I have a lot of hope. I’m full to the brim with it. This is a gift God has given to me. I have no idea why. I don’t even remember asking for it.
But here I am, a one-time full-throated negativity announcer, a misery-monger, who now falls asleep at night with a smile on her face. I’m a woman with a chronic, progressive illness who has to sleep half of every day away, once divorced, a woman who lost her breasts and hair and strength to cancer, a woman who — despite many serious trials and failings, and one with a long legacy of sin — is bursting with hope.
My heavenly Father has given this to me. I have not earned it. I have not conjured it. It is a pure gift — and I want to share it with everyone I meet.
As I write, I’m reflecting in adoration on Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. I have brought you and your heart and hopes with me. It is Advent 2023 and the sanctuary is dressed in purple; the smell of incense fills the air; the candles burn, offering their tender, holy light, and the Lord is big and so beautiful in the glimmering, golden monstrance before me, seated high and mighty on a white marble altar. And he is reaching down into my little hand, into my pen, and I sense him saying to me how very much he loves you and this same hope that brims over in me he wants to give to you too. A thrill of hope, an Advent hope that longs for his coming.
I’m confident of that.
And of this too: hope in him, hope in his goodness, hope in the knowledge that he knows you perfectly, loves you completely, every hair on your head — or falling off your head as the case may be. And he has such plans for you, for your flourishing — despite hardship, despite illness, despite failure, sin, limitation or loss. Flourishing. You. That is absolutely the plan.
And this: You were created for hope and to be a bearer of hope for the world.
Buoyed by hope
The Advent season is meant to refresh us in hope of the second coming and to stir our desire for heaven. Until then, we remain pilgrims, “people on the way,” and the fuel we use to move forward is hope.
As a theological virtue, hope orders our heart toward “the desire of the Kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises” (CCC, 1817). The Church reminds us that, “The virtue of hope responds to the aspiration to happiness which God has placed in the heart of every man … it keeps man from discouragement; it sustains him during times of abandonment; it opens up his heart in expectation of eternal beatitude. Buoyed by hope, he is preserved from selfishness and led to the happiness that flows from charity” (CCC, 1818).
Let’s make it a point to spend some time reflecting on this gorgeous idea: a desire for happiness has been placed in our hearts. Buoyed by this hope, we can become effective witnesses to Christ in the world that needs him so much. Let’s allow the Lord to give us a new infusion of hope this Advent, overflowing, running down, spilling over. And then let’s share that with the world around us.
Holy Spirit, stir afresh our hearts with true hope, give us a fresh infilling that our lives would illuminate the truth of Christ and draw the world nearer to him who is our hope.
Stanchina is the community leader for Women’s Formation at the Word on Fire Institute, and the author of “A Thrill of Hope,” the 2024 Advent devotional from women’s ministry Blessed is She, from which this article has been excerpted. Visit her website at LizK.org.
