Lent: A Pilgrimage of Hope

This year, Lent has a particular feel because we celebrate it in the context of the Jubilee of Hope. Much more could be written about the Jubilee and if you want to know more feel free to follow along with our Lenten podcast series on the topic at podcast.olopschackbay.org and/or read Dr. John Bergsma’s book, Jesus and the Jubilee.
 
Let’s therefore focus on the virtue of hope in our journey through Lent and through life. The Catechism of the Catholic Church follows St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans (4:18) and the Letter to the Hebrews (chapters 6 and 11) in presenting Abraham as a model of faith and of hope for us. In fact, faith and hope are closely related—so much so that faith is part of hope. We cannot have hope if we do not first have faith.
 
In paragraph 1817 of the Catechism, the Church teaches us that there are three aspects of hope:

1. desire for the kingdom of heaven and eternal life
2. trust in Christ’s promises, which is part of faith (cf. CCC 1814)
3. reliance on the Holy Spirit

Abraham exhibits all three aspects of hope in ways appropriate to the level of Revelation he had received in these early days of God’s forming His covenant family. One could say that he exercises Old Testament hope in a way that anticipates New Testament hope. Let’s go back to his first mention in Scripture. Having traveled from Ur of the Chaldeans to Haran with his father Terah, God called Abraham (Abram at that point) to go farther—all the way to the land of Canaan, to which his father had failed to persevere:
  
Having received these covenant promises from God, Abraham trusted that God would come through and departed for the promised land which, of course, points forward to the true promised land: Heaven. Thus, both his trust and desire for this land reveal Abraham’s character as a man of hope. Abraham and his wife Sarah, Hebrews tells us, “desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Hebrews 11:16, emphasis added).
 
In fact, it is God’s promise—in the form of a covenant oath—that is our hope. And this hope is “a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul”, held fast in Heaven (Hebrews 6:19).This is what hope does: in the constant bombardment of the temptations and discouragements which come from the world, the flesh, and the devil, our hope in Heaven is what allows us to avoid capsizing into mortal sin. By it we begin to be rocked less and less by venial sin, and even experience fewer imperfections like distractions, worries, and the like.
 
The anchor is a most fitting image for hope because the anchor is a tool for a journey. Like Abraham journeyed from a land of sin to the earthly promised land, we disciples of Jesus are meant to be journeying upon the hard and narrow road to Heaven. (Matthew 7:13–14) Further, after the Exodus from Egypt the host of Hebrews was also a wandering people, spending 40 years in the desert on their way back to the land that God had promised.
 
Yet God had a plan for their wandering. Over and over again his people let go of the rope attached to the anchor of His promise. Over and over again they failed to rely on the Spirit of God. Over and over again, many of them capsized into the death of mortal sin. Their father—our father—Abraham had relied on God’s Spirit, especially when asked to offer up his son Isaac and trusting that, if necessary, God would even raise him from the dead (Hebrews 11:17–19).
 
And how did they know that God would come through? They knew that God would come through because, as mentioned above, God swore a covenant oath to them (Genesis 12:1–3; 15:1–21). A covenant is a sacred family bond between persons. Covenants make family. God would not abandon them, because God had taken them in as His sons and daughters.
 
We too have become children of God, through an even greater covenant than that made with Abraham. By the Sacrament of Baptism which incorporates us into the new and eternal covenant in the Blood of Jesus, the Christ, who is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, we have been washed clean of sin, adopted as God’s own sons/daughters, and made part of His family, the Church.
 
As we journey through Lent, engaging in whatever mortifications and other spiritual practices we’ve discerned for ourselves and our families, we can have hope because Almighty God, the Creator of the Universe, has chosen to make Himself our Father. In the ups and downs, the winds and the waves, the times of smooth sailing and the times of being tossed about on the rough seas, let us hold on to the anchor rooted in Heaven which is hope by praying for and fostering by our actions the desire for Heaven, trust in the promises of Christ, and relianceon the Holy Spirit who “is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20).

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Father Brice Higginbotham, SSL is the administrator of Our Lady of Prompt Succor Parish in Chackbay. Having earned a Master’s Degree in Theological Studies from Notre Dame Seminary in 2017 and served in various pastoral assignments throughout the Diocese of Houma–Thibodaux from 2017 – 2021, he earned a License in Sacred Scripture (S.S.L.) from the Pontifical Institute in Rome in June of 2024 before moving to Chackbay on 01 July 2024.