Lent 2026 - Reading #40 - Hope
Reading
C.S. Lewis, in The Weight of Glory, speaks of the ache of hope that points beyond this world: "In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you, the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence." Lewis continues: "Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth's expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If they could have been present at the original creation of the universe, these souls would have felt the same. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing." Lewis insists: "These things, the beauty, the memory of our own past, are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.
Reflection
Forty-two days into Lent, Lewis names the ache that lies beneath all our lesser desires. Our journey through the virtues has been peeling back layers, from the outer disciplines of action to the inner landscape of faith and hope. And here, at the deepest level, Lewis finds not satisfaction but longing: an inconsolable desire for something no earthly experience can fully provide. This is not pessimism; it is the most radical form of hope. If our deepest desires cannot be satisfied by anything in this world, then either we are cosmic accidents doomed to perpetual frustration, or we are made for another world entirely. Christian hope chooses the latter interpretation, not because it is comforting, but because it fits the evidence. The beauty that arrests us, the love that overwhelms us, the joy that breaks through in unexpected moments, these are not illusions but signals, hints of a reality more solid than anything we currently know. Lent has been teaching us to notice these signals by clearing away the noise. The fasting, the silence, the simplification, all of it creates space for the deep longing to surface. Many people find Lent uncomfortable precisely because this longing, usually buried under busyness and stimulation, finally makes itself felt. Do not run from it. It is the most honest thing about you. It is hope in its purest form: the soul's native orientation toward its true home. Holy Week approaches, and with it the virtue of love. But love, as we will discover, is the fulfillment of this very longing.