2025 Lenten Message
March 5, 2025
“Hope for a better tomorrow “(Rom. 5: 3 – 4)
Greetings of peace and hope in our Lord Jesus Christ!
Once again, we are blessed with the Season of Lent – a time of prayer, a moment of renewal and a time of conversion. During these days, let us remember the Holy Father, Pope Francis in our prayers. May God in HIS loving kindness look with favour on him in his illness.
Our Season this year falls within the Jubilee of Hope. In this Season we are invited to appreciate God’s unfailing mercy and hope in God’s providence. The prophet Isaiah assures us that: “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be white as wool” (Is 1:18).
God’s mercy is infinite, therefore, let us hasten to strip away everything that prevents us from fully living the Gospel so as to rediscover the joy of being loved by the One who is faithful. And as we journey through this Season, lets fix our eyes on the Cross of Jesus. It is through HIS suffering, death and resurrection that we have been redeemed.
As St. Paul sums it so well, when he writes: “We also rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces power, and power produces hope” (Rom. 5: 3 – 4). Even when we face individual and societal challenges, let us cling to the hope that comes from the victory of the Cross, knowing that the darkness we encounter is subdued by the light of Christ.
My dear brothers and sisters, I wish to invite you to find time this Season to read, reflect and pray with the Sacred Scriptures. May the stories of faith, perseverance, and victory found in the word of God inspire you and fill your hearts with hope and courage and be a lamp for your feet and a light for your path (cf. Ps. 119:105).
Further, may your fasting and abstinence this Season be a reminder of the hunger and thirst faced by many in our communities. Kindly respond generously, sharing not only your abundance but also your sacrifices. Jesus says, “Whatever you do to the least of my brothers and sisters, you do it to ME” (cf. Mt. 25: 40).
In this Season and throughout the year, we are invited never to walk alone. As the Body of Christ, we are called to support each other in faith and charity. May our Families, Small Christian Communities, and Parishes be places of prayer, support and solidarity, as we build together a community that radiates hope for a better tomorrow.
For families struggling to put food on the table; workers toiling endlessly, yet remain in lack; and communities which were once full of hope, but now wrestle with despair, and the high instances of double standards and injustice festering before our own eyes.
The church as a voice of conscience, will always raise awareness to those concerned, not out of malice but out of Christian charity, to do better. People are lacking, hurting and angry. This is not an opinion but reality. Hence, there is need to embrace humility when receiving feedback.
The desire to silence the Church from raising awareness of the sufferings of the people, will not at all erase the miseries. If anything, it only proves that those concerned are inimical to the truth. However, the truth will always prevail. Truth has never been a numbers game. It has never needed a majority to stand tall.
At any rate, the Church will speak the truth, defend the truth and proclaim the truth, no matter the cost. Even when the Church is reduced to just twelve, as it was in the beginning, it will not waver in speaking, defending and proclaiming the truth.
May Mary, the Mother of the Child Jesus and our Lady of Lusaka, -the Assumption, intercede for us.
Given this at the Cathedral of the Child Jesus, this 5th March – Ash Wednesday in the Year of our Lord 2025, Eighteenth of our Episcopate.
Most Rev. Dr. Alick Banda
Archbishop of Lusaka