Hope

Don’t lose hope.

Things are surely difficult right now, with stay at home orders and social distancing and the threat of the virus itself. Catholics are unable to receive the Eucharist, and in some places cannot receive other Sacraments. Even at Easter, it looks as if we will be celebrating the rising of the Lord in our homes, rather than physically in the community of the Church. Yet, don’t lose hope.

One sign of hope currently appearing is the spring flowers. Dormant and sleeping through the winter, they’ve started to color the earth with their reminder that “The world is charged with the grandeur of God … There lives the dearest freshness deep down things.” (Gerard Manley Hopkins)

Hope does not let darkness and discouragement upset it. Charles Peguy has beguiling and perfect images of the virtue of Hope in his extended poem The Portal of the Mystery of Hope. The most captivating image is of a little girl walking between her two older sisters (Faith and Charity), pulling them forward:

The little hope moves forward in between her two older sisters and one scarcely notices her. On the path to salvation, on the earthly path, on the rocky path of salvation, on the interminable road, on the road in between her two older sisters the little hope Pushes on. In between her two older sisters. …

And [the Christian people] willingly believe that it’s the two older ones who drag the youngest along by the hand. In the middle. Between them. To make her walk this rocky path of salvation. They are blind who cannot see otherwise. That it’s she in the middle who leads her older sisters along. And that without her they wouldn’t be anything. But two women already grown old. Two elderly women. Wrinkled by life.

It’s she, the little one, who carries them all. Because Faith sees only what is. But she, she sees what will be. Charity loves only what is. But she, she loves what will be.

Faith sees what is. In Time and in Eternity. Hope sees what will be. In time and for eternity.

In the future, so to speak, of eternity itself.

Hope is a little girl because children persevere. Chesterton notes that little children, when an adult plays with them, tell that courageous person to “Do it again!” and to “Do it again!” until the adult is nearly dead. Peguy’s image of hope is perfect, for the child perseveres laughing where the adult succumbs to weariness. “We have grown old, and our Father is younger than we” – we have grown old indeed if we lose sight of the glory of existence because of temporary struggles. We have let go the hand of the little child Hope if we lose sight of God working in the midst of challenges and fears.

We who live our lives in the light of the Resurrection can never despair, for Christ our Hope has conquered even death itself.

Don’t lose hope.