The Heartbeat of Faith: Approaching Lent with Hallow’s Pray40

At the end of Lent, the celebration of the Paschal Mystery shows how the Lenten journey of purification culminates in the free and loving gift of self to the Father. 
—St. John Paul II, “Message of the Holy Father John Paul II for Lent 1997” 

What begins as an exciting promise of grace, renewal, and charity can sometimes be overshadowed by perfectionism or outsized expectations. As on December 31st, we may feel a great desire to uphold resolutions without proper preparation–giving up all sweets, selfish behaviors, or vices in a manner that is less than sustainable or turns the Lenten season into a sort of “waiting period” or self-help ritual. While some of us may bite off more than we can chew, some of us may make rigid asceticism the sole purpose of the Lenten journey, accidentally entrapping ourselves in performative piety and wondering where we went wrong. However, St. John Paul II reminds us of the ultimate goal of this journey–it is not the Catholic version of a successful New Year’s resolution, but instead the free and loving gift of self to the Father. 

With this in mind, what we actually hope to achieve through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving transcends the quotidian. Perhaps we long to better embody the sacrificial nature of love, to allow God into the most wounded parts of ourselves, to develop a more charitable spirit, or to strengthen our grace in relation to others. Maybe we enter the Church on Ash Wednesday for the first time since last Sunday, since Christmas, since our childhood, or even for the first time in our lives. No matter how far we must travel, we are all invited to return home and receive the ashes, a centuries-old, visible reminder of the freeing nature of repentance, the hope of eternal life, and our Father’s abiding love and mercy. Rather than wringing our hands over our earthly performances of fasting, we may find that softening our hearts to these spiritual reminders allows us to set realistic goals to carry us through Easter and beyond.

Prayer and Its Wings

Do you wish your prayer to fly towards God? St. Augustine writes that you should then make for it two wings: fasting and almsgiving. If these three pillars of Lent are a bird, prayer is the bird’s body. Whatever you choose to give up, and whatever benevolence you show, prayer is the heartbeat that allows those wings to do their job. Each pillar relies on the other to keep the bird in flight, and their purposes cannot be divorced. This Lenten season, we invite you to explore a new tool to help you center your prayer life, the heartbeat of your relationship to God, in a way that supports your focus and commitment to the true purpose of the season. 

Hallow’s Pray40: The Way

Just in time for Ash Wednesday, everyone’s favorite prayer app has announced its sixth annual Lenten Prayer Challenge: Pray40: The Way. 

If you aren’t familiar with Hallow, we recommend it wholeheartedly. The app is inviting, user-friendly, and uncluttered, with a vast collection of recordings: daily Gospels, Rosaries, reflections on the saints, devotionals for men, women, and teens, meditations, novenas, examens, playlists, podcasts that lead you through the Bible or the Catechism in one year, Bishop Robert Barron’s Sunday Sermons, Gregorian chant…the list goes on. The app is primed for profound spiritual reflection, quick guided prayers for your lunch break, falling asleep peacefully, and everything in between. 

A press release from Hallow says that the 2025 prayer challenge’s theme is based on John 14:6–I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life–and will draw from St. Josemaría Escrivá’s The Way. “The book, published in 1934 and considered one of the most powerful spiritual texts of the 20th century, is composed of 999 ‘points,’ or considerations, that inspire prayer and meditation,” the press release explains. 

While purchasing Escrivá’s book is certainly not necessary to participate in the challenge, its accessible nature will appeal to many. Composed of bite-sized aphorisms, the book is easy to pick up whether you have an hour or three minutes to devote to contemplation. Hallow says that Pray40 will also feature a special edition of A Song for Nagasaki, “a book published by Ignatius Press on the life of Servant of God Takashi Nagai, who survived the atomic bomb but faced difficulty, heartbreak and, ultimately, conversion.” In different ways, these texts both serve to keep forgiveness, prayer, and ongoing conversion at the forefront of our minds through the lives of the saints and the faithful.

Sr. Miriam James Heidland and actors Jonathan Roumie and Mark Wahlberg will lead the prayer challenge alongside Fr. Mike Schmitz, who will also lead the Sunday homilies. Cardinal Robert Sarah’s Saturday sessions will be “focused on meditation in silence, drawn from his book The Power of Silence, to find peace amidst the noise of the world.” Actor Chris Pratt will join as a special guest, guiding sessions focused on fasting with Wahlberg.

On Ash Wednesday 2024, Hallow became the first ever religious app to reach the #1 spot on Apple’s App Store, with tens of millions of individual downloads. One imagines that it will reach that status again this year. Hallow’s press release states that they will be partnering with the Sanctuary of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro to light the famous statue up in “Hallow purple” on Ash Wednesday, and the challenge will be available in eight languages with anticipated users in over 150 countries. 

Among the app’s many strong features, that last point shouldn’t be neglected–Hallow fosters a connection between Catholics around the world through communal prayer, digitally reflecting our nature as the Body of Christ. Let us not forget the true purpose of Lent this season, and let us also not forget this reality of our connection to others, resolving to treat them as the beloved children of God that they are and embracing our relationships to one another as siblings in Christ. 

Watch the Hallow promo video and listen in to a recent conversation between Paloma & Fig founder Christina Sabo and Taylor Buckley from Hallow on our podcast, “A Resounding Yes” on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

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Writer and editor Franci Revel Eckensberger holds a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from Cornell University. With years of experience as a copyeditor for academics, fellow writers, and various small businesses, she takes pride in maintaining clarity, consistency, and beauty in each client’s voice. 

Franci finds grace and insight in the Catholic Church’s rich relationship to language and invites that relationship to influence both her literary and editorial work. Saint Cecilia and Catherine of Siena continue to play a vital role in her journey to the faith as an artist. She lives in coastal Delaware with her husband.