Have you ever met a person who lost hope? You’ll find the face of despair anywhere and everywhere. A young person whose relationship ended and sees no future. An old person, married 70 years, whose spouse has died and sees no future. A person who is addicted and tried time and again to recover but can’t … and sees no future.
The late Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, an author and teacher, once said, “Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.”
But what about people who can’t believe tomorrow will be better than today? What do they do?
I’ve met many people, from students to seniors, from widows to terminally ill patients, who’ve known despair, and I’ve known a fair number who are depressed because they see no future.
Sadly, some of them are young people, who should be the most hopeful. They see no reason for living, and for them it’s virtually impossible to think their way out of despair.
I’ve also known people whose addictions brought them so far into darkness they were convinced there was no hope. The fortunate ones eventually found a 12-step program like Alcoholics Anonymous, where the first steps are: 1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable. 2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. 3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.
They had lost hope and realized that by themselves, they couldn’t pull themselves out of their despair and addiction.
A priest I knew once told the story of a man in his town who wanted to die. He was old and sick, and he insisted that assisted suicide was his “right.” He wrote letters to the editor and called legislators, urging them to pass a law recognizing this so-called right.
Then one day, the letters and calls stopped. Everyone assumed he had died or worse, taken his life. But the truth was much different. He no longer wanted to die.
A religious sister who worked with the elderly had begun visiting him and accomplished the miraculous. She didn’t cure him physically, but she reaffirmed that his life—as broken and unproductive as it may have seemed to the outside world—had value.
She showed him the love of Christ—a love we’re all entitled to, no matter our condition or health or wealth. Her compassion and caring made all the difference, and his suffering became easier to endure. Someone else saw the value of his life, and so he did too. He found hope.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church says: “Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit. [This virtue] takes up the hopes that inspire men’s activities and purifies them so as to order them to the kingdom of heaven; it keeps man from discouragement; it sustains him during times of abandonment; it opens up his heart in expectation of eternal beatitude. Buoyed up by hope, he is preserved from selfishness and led to the happiness that flows from charity” (CCC 1817-1818).
Those words, “relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit.” That’s different from Thich Nhat Hanh’s teaching, which says we can create hope through our optimism.
One person who understood hope was St. Paul, who suffered a lot of adversity but never lost hope. As he told the Romans, “Rejoice in hope, endure in affliction, persevere in prayer.”
Hope is a gift, and there’s only one place to find it. Sit in front of the tabernacle, where all the answers lie.
Are you having problems with your marriage? Sit in front of the Blessed Sacrament. Are you having problems with your kids? Sit in front of the Blessed Sacrament. Did a family member or friend die? Sit in front of the Blessed Sacrament. Are you having difficulties at work? Sit in front of the Blessed Sacrament. Are you facing financial troubles? Sit in front of the Blessed Sacrament. Are you depressed, despairing, guilty, lonely, angry, unloved? Sit in front of the Blessed Sacrament … and you’ll get all the hope you need.
(Joe Pisani can be reached at [email protected].)
