Neil Darragh offers suggestions for how we can engage individually and as a church community this Lent. How should we approach the season of Lent in 2025? Is it the same as before or could it be different?

THE LITURGICAL SEASON of Lent is an extended period of self-discipline in preparation for resurrection. It has its own traditional themes: the theme of the Process of Initiation into the Christian Community and the theme of Penitential Reconciliation (a journey of return for those already baptised Christians who for some reason have been excluded from the Christian community).

More recently popular is the theme of Social Justice: “live simply that others may simply live”. Here the practices of Lent are not just about our own self-discipline (“giving up something for Lent”) but also and more directly about self-discipline (reduced consumption) which allows us to contribute to the welfare of others. The Caritas New Zealand Lenten programme this year with its orientation towards aid and development uses reflections on the Gospel readings (a traditional lectio divina method) for each of the Sundays of Lent.

These are approaches to the practices of Lent that have proven their worth and are still available to us today. The year 2025, however, has thrown up some new possibilities that are particular to this year. Lent can be a time not just of revising our customary practices, but also of revising our orientation to the deeper currents in church and society that call for our attention at the present time.

SOME NEW APPROACHES

We are trying to deal with the shock that as an institution our church failed to protect minors and vulnerable adults from sexual predators within the church. Lent could then become in 2025 a season of prevention, a season in which we embed the practices of safe-guarding and self-guarding in our personal behaviour and especially in our institutions.

Another theme that calls for our attention in 2025 to be that of the Holy Year, a year of Jubilee. The ancient Hebrew idea of “Jubilee” carries the implication that in a jubilee year relationships among the people should return to how they used to be before injustices and corruptions destroyed living by God’s covenant. In the New Testament, Jesus, following the prophet Isaiah, proclaimed a “year of jubilee” as the first announcement of his mission (Luke 4: 18-20).

Pope Francis has noted that we live in an age when many societies are characterised by “ever-increasing inequalities, increasingly autocratic and dictatorial regimes, and the predominance of the market model without regard for the vulnerability of people and of creation” (Address for the Commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the Institution of the Synod of Bishops, 17 October 2015, par 47). He calls us to be pilgrims of hope who announce and live out a response of hope in an age in which hope founders and struggles to raise a contrary voice. The theme of this particular 2025 Holy Year invites us to be “pilgrims of hope” and is a response to today’s social breakdown, war and the failures of democracy.

There is yet another possible theme for Lent 2025 if we could integrate Lent 2025 into the continuing process where we have been learning how to become a more “synodal” church, that is, a people who “walk together”. Lent 2025 could then become a gathering up of the momentum of the last three years, including the 2023 and 2024 Synods, of our attempts at synodality. The synodal way is essentially a path of spiritual renewal and structural reform that enables the Church to be more participatory and missionary.

We are not short, then, of themes that could provide focus for our Lenten efforts at renewal: Christian initiation, penitential return, social justice, safe-guarding the vulnerable, pilgrims of hope and the strength of walking together. Several different themes, then, all of them with roots deeply embedded in Christian tradition.

The two new themes, the Holy Year theme of becoming “pilgrims of hope” and the synodal theme of “walking together” are the most challenging for us at this particular time in history. Is there more to it than we used to think?

PILGRIMS OF HOPE: THE THREATS TO DEMOCRACY

The challenge to become pilgrims of hope is a response to the current dangers to well-being in our societies. The church’s commitment to the realm/reign of God includes a commitment to the well-being of all people in planet Earth, not just some. Among the many forms of governance today, democracy is the one that comes closest to ensuring this. Today, however, democracy is increasingly under threat.

“Democracy” can be popularly described (with Abraham Lincoln) as government of the people, by the people and for the people. It has spread widely through the world since the 18th century but is now under threat through the recent rise of the old monarchies, the new oligarchies and the populist dictatorships in many countries. Although democracy is a relatively recent arrival in our mission politics, its survival could well be an objective for pilgrims of hope in the world today.

Hand in hand with the threat to democracy comes the threat to journalism. Democracy can only work if the people are well informed. The recent spread of disinformation, misinformation and lies has left most of us defenceless in the face of deceitful but well-funded campaigns. Where journalists become simply propagandists or spreaders of gossip who no longer hold themselves accountable for the truth of their communications, truth becomes a victim.  If we were to commit ourselves to truth-telling as our Lenten discipline, we could be pilgrims of hope in an increasingly confused world.

THE SYNODAL WAY: LEARNING TO WALK TOGETHER

While becoming pilgrims of hope is a response to dysfunctions in our politics, the “synodal way” is a response to dysfunctions within our church. The synodal way begins with a commitment to listen to others. But the pathway does not end there. Some groups within the church have taken the first step on this path, the step of listening. But after the listening comes the more difficult step of discerning which steps to take among the many proposals for the way forward. This is the stage that requires commitment to accountability and the evaluation of our current practices as a church.

Presently, the forward movement seems to be faltering. Among Catholic communities who have taken these first steps, the differences have become apparent. This is not just a matter of everyone being heard. Hard steps such as the equality of women in a male-dominated church, clericalism, the inculturation of liturgy, especially Eucharist, into the diverse cultures of the modern church, and the reform of decision-making in the church all remain issues that need to be negotiated, not just listened to. All these issues need hard thinking processes and hard thinking theology. Hierarchical thinking and synodal thinking do not easily mix.

If the degrading of investigative journalism goes hand in hand with the demise of democracy in society, it may be that the degrading of critical theology goes hand in hand with the collapse of walking together in the church.

Traditionally, we have not expected Lent to be comfortable. A focus on 2025 Lenten themes that lead us down into the deeper currents of society and church might make this Lent different and just what we need.

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 301 March 2025: 4-5