WAITING WITH HOPE IN THE DARKNESS

A single parent hoping to land a job so that his children won’t have to skimp on meals.

A young girl hoping her family will hold together as anger and vice threatens to tear them apart.

A cancer patient in Mount Alvernia Hospital hoping that the next round of chemo will finally kill her damaged cells.

A parishioner in Holy Family Church hoping his life of quiet desperation, deep loneliness, and dwindling faith in God will find relief somehow.

The couple living next to you hoping that God will deign to bless them with a child after fruitless years of trying.

And in the stillness, a voice whispers, “Wait.”

It is the beautiful task of Advent to awaken in all of us memories of goodness and thus to open doors of hope.

— Pope Benedict XVI, Seek That Which is Above

We’ve just begun the season of waiting. Advent – adventus – signals the coming or arrival of God’s Hope on Earth, and the day when the Son of Man comes again ‘at an hour you do not expect’. It’s a time to rejoice, as the psalmist says, because of this anticipated event. God will be the only authority ‘in the days to come’, Isaiah says, forever vanishing war and confusion, establishing lasting peace for all who arrive at His house because we’ll be walking in His light.

It’s also a grace period to get our act together and live in the present with responsibility and vigilance. Paul declares we must wake up now because ‘the night is over, it will be daylight soon’, and we don’t want to be caught like the householder of Jesus’ parable.

THIS IS YOUR WAKE-UP CALL!

We must start our journey to ascend to the mountain of the Lord, to be illuminated by His Words of peace and to allow Him to indicate the path to tread (cf. Is 2:1-5). Moreover, we must change our conduct abandoning the works of darkness and put on the ‘armor of light’ and so seek only to do God’s work and to abandon the deeds of the flesh (cf. Rm 13:12-14). Jesus, through the story in the parable, outlines the Christian life style that must not be distracted and indifferent but must be vigilant and recognize even the smallest sign of the Lord’s coming because we don’t know the hour in which He will arrive (cf. Mt 24:39-44). – Pope Benedict XVI, Celebration of First Vespers of Advent, Vatican Basilica, December 2006 (excerpted from Dicastery for the Clergy)

We want to start Advent the right way, and use this grace period wisely. In this four-week period, the Church explores the themes of hope, peace, joy, and love, and calls us to reflect, pray, and change. And the first quality we want to encourage in our hearts this week is Hope.

Man’s Hope vs Advent’s Hope

Attend any Novena session and you’ll hear petition after petition pouring forth fervent hopes for a better, safer, happier life. Like those of the people above. They’re going through heart-wrenching challenges and living with anxiety, fear, and pain. Advent for them might seem like a long, dark wait for relief that won’t really come. Furthermore, this week’s focus on hope might seem like a cruel, careless nod to their suffering, like telling them don’t worry, just pray and wait, and trust God, and you’ll be better soon.

It can be crushing.

What if that father doesn’t land a job? What if that young girl’s family is torn apart anyway by separation, violence, or divorce? What if that cancer patient in Mount Alvernia is told she has to simply grit her teeth and continue undergoing radiation treatments, without any guarantee of recovery? What if that Holy Family parishioner is overwhelmed by mental darkness and despair without anyone even knowing? What if that couple is told, yet again, that no, it doesn’t look like their hope for a baby will ever materialise? How long can hope stagger along before it dies in the darkness?

You must have passed through at least one stage of spiritual dryness in your life. All the saints did. Faith tells us that God came to us before and He will come again – guaranteed. Therefore, we must bravely stay the course and wait in trustful hope. Life tells us pain and suffering are here to stay – also guaranteed. Therefore, we should resign ourselves to our current state and wait for it all to end.

It’s easy to forget the first and believe the second, when our longed-for hope seems to be a long time coming. That’s exactly why Advent is so important.  This season invites us to imagine a different kind of hope: not that life will suddenly make sense or stop the pain it sends us, but that despite the confusion and suffering, God is still walking with us and in His time, He will restore His creation. That includes us.

Our hope is not in vain.

The Hope of Advent doesn’t minimise or trivialise suffering; it doesn’t chase doubt or weariness away. It doesn’t tell us to accept with a resigned shrug that this is what God’s followers are supposed to endure just because suffering is good for the soul or some such thing.

‘The great thing about hope for Christians is that it doesn’t have to be rooted in any way in things going well for us.’ – Father Mike Schmitz, The Catechism in a Year podcast

If we make the time to really focus on it, the Hope of Advent will show us how to face the darkness with courage and choose to believe that God, who has kept all the promises He made to our forefathers in faith, will fulfil His promise to us as well.  So, waiting becomes a lesson in patient expectation, offering up to Him our fears, anxieties, doubt, weariness, pain, and suffering; a re-discovery of resilience, a softening of our hard attitudes and mindsets; renewed trust to open our darkness to Jesus, the Child who comes at Christmas and the Son of Man who will come again.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says hope is ‘the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit.’  It’s the trust, Thomas Aquinas says, which we place in God ‘to give us everything that we need to get us to heaven’.

We’re already starting with an advantage: this Jubilee Year makes us all Pilgrims of Hope. All the activities we’ve (hopefully!) been engaged in, in this role, should remind us of what we’re hoping for: that our lives, as Pope Benedict said, ‘will not end in emptiness’. This, he said, is ‘a distinguishing mark of Christians’.

Help for Hopelessness: 1. Remember God

If we’re struggling with despair – the antithesis of hope – and come to believe that God’s grace can’t possibly be anywhere near us, here’s something we can do:

Sister Catherine Droste, a Dominican nun and theology professor at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome, says it can be helpful to step back and ask ‘Do I believe in God? Why do I believe?’ Reaffirming one’s faith is the first step to regaining hope.

“If I do believe in God, well, that’s the source of my hope,” she says. “Because who is God? He is my Creator. He wishes my good. He wishes me to achieve union with him. … We have to remind ourselves of who God is, that He loves us, so that we have this true hope, that He will help me in spite of the difficulty, and He will give me the grace.”

And if we’re drowning in anxiety, she says that’s often linked to a misplaced reliance on ourselves, rather than on God. “Part of that anxiety is pride because I think I can do it without God,” she says. True hope reminds us that we do not have to bear life’s burdens alone. “With hope, there is a tranquility that should come in spite of the difficulty because I have confidence in God. I face the difficulty, I face suffering, but because of God I know that is not the end.”

Consider: In this week of Advent Hope, are you ready to acknowledge what God is to you? Can you affirm what hope, exactly, you have of Him?

Help for Hopelessness: 2. Prayer to the Rescue

Hope is nourished in prayer. The Catechism tells us ‘Hope is expressed and nourished in prayer, especially in the Our Father, the summary of everything that hope leads us to desire’ (1820).

Through prayer, our hearts expand to receive the hope God offers. Pope Benedict said it needs to be ‘something very personal, an encounter between (our) intimate self and…the living God’. We don’t pray to change God’s mind. We pray to strengthen our hope that our belief in Him is justified, and little by little to deepen our trust that His roadmap for us is the right and best one. 

Consider: In this week of Advent Hope, are you ready to re-examine your prayer life? Are you ready to foster an intimate relationship with a God who’s very much alive?

Help for Hopelessness: 3. Pilgrim of Hope, Be a Missionary of Hope

The smallest spark of hope can ignite a blaze of belief.  When darkness threatens to overcome, having someone tell you that there is a way out, that salvation is possible, could be the first step towards God’s light. And in giving hope to someone else, our own hope for God’s new world will burn more intensely. At the start of the Jubilee Year, Pope Francis encouraged us to bear that hope to a world in desperate need of it.

Look around at our parish ministries: throughout the year they’ve been ministering to us through prayer, acts of kindness, fellowship, teaching, nurturing. They’ve been sowing rich seeds of hope. This might be a place to start your missionary journey.

Consider: In this week of Advent Hope, are you ready to bear God’s Hope to someone who needs it? How would that fuel the spark of your own hope that God will be there for you?

“The one who has hope lives differently; the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life.” – Pope Benedict

It’s time to wake up, whether from complacency, despair, or indifference, arm ourselves with our Lord Jesus Christ, and in everything we do this week, stand ready for all opportunities to welcome Him in others, in ourselves, and to receive His light born from God’s Hope in us.

As you wait this season for what He has promised you, I hope you let that Hope grow in your heart. May the Prince of Peace find you awake, ready and filled with faith when He comes!

Article by Joyce Norma, HFC Blog Contributor