Throughout our upcoming Lenten journey, during which faithful U.S. Catholics will strive to deepen their relationship with Jesus through acts of prayer, fasting and almsgiving, three persons are distinctly well-positioned to serve as our spiritual guides this year.

The first Lenten guide for 2026 is Pope Leo XIV. As a fellow American, formed by his own upbringing in our nation’s robust Catholic culture, the Holy Father very literally speaks our language in a way no preceding pope ever has. We love Leo, and Leo loves us.

Since his election last year, the Holy Father has regularly displayed his gifts as a pastor of souls, including via his digital visit to the U.S. with teens who gathered in November at the National Catholic Youth Conference in Indianapolis. We should anticipate similar pastoral and spiritual nourishment throughout Leo’s first Lent as pope.

It has already been announced that he will visit five Roman parishes on Lenten Sundays, celebrating Mass and meeting there with parish groups. He has also chosen Norwegian Bishop Erik Varden to preach the Vatican’s annual Lenten spiritual exercises, on the theme of “Illuminated by a Hidden Glory.”

As an Augustinian, the Holy Father can be expected to draw extensively in his own Lenten reflections from the profound wisdom of the founder of his religious order. “Do you wish your prayer to fly toward God?” St. Augustine famously advised, regarding Lent’s core spiritual practices. “Make for it two wings: fasting and almsgiving.”

This year’s second Lenten guide is Jimmy Lai, the heroic Hong Kong Catholic media magnate who was unjustly sentenced to a 20-year prison term on Feb. 9 following his conviction on false charges of violating national security. The real reason for Lai’s initial arrest in 2020, and his subsequent imprisonments, is his unwavering support for the pro-democracy movement that mobilized at that time, after China’s ruling communist regime moved to suppress Hong Kong’s civil freedoms in violation of the guarantees that were provided in 1997, when the U.K. ceded control over the territory.

Lai was earlier convicted on other trumped-up charges, and he has been held for years in solitary confinement. So this month’s additional sentence represents a prolongation of his imprisonment, not its commencement. He has chosen to embrace this continuing injustice as an offering to God, refusing to recant his support for democracy and filling up his hours behind bars with prayers — including praying for his communist captors — and other Catholic devotional practices.

What a remarkable witness of faith under fire! Along with stirring us to pray fervently for his speedy release and to request that the Trump administration double down on its earlier efforts to overturn this legal travesty, the involuntary long Lent of Jimmy Lai should inspire us to draw closer to God ourselves by embracing our own voluntary sacrifices.

The third Lenten spiritual guide for 2026 is Archbishop Fulton Sheen, the renowned U.S. evangelist whose impending beatification has just been announced by the Vatican. This overdue recognition of the holiness of the greatest Catholic preacher in American history — and one of the greatest in the long life of the entire Church — was happy news to Catholics throughout the nation. It was especially welcome in the Diocese of Peoria, Illinois, where he was born, and in the Archdiocese of New York and the Diocese of Rochester, New York, where he served the Church with so much distinction throughout his decades of service as a priest and bishop.

Archbishop Sheen’s compendious output of books, syndicated newspaper columns and audio and video recordings includes a treasure trove of Lenten insights, highlighting the positive benefits that always derive from conforming with the Church’s recommended penitential sacrifices.

“We can think of Lent as a time to eradicate evil or cultivate virtue, a time to pull up weeds or to plant good seeds,” he counseled. “Which is better is clear, for the Christian ideal is always positive rather than negative.”

Pope Leo, Jimmy Lai and Archbishop Sheen: Combined, they constitute a spiritual trifecta that’s well worth betting on, in order to make this year’s Lent as fruitful as possible.