Reading and watching during Lent

The three pillars of Lent—prayer, fasting, and almsgiving—must always be our primary focus during these forty days. The purpose—or end—of these disciplines is to grow closer to God through spiritual and corporal works.

While we should never shun or even diminish those essential elements of Lent, some adjunct activities may both subsidize traditional Lenten disciplines and serve the purpose of spiritual development. Lent can be a time to grow in our understanding and appreciation of the three transcendentals of truth, beauty, and goodness. Thus, many of us add intentional reading, listening, or watching to our Lenten practices and habits. Toward that end, I have suggestions for Lenten reading and viewing that might contribute to a rich, fulfilling Lent.

There’s no end of booklets, pamphlets, and apps specifically designed to assist us in Lenten prayer. Readers of Catholic World Report are likely aware of several such prayer aids. Without diminishing the value of these publications and websites, becoming immersed in great, perennial works of literature, memoir, and biography can also contribute to Lenten discipline and growth. I suggest one of each genre.

Help my unbelief

Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory is one of those novels that presents itself anew in reading after reading. No matter how often I read it, I find some new insight into the fallen human condition, the essential goodness of creation, the perseverance of the Hound of Heaven, and the hope of redemption. On the surface, The Power and the Glory is the story of an imperfectly faithful priest fighting internal demons and external violence as he tries to serve his flock in revolutionary Mexico. The unnamed “Whiskey Priest” is among Greene’s most famous characters, and perhaps his most typical. Like many characters in Greeneland, the priest roams around the margins of political, economic, and social life, and thus amidst the extremes of human frailty and inconstancy. Perennial types of Judas, Pilate, Herod, and Caesar are all here, reformulated by Greene into rich, complex characters who move the novel briskly toward its shocking climax.

As with most of Greene’s novels, the narrative reaches a deep level of psychological, moral, and spiritual conflict, which are perfect themes for the season of Lent. Along with the Whiskey Priest, we meet an assortment of cynics and hypocrites, spies and betrayers, faithful Christians and militant atheists. And like many of Greene’s protagonists, the priest himself is a bundle of contradictions. Is he a coward or a hero? Is he a faithful priest or a scandalous apostate? A saint or a sinner? The answer to all these questions is probably, “Yes.” Greene’s task is to show us that the Whiskey Priest is not dissimilar to us, the reader, in the ebb and flow of his faith and faithfulness, his resolutions and failures.

Most importantly, however, The Power and the Glory is a novel about Christ and his Church, which transcends the failings of her members. But, oh, those members!

Restless hearts on the pilgrim path

It might seem like a cliché to recommend St. Augustine’s Confessions, but I am often reminded how neglected this great work of spiritual memoir is, even among well-read Catholics. Even though it is the account of the spiritual, moral, and intellectual pilgrimage of a great fifth-century saint—and perhaps the greatest theologian in the history of the Church—Confessions is both highly relevant and applicable to any reader in any era. The narrative character of the first ten books, at least, makes the form of the memoir especially fitting for Lent.

Though he has long been in the company of canonized saints, before he was a bishop of the north African region of Hippo, Augustine was an inveterate sinner in Tagaste . . . and Carthage . . . and Rome . . . and Milan. His moral failure and spiritual journey are familiar enough to relate to many of us. Youthful hooliganism, adult sexual debauchery, flirtation with Christian heresies and pagan philosophies, tension with his parents, disputes with mentors, and the loss of close friends are familiar aspects of the human drama.

Yet, St. Augustine’s experience of these things and the persistence of God’s pursuit of His wayward son offer unique insights from which we can all learn. Throw in profoundly original meditations on time, memory, and the problem of evil, and Confessions is perfect reading for our own Lenten journeys. (And if you want a bonus book, Robin Lane Fox’s biography, Augustine: Conversions to Confessions, is a critical but fair companion to the great saint’s own memoir.)

God’s good servant

On the topic of biography, I did not think I would find a more thorough and fair account of the life of St. Thomas than Peter Ackroyd’s 1999 bio, The Life of Thomas More. But in 2025, British historian Joanne Paul’s new book, Thomas More: A Life, may have superseded Ackroyd’s excellent work.

By no means is the book a hagiography. Paul presents More in all his complex humanity, as frail and faulty as anyone in many ways. But she is always fair to his life and legacy, skillfully situating his faith and life in the context of 16th-century England. Readers will find in More’s life the inspiration to deepen one’s commitment to Christian faith, without regard to the consequences that might follow. From Joanne Paul’s biography, we can learn what St. Thomas More meant when he declared that he was the King’s good servant, and God’s first. (Bonus reading: St. Thomas More, The Four Last Things.)

Watching and waiting

Many people choose to limit or eliminate screen time for Lent, whether that be the small screen of personal devices or a large television screen. But if you incorporate edifying viewing into your Lenten discipline rather than eliminating media, the options are abundant. Toward that end, I suggest two films.

True purpose of amendment

Jeff Bridges has had one of the longest and most productive careers in Hollywood, making his film breakthrough in 1971 in an adaptation of Larry McMurtry’s novel, The Last Picture Show, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award. Perhaps best known for his iconic role as “The Dude” in The Big Labowski, he has also had brilliant performances in Come Hell or High Water, True Grit, and Bad Times at the El Royale, to name just a few.

My favorite Bridges film, however, is the one for which he has won his only Oscar, the 2008 film Crazy Heart, which also happens to be a great film for Lent.

In Crazy Heart, Bridges plays Otis “Bad” Blake, a washed-up, has-been (or, perhaps, never-was) country singer-songwriter whose career has plummeted to the level of playing gigs at truck stops and bowling alleys. Once a promising songwriter—with one hit song sung by another artist—as the film opens, he is a chronic alcoholic, driving a broken-down pickup truck from one dusty southwestern crossroads to another. At the nadir of his artistic career, Blake meets a journalist (Jean Craddock, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal), with whom he falls in love. This relationship sets the trajectory of the film, including Blake’s continuing struggle with alcohol and Gyllenhaal’s vexation in trying to help him.

Of course, I don’t want to spoil the film, so I’ll not say more about the plot. Suffice it to say, however, it does not go the way you probably think. But you will see in both Blake and Craddock key themes for Lenten reflection, even as these forty days lead to their resolution at Easter. (As a bonus, Bad Blake’s story is partly told through his struggle to write a song, “The Weary Kind.” The song, actually composed and recorded by Ryan Bingham—who has a cameo appearance in the film—won the Oscar for best original song.)

Living

Living is a 2022 British drama set in 1953, when London was still rebuilding from the devastation of World War 2. Directed by Oliver Hermanus from a screenplay by Kazuo Ishiguro, Living is adapted from the 1952 Akira Kurosawa film, Ikiru. British actor Bill Nighy plays Rodney Williams, an aged London County Council bureaucrat running one of an alphabet soup of public works departments. Along with other agency heads, Mr. Williams is more concerned with losing project requests in a mountain of neglected files and folders than with cleaning, repairing, or building actual public works. Mr. Williams is a humorless, lethargic, uninspired autocrat, lording over a team of four lower-level minions, who are both obsequious to his authority and neglectful of actual work.

But then Mr. Williams is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Realizing that he has only months to live, and that he has not lived at all for the sixty-odd years of his life, he sets out to make up for lost time in a drunken bacchanalia at a seaside resort. But that is no more fulfilling than his mirthless job. Through the companionship of a young former subordinate (Miss Margaret Harris, played by Aimee Lou Wood), he tries another tack to make the most of the time he has left: serving the needs of someone else. “Living,” Mr. Williams learns, is defined neither by inertia nor self-gratification, but rather by making oneself available to others. We watch Mr. Williams travel through the desert of despair to a life well lived, even if lately learned.

If you have given up all media for Lent, good for you. But if not, and you are looking for books or films that may enrich your Lenten journey, these suggestions might help you to learn things about yourself, God, and other people that you might not yet know. And, properly intended, they may contribute to your own Lenten growth.