The Call of Fellowship

Mar 27, 2026 | By Jack Ludwick GH ‘28

While the Lenten season is traditionally understood as a time of reflection, repentance, and reconciliation, this season also reveals a deeper grace - the universal call of Christian fellowship.

As a collective Christian body, we are called to walk together through these forty days of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving, living with and learning from the faiths of those all over the world.  Through this time of reconciliation, we grow deeper not only in a personal connection with Christ, but in a more intimate communal conversion of the entire Christian world. 

This Lenten calling for fellowship can be seen in large, profound ways. After a weeklong Christian conference, a group of students and I began a weekly fast of vices we were independently struggling with. These experiences have highlighted that a more communal approach to personal sin and shame has a transformative effect on our faith. Lent is meant to change us, through our habits and through our desires, and sharing in fellowship with other followers is the most effective and collective way a Christian can accomplish that conversion.

We are also blessed to have Spring Break in the middle of the Lenten season, with the opportunity to take our Lenten journey off our campuses and to the greater Christian world.  During this spring break, I spent time in Vietnam traveling around with a campus group. Sitting at a Friday afternoon mass, hearing the announcements in both Vietnamese and English, I learned that a version of a “fish fry” would be taking place after mass for dinner. Stunned, I instantly thought about the fish fries I attended growing up at my church back in North Carolina.  Sensing a sort of call, I decided to attend the fish fry and talk to some of the parishioners about their faiths and their Lenten journeys.  That next hour was one of the most enlightening moments of my Christian faith, breaking bread with Christians halfway around the world and sharing in similar desires of radically different lives. I felt the unified fellowship of Christian life so overwhelmingly in our prayer, in our struggles, and in our love for Christ and each other.  Though we did not know each other, the fellowship of the Lenten season equipped each of us to approach the rest of our journeys with a knowing and appreciation for the joys and struggles of someone a 17-hour flight away. 

As we come to the near conclusion of this Lenten season, remember that your fasts, your sins, and your seasons of loneliness are not just burdened by yourself, but are replicated and carried by the entire fellowship of followers around the world.  Holding ourselves to the pillar of prayer, pray for everyone around the world, that this Lenten season may be a time for deeper conversion, and that the conversation of others inspires us to embrace further fellowship.