In the hope that everything turns out for the best
Yesterday I heard an interesting reflection about the much-needed virtue of hope. It contained a quote from Vaclav Havel, the famous Czech ex president, author, poet, playwright and dissident. He wrote: Hope is not a feeling of certainty that everything ends well. Hope is just a feeling that life and work have a meaning. Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.
It is interesting that in Havel’s view, hope is a feeling that life and work possess a meaning and the certainty that something makes sense, irrespective of its consequences. At one point Havel even said: Hope is the deep orientation of the human soul that can be held at the darkest times.
It is also illuminating to relate what Vaclav Havel is saying with what Pope Francis thinks about hope. Once he said: Although the life of a person is in a land full of thorns and weeds, there is always a space in which the good seed can grow. You have to trust God. But why in our lives there is always a space wherein the good seed can be planted, grow and bear fruit? Pope Francis replies: Sisters and brothers, this is our hope. God is Emmanuel, God-with-us. The infinitely great has made himself tiny; divine light has shone amid the darkness of our world; the glory of heaven has appeared on earth. And how? As a little child. If God can visit us, even when our hearts seem like a lowly manger, we can truly say: Hope is not dead; hope is alive and it embraces our lives forever. Hope does not disappoint!
And what is the direct consequence of Jesus Christ, as our hope? What does this hope tell us to do? Pope Francis continues: All of us have received the gift and task of bringing hope wherever hope has been lost, lives broken, promises unkept, dreams shattered and hearts overwhelmed by adversity. We are called to bring hope to the weary who have no strength to carry on, the lonely oppressed by the bitterness of failure, and all those who are broken-hearted. To bring hope to the interminable, dreary days of prisoners, to the cold and dismal lodgings of the poor, and to all those places desecrated by war and violence. To bring hope there, to sow hope there.
Lord Jesus Christ, you are my my hope. Help me let you work in and through me so that even today you keep bring peace, joy and love to the lonely, oppressed, and broken-hearted. Amen.
Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap
