PRACTICING HOPE

by Stuart Hamilton

If you pay any attention to the news, hope seems in short supply these days. Last Friday was the feast of the immaculate conception–one of the Church’s holy days of obligation.  As I entered into that great liturgical celebration of the Church, what seemed most palpable to me was the calling to be a people of hope. 

Before the conception of Mary, for untold centuries every human being had been marred at their conception by the brokenness of original sin. Even God’s chosen ones, the people of Israel, had, at various times in their storied history, given up hope that anything would ever change. Constantly, they gave in to their unbalanced cravings for sin because they couldn’t envision any other way to live. Only the prophets of Israel–the tiniest of a tiny minority–saw any hope for humanity in God’s promises of the future in which the offspring of a virgin would “crush the serpent’s head”. 

With the Immaculate Conception of Mary, the prophet’s small glimmer of hope was finally fulfilled as she was the first human born free of original sin by the saving grace of her future son’s work. Later, at the Annunciation, Mary once again stood as an image of hope when confronted with the dangerous task of saying “yes” to God’s will for her life, by bearing God’s only begotten son. Both she and Joseph stand as living icons of obedient hope as time and time again they said “yes” to the plan of Christ for their lives, in spite of incredible odds that they might not make it.

It seems to me, looking at the state of our current culture, that what the world desperately needs right now is genuine hope. But hope isn’t just a theological gift we receive–it is a theological virtue that must be practiced in exactly the same way Joseph and Mary did. When we consistently say “yes” to God’s plan, we, by these small acts of rebellion against despair, build up a sense within ourselves and others that things can change, and through God’s providence, things will change. Seek the gift of hope, practice the virtue of hope and, in your life, let hope shine forth like a city on the hill. Only then will the shadows of the culture of death be scattered once and for all.