Today is the first Sunday of Advent.
The candles in the Advent wreath represent Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love. This week I want to talk about hope. If you know what my topics are for the coming weeks of Advent you’re smarter than the average bear as my mother used to say.
In Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical Spe Salvi https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20071130_spe-salvi.html he talks about the relationship between faith and hope. I think there’s such a relationship that the two are hardly separable. Think about why you have hope and see if faith isn’t a prerequisite for hope. Our faith in the resurrection of Christ give us hope that we too may be raised up on the last day. Faith in Mary’s assumption gives us hope for our own.
What gives you hope? The Theological Virtues are Faith, Hope, and Love. St. Paul tells us that love (charity) is the greatest of these. In fact, once we are in heaven we no longer need hope since the thing hoped for has come to pass.
We use the word hope in secular ways all the time too. Each week I close by telling you I hope you have a great week. I also hope the Bears will win but things are such a mess with them I’m about hopeless in that regard. That’s another kind of hope though. Thursday I hoped we would have enough turkey left for me to get a sandwich. We did.
Jesse Jackson famously said to keep hope alive. I think Bill Clinton might have borrowed that phrase as well. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said “we must accept finite disappointment but must never lose infinite hope“. That seems good advice. St. Peter told us to always be ready to give a reason for our hope.
So, as we consider this week’s Advent candle let us think about what gives us hope and how we might pass that on to others. God knows this world needs some hope right now and, whether or not we think we’re the ones to provide it, that’s part of our job. I hope we’re up to it.
That’s it for now. Thanks for reading.
I hope you have a great week.
Peace, Bob
This and That BLOG 