Protest: A Lenten Practice

TIMOTHY BRUNK — February 8, 2026

The season of Lent 2026 is around the corner.  In this short essay, I contend that lawful protest on behalf of the rights of immigrants is a suitable Lenten practice.

Vatican II reminds us that “the season of Lent has a twofold character: primarily by recalling or preparing for baptism and by penance, it disposes the faithful, who more diligently hear the word of God and devote themselves to prayer, to celebrate the paschal mystery.”¹  Regardless of whether one celebrates the sacrament of Penance during Lent, this season is marked by a spirit of repentance.  On the subject of repentance, the Order of Penance which came into effect in 2023 offers these comments:

“There reigns among people, by the hidden and benign mystery of the divine will, a supernatural solidarity whereby the sin of one harms the others just as the holiness of one also benefits the others,” and so repentance always carries with it reconciliation with one’s brothers and sisters, to whom sin always causes harm.

In fact, often when people commit deeds of injustice, they act together.  In the same way, when they repent they help one another, so that, freed from sin by the grace of Christ, they may work together with all people of good will for justice and peace in the world.²

A spirit of repentance, then, has a link to working “together with all people of good will for justice and peace in the world.”  Advocating for the rights of immigrants is surely a matter of working for justice and peace.  Such advocacy can involve legal representation, letters to government officials, direct service to immigrants . . . and protests.

For some, connecting liturgy / liturgical spirituality to acts of protest might come across as a stretch.  Let us note, therefore, that the word “protest” appears only three times in the present Catechism of the Catholic Church.  For our purposes, the relevant appearance is in no. 2172:

God’s action is the model for human action.  If God “rested and was refreshed” on the seventh day, man too ought to “rest” and should let others, especially the poor, “be refreshed.”  The sabbath brings everyday work to a halt and provides a respite.  It is a day of protest against the servitude of work and the worship of money.³

Sunday worship is already an act of protest and a declaration of allegiance to the Triune God above all other allegiances.  To declare such allegiance is to preach the Gospel.  In the words of the 1971 Synod of Bishops, “action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world fully appear to us as a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the Gospel.”⁴

Especially when those who protest for the rights of immigrants keep in mind that they, too, are sinners before a merciful God, such protests are indeed a fitting Lenten practice (and not only in Lent and, of course, not only with respect to immigrants).

¹Sacrosanctum Concilium 109 at https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19631204_sacrosanctum-concilium_en.html

²Order of Penance 5.  The text in quotation marks is taken from Paul VI, Apostolic Constitution Indulgentiarum doctrina (1 January 1967) 4.

³Text at http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/para/2172.htmh .  Emphasis added.

⁴World Synod of Bishops, Justice in the World (1971) 6