Walking Lent with Francis, with John, and Across the Landscapes of the World

Across the world—from icebound poles to bustling cities, from drought-stricken plains to rainforest canopies—humanity is wrestling with the same questions: How do we live truthfully? How do we repair what has been broken? How do we become people of peace and reconciliation?

This Lent, we turn to the Gospel of John—the Gospel St Francis of Assisi asked to be read to him as he lay dying in October 1226. His companions tell us that the reading began, “Before the feast of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come…” (John 13:1). The passage was the washing of the disciples’ feet: the moment Jesus kneels, takes the posture of a servant, and reveals that reconciliation always begins in humility. For Francis, this was the Gospel that held his whole life—conversion, penance, peace, and joy—in a single, luminous frame. He wanted his final breath to be shaped by the story of Jesus’ self-giving love, and this Lent, we listen alongside him.

Why John’s Gospel ?

John’s Gospel draws us into divine intimacy. It reveals a Christ who freely lays down his life in love, who washes feet as the truest sign of authority, who makes peace even in the shadow of betrayal, and who reconciles a fractured creation by stretching out his arms on the Cross. It is a landscape of light, belonging, mutual indwelling, and the continual invitation to “abide.” For Francis, whose life became a pattern of joyful penance and radical peaceableness toward every creature, John’s vision was not abstract but lived reality.

Reading John Across the World

This Lent, we will not read John alone.

We will read it with the Church across Oceania, Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe—each offering insights shaped by land, history, wounds, and hope. Their wisdom reminds us that penance is never merely personal; it is communal, relational, and ecological. It involves truth-telling, the healing of memory, the restoration of dignity, and the renewal of creation itself.
Alongside these global voices, we will hear stories from landscapes marked by conflict, colonisation, climate change, cultural loss, and courageous rebuilding. These reflections root the Gospel in the soil of real experience—places where injustice still cries out and where reconciliation remains urgent.

These five continental perspectives are framed by the Arctic and the Antarctic—the bookends of our shared planet. Their ice, water, and fragile ecosystems are the barometers of the world’s health. They remind us that repentance and reconciliation must include the earth itself: its wounds, its cries, its longing for restoration.

A Pilgrimage Through the Earth’s Landscapes

We begin in the Arctic—a landscape of snow, silence, and light—where Indigenous wisdom teaches that creation itself keeps Sabbath and that healing cannot be separated from land, sky, and community. From there we journey through the continents, listening to theologians, elders, poets, and storytellers who help us hear John’s Gospel in new accents and through new experiences. In Holy Week, we travel in spirit to Antarctica: a place of stark honesty, vigilance, fragility, and courage—a fitting landscape through which to accompany Jesus toward the Cross.

The Rhythm of Sabbath

Sabbath rest frames each Sunday of this journey. Before turning to the next continent, we pause. Sabbath teaches us to breathe, to listen, to honour limits, and to receive rather than grasp. It is a weekly reminder that reconciliation does not begin with frantic effort but with attentive presence—the presence Jesus offers throughout John’s Gospel, and the presence Francis cultivated in prayer, simplicity, and joyful humility.

The structure of this book mirrors that rhythm

• Weekdays immerse us in John’s Gospel and in the landscapes, wounds, wisdom, and hopes of communities across the world.
• Sundays offer Sabbath rest: a gentler reflection, a moment of quiet, and an introduction to the next terrain we will enter.

Walking Together in a Worldwide Franciscan Family

These reflections are offered as a gift from the five Provinces of our worldwide Franciscan family: Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific Islands. Each Province brings its own voice—contemplative stillness, ecological consciousness, Indigenous wisdom, resilience in suffering, longing for justice, and the deep desire for healing in a fractured world. Together they form a single invitation:

to explore what it means today to be penitent people who work for peace and reconciliation—in our relationships, our communities, and the whole creation.

An Invitation into Transformation

To walk through Lent in this way is to accept the same invitation Francis accepted at the end of his life: to let the Gospel judge us, remake us, and restore us. We do not read John to admire it from afar, but to let its truth take root in us. Each landscape—frozen, forested, volcanic, urban, or oceanic—becomes a mirror for the landscape of our own hearts.

This Lent, may we walk gently across the world.
May we listen as Francis listened.
May we rest as creation rests.

May we allow John’s Gospel to lead us—through light and darkness, through sorrow and glory—into the reconciling love of the Crucified and Risen Christ.

Let this journey draw us into the heart of Christ, who walks with us and shows us both the cost, and the endless adventures, of loving deeply.