get through it as quickly and painlessly as possible.
It’s the hope that we’ll be transfigured by encountering God in the desert as we absorb the richness of His Word, as we look back and recognise His mercy, protection, and providence in big and small ways every day. It’s the hope that in our struggle and distress we’ll realise His angels are holding us up on their hands, and that God Himself is reshaping us, refashioning us, more into His likeness.
Of course it’s going to be painful. But we shouldn’t see Lent as a barren wasteland, like Tatooine, from which we’re eagerly looking to escape. We’re Pilgrims of Hope this Jubilee Year, like the Israelites walking together to the Promised Land, and in the desert we’re gearing up to fight against all that beguiles us away from God. That fight’s inside us. That’s what the desert is. It takes courage to enter there and allow God to break us down, knock and chisel away at our souls, form us anew.
But Hope is with us. So is the Holy Spirit. We only have to ask for help.
Look at today’s responsorial psalm: it’s a call to the Lord to be with us in our distress. And the Lord swiftly promises all who trust in Him that He will rescue, protect, and answer us, ‘I am with you’ (Ps 90). We have proof in the way His Holy Spirit never left His Son alone throughout the period of temptation.
The scary thing is in today’s Gospel we see that ‘the devil left Him, to return at the appointed time.’ It didn’t end in the desert. In fact, these temptations beset Him all through His public life: the people who wanted to force kingship on Him (Jn 6:14-15), the Pharisees who wanted a sign from Him as a test (Mk 8:11), right up to His death, when the thief on the cross tempted Him to end His suffering by coming down from the cross (Matt 27:40).
Jesus’ replies to the devil are all from Deuteronomy. His temptations correspond to those of the Israelites in the desert. The difference? They succumbed. Jesus did not.
And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure. (1 Jn 3:3)
Putting on the armor of God isn’t a one-time thing. It must be done daily, because, as with Christ, we will continue to face temptation and be drawn to sin. Today we receive a special gift from our Lord and His Church: a seasonal retreat into silence and solitude where He’ll help us push the world away while He trains us intensely for the battle. Emotions and desires will war against our longing to become pure and holy, fully committed to God. But we believe in the Christ who walked, bleeding and broken under a heavy cross made of our sins, to the place where He asked why the Father had abandoned Him. We want to make this walk with humble hearts that are grateful for the chance to stop the tears of the Lord by crucifying the evil inside us. We want to walk with the help of our fellow Catholics and the hope of renewal through the Lord.
Yoda, Jedi Master in Star Wars, says, ‘For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is.’ We have a far more powerful ally in the fight against an even bigger evil. That ally is our Triune God, and the hope in Him that we cling to. Lent offers us a new hope: that we can emerge from the desert with a stronger bond with God and a deeper, more fervent faith.
As we start our journey through Lent, hear and accept the call of today’s Gospel to adopt the same confidence that Jesus had in the face of temptation: that God's word alone will suffice, God's promise of protection can be trusted, and that God alone is God.
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit (Rom 15:13).
The blessing of God be upon you on your Lenten walk!
Article by Joyce Norma, HFC Blog Contibutor