Hope in God’s Plan
Our Lenten theme, “Jeremiah 29:11 – Hope in God’s Plan,” focuses on trusting God’s purposeful plan for our lives, even in difficult times. As we reflect on this verse, we join with the universal Church in the Jubilee Year theme “Pilgrims of hope”, reminding ourselves that God’s plans bring a future filled with promise, guiding us through our Lenten journey with faith and expectation.
LENT 2025 Hope in God’s Plan
Jeremiah 29:11-12 For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. 12 Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you.
The liturgical season of Lent begins today. We start our journey with the whole Church as day by day we move toward the Triduum, the three days of praying through Christ’s passion to His resurrection. In this jubilee year, Pope Francis has called us to be “pilgrims of hope” who walk together in prayer, steadfast in our commitment to become more aware of the need to encounter one another in Christ’s beloved community. Ash Wednesday begins that journey each year, reaching into God’s loving patience and mercy as we make our way through these next 40 days. At Holy Cross College, we have turned to the words of the prophet Jeremiah 29:11-12 to reflect on God’s desire to gift us with future filled with hope. When I read Jeremiah’s passage above, I linger over the last sentence. What a hopeful image to see our loving God waiting for us to call upon him with our prayers anchored in the promise that we will be heard echoed here, “Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you.”
Lent, with its reference to the spring season, has traditionally been the time to attend to what we are going to do…fast from foods or things we enjoy, pray more, and offer alms to provide for the needs of others. The perennial question of “what am I going to do?” might be missing the point of this penitential season. I wonder, as we move out of the darkness and silence of winter and into the warmth of an emerging spring that the intentions of our Lenten promises are best understood as being open to what God is doing in our lives when we pray more, fast and give alms. How do my efforts of fasting open my heart to encounter God’s desire to listen to me and hear me. In what ways do my prayers rest in the confidence that God is patient and waits for me to turn toward him? How does the offering of alms reflect the love of neighbor in my heart, which God is continuously filling with compassion and justice? I wonder what is possible if this Lent we center our lives on the promise of the forgiveness our sins that opens us to the true transformation to become more like the Christ who journeys toward the Cross, confident in the hope that it brings for humanity and creation.
This is a call to pray together as “Christ’s beloved community” at Holy Cross College and be embraced by a loving God whose promise is filled with hope for the future we share with all of humanity. As in the tradition of the Congregation of Holy Cross, with a God who is ever listening and hearing, we can proclaim, “Ave Crux, Spes Unica; Hail Cross, Our only hope.”
The first few days of Lent, between Ash Wednesday and the first Sunday of Lent are what I jokingly refer to as the “free trial period”. Perhaps you had great ambitious plans for your prayer, fasting, and almsgiving well before Ash Wednesday and now you are living into what that will look like in your day-to-day life, considering if you can manage this for all 40 days.