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May 2 Hope: Trust in action

This week we celebrate Catholic Education Week! The theme for this week is: "nurturing hope." What a timely and beautiful thing for us to focus on =)


I've spoken before about hope (I think), but it is such an important topic, and there is so much that can be said about it! Hope is one of the theological virtues (just a cool fact for you to know). Hope is also the name of one of our students... On a more serious note, hope is one of the safeguards against despair - a pretty serious pitfall if you've ever been unfortunate enough to tangle with it before. Hope protects us by helping us to stay focused on the light at the end of the tunnel. In our current situation, it is perhaps one of the most important virtues for us to cultivate. SO... let's look at two aspects of hope: trust and gratitude.


Trust: trust is very closely linked to hope. We like to be in control - we like to know what to expect and what we might be up against in the near future. COVID has presented us with a series of situations that we a) have little or no control over, and b) can't really predict what might be coming next. The pandemic has wreaked havoc on our human desire for being in the know and in control. You might think the solution is some sort of fancy time-travelling-future-predicting thingamajig, or to simply have the universe graciously return control to us. However, that doesn't seem likely. Allow me to offer an alternate solution that is actually within reach: trust. Trust in no way changes the situation itself, but rather (innovatively), impacts our perception of the situation. See, rather than fulfilling our need for control, it goes around it. When I trust in God - knowing that He is a) all-powerful, b) always in control, and c) loves us and has our best interests at heart - then I don't have to look for control. The beauty of this is that God being in control is better than me pretending that I'm in control. What I'm saying is, "Jesus take the wheel" is a great idea because, let's face it, He's a much better driver than I am. Letting go, and letting God, is liberating: I don't have to seek control, or worry about the future. Trusting God doesn't mean that we shouldn't be prudent and prepare for our future and seek to exercise the gifts that God has given us - rather, it means that we can go about doing this without the gut wrenching anxiety that usually accompanies these kind of situations. Trust in God beats out despair, conquers fear and anxiety, and frees us to truly live life effectively. In this way, trust, when done right, leads us naturally to hope.


Similarly, gratitude leads us to hope. In the Bible, there are so many stories of holy men and women who recount God's marvelous deeds prior to undertaking a seemingly insurmountable task. They do this because the gratitude for God's deeds, as well as the memory of the incredible feats that He has done for them and their people, strengthen them to be able to face the situation with hope and trust. Hope because they know that God can conquer their situation, and trust because they know that He wants to [do what's best for them]. As we have now been pandemic-ing for more than a year, it might be a good idea for us to take some time to recount God's wonderful deeds in our life. I know, I know... why doesn't God just end the pandemic? Why doesn't He step in and just Holy Spirit COVID away? In fact, why did He allow COVID to happen at all? Truth is, I don't know. I mean, I know the theology around the problem of evil, and obviously that's where I'm going with this, but... I can't pretend to know God's actual thoughts. I just know that His ways are higher than my ways, and His plan is always better than mine. Ok, so here's some semblance of an answer: Love is a choice. Not a feeling, not butterflies in your stomach, not "omg, do you think he likes me too??!" No. It's a choice - a sacrificial choice for someone else's good. Even if it costs you. Especially if it costs you. (Love doesn't count the cost). In order for you to love, you must have free will (the ability to make choices... because love is a choice^^^^). In order for you to have free will, (the possibility of) evil must exist. Huh?? Yeah, because in order for you to have free will, you have to be free to choose whatever you want - including evil. Evil exists, then, because God loves us enough to allow us to have free will in order that we might be capable of love. If He "took away" all of the evil from the world, He would also have to strip us of our ability to choose - making us essentially into robots programmed only to do good (since one of the potential sources of evil is our own choices). But what if He only gave us good things to choose between, and didn't allow us to choose evil? Yeah, that's not free will. So, God permits evil because He loves us. Wait, lemme say that another way: God permits evil because He knows that us having the ability to love and to choose freely is worth the cost of the possibility of evil. Also, He knows that this world is just passing - we are made for much more than this, and we're just passing through here. Thus, even natural evil (which, don't get me wrong, sucks) such as disease, when seen from God's perspective, isn't the end of the world. He always sees things under the aspect of the eternal - with the reality that we will all pass from this world into the next at some point, because this world is simply for the sake of the next. So yea, COVID (and all disease) sucks, and yes I wish God would zap it away already... However, I know that His plan is always better than what I could have imagined, and although this pandemic has been rough, God still has a plan, and is still working for our good even through all of this. The problem of COVID and God not zapping it is bigger than I can tackle in one reflection though, so let me return to the actual point I was attempting to make. Gratitude, which even now we should have, can lead us to hope, because it focuses us on the fact that God has our back. He always has, and always will. Thus gratitude and trust are both helpful in the pursuit of hope.


Don't know if this one helps, but hey, hope you have a blessed Catholic Education Week!



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