Sometimes in life there can be two totally unrelated things that, upon closer look, are actually connected. I thought about that recently when I viewed the devastation caused by the fires in California earlier this year. Towns and homes were tragically reduced to rubble and ash.
Similarly, months before, the destruction leveled by Hurricane Helene left many parts of North Carolina destroyed.
Despite the destruction and heartbreak caused by both of these situations, though, the one common theme heard among those affected was this: We will rebuild. Out of this destruction will come new life.
Lent’s Call to Action
This month, we mark the beginning of the season of Lent on Ash Wednesday. When we receive ashes on our foreheads, we are reminded not only of death, but also the journey of rebirth we experience during Lent. It is a season of looking inward at ways we can bolster our faith lives. But just as much as we are called to reflect inwardly, we are also called to find ways to live out that faith.
And we have seen that faith in action in many ways following these crises. People have come from all over to help those displaced or affected by the natural disasters. Strangers have brought hope to people in times of despair. Sometimes that hope looks like bringing food and necessities to those in need. Other times, it takes the form of offering a place to stay. Each of those small acts, however, is one of hope—hope that tomorrow will be one step on the way to a new beginning.
During times of despair as we have witnessed, hope is what helps people imagine that a new life can begin following such destruction. In a letter to the residents of Los Angeles, Archbishop José Gómez reminded them: “You are so precious to God that he sent his only Son into the world to die on the cross for you. We need to cling to this truth when hardships and sufferings come.”
He went on to assure them that “Jesus knows our hopes and dreams and struggles. He is near to us in our joys and in our sorrows.”
A New Start
How appropriate, then, that this year the Church is celebrating the Year of Hope. In a January 11 audience, Pope Francis focused on the theme of “to hope is to begin again.”
He told those in attendance: “Hope . . . is not a habit or a character trait—that you either have or you don’t—but a strength to be asked for. That is why we make ourselves pilgrims: We come to ask for a gift, to start again on life’s journey.”
That hope was again demonstrated after Corpus Christi Church burned down in the Palisades fire and Captain Bryan Nassour of the Los Angeles Fire Department discovered the church’s tabernacle fully intact.
He said: “My brother lost his home. I have close friends who lost everything but the shirts on their backs, and they belong to that church too. So, if I could save just one thing, let it be this, so they have something to believe in.”
On Ash Wednesday, we will mark the beginning of our journey of hope toward Christ’s resurrection. Along the way, may we bring those in need of that hope along with us.
