When you see “be hopeful” stamped in cursive on a Hobby Lobby mug, do you ever find yourself asking: why should I be? Sometimes, the stressors in our lives are big enough that a cheery mug message can’t perk us up.
This year is a Jubilee Year in the Catholic Church, and Pope Francis has selected the theme “Pilgrims of Hope.” Is this Jubilee theme no better than some cheesy dishware? How can we force ourselves into a state of bright positivity for an entire year?
In order to embrace our Christian call to hope, we need to understand the difference between hope as a passion and as a virtue. The virtue of hope is not optimism, and it is more than the feeling of desiring some upcoming good. Rather, it is a gift from God which anchors us in peaceful confidence and propels us towards our ultimate desire and happiness: Eternal Life.
The Jubilee theme can help us better understand the virtue of hope, because we are all pilgrims in this life. Human beings are on a journey: to the next good job, the next big milestone, the next dream house. People are driven by stacking desires—little hope upon little hope that whatever “next” thing we hope for will bring us the happiness we crave.
During the Jubilee Year of Hope, all members of the Church are invited to go on a pilgrimage to designated Holy Doors and receive a plenary indulgence. But we are also making pilgrimage to the Holiest Doors, the Gates of Heaven. God instilled a desire for happiness in our hearts, and He gives us the gift of Hope so that we can learn to recognize that eternal life with Him is the only happiness that will fulfill our infinite desires. The theological virtue of Hope takes up and purifies the emotion of wanting “more” or “next” and teaches us to desire our destiny, Heaven.
Hope protects us against two sinful extremes: presumption and despair. This virtue reminds us that our final goal is difficult to attain and gives us the humility to beg God for His help. But, it also bolsters us and reminds us of how loved we are and always will be, and that we have a heavenly Father who wants to help us reach our Heavenly homeland. Hope therefore must be rooted in Faith, since Faith offers the certainty of a loving God and the possibility of eternal happiness with Him.
In his encyclical Spe Salvi, Pope Benedict XVI pointed to St. Josephine Bakhita as a model of hope. This heroic woman was enslaved and abused for years. Yet, she said: “I am definitively loved and whatever happens to me—I am awaited by this Love. And so my life is good.” This Saint recognized how loved she was, presently and surely, even in the hardest moments of her life. She then trusted that this love would continue, and that the fullness of Love awaited her in Heaven. As Benedict XVI put it: “Man's great, true hope which holds firm in spite of all disappointments can only be God—God who has loved us and who continues to love us ‘to the end,’ until all ‘is accomplished.’”
While our lives are full of lesser hopes which move us forward day by day, they are insufficient. Hoping for a better job is not enough to make the Hobby Lobby mug meaningful. The only true, unconquerable hope is hope from God and in God—bringing us to God. We are all Pilgrims of Hope, not only in 2025, but until the journey of our lives is complete.
By Genevieve O’Connor, Communications Specialist and Campus Minister of Muhlenberg College, Allentown. She holds an MTS in Moral Theology from the University of Notre Dame and an MFA in Creative Writing from DeSales University, Center Valley.
