“Through the desert God leads us to freedom” is the theme of Pope Francis’s 2024 Lenten Message. Beginning in the Book of Exodus, Pope Francis said that when God reveals God’s self, the message is one of freedom: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Ex 20:2). Pope Francis asks us to consider those things that we cling to that perhaps need to be left behind so we can grow in the freedom of God’s love.