On Hope

 

When you wish upon a star
Makes no difference who you are
Anything your heart desires
Will come to you

If your heart is in your dream
No request is too extreme
When you wish upon a star
As dreamers do

 

These lyrics from the wonderful song, When You Wish Upon a Star, from Disney’s Pinocchio, evoke nice feelings about a fun movie. The song was recorded eighty-five years ago. I love that song and really enjoyed the movie.

If only our dreams came true that easily.

For many people their lives more closely follow the lyrics of Peggy Lee’s, Is That All There Is?

 

Is that all there is
Is that all there is?
If that’s all there is my friend
Then let’s keep dancing
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball
If that’s all there is

How do we avoid feeling like, “Is that all there is?”

 

Hope!

I have written previously about the theological virtue of Faith. Faith is the building block for our lives. We also need Hope.

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. [CCC 1817]

Placing our trust in Christ’s promises. How can we trust promises unless we know the one who made the promise and know that we can trust Him?

The better we know God the deeper our love for Him grows. We need faith, our knowledge of God, to have hope. It is the knowledge we have of God that allows us to trust Him and to live with Hope.

Despair – the opposite of Hope

From an early age I became aware of despair and suicide.

I was the youngest of twelve cousins on my mother’s side. My father was an only child. The two oldest cousins were Howard and Edward. They were born almost eighteen years before I was born.

Howie and Ed were identical twins. Brilliant young men. Eagle Scouts. They were attending college at a prestigious university. Life seemed to be full of unlimited promise.

One morning Ed and Howie got up to go to class but Ed told Howie he wasn’t feeling well. Howard went to class. Edward shot himself.

I have no memory of Edward. I was not even four when he died. I do, however, remember going to the cemetery on the day of his funeral. In those days someone who committed suicide would be denied burial in the church unless a dispensation was given by the bishop. My dad secured the dispensation for his nephew to have a Catholic Mass and burial.

Guns were not allowed in my house when I was growing up. Edward’s death left a cloud over all of us.

Fast forward thirty plus years. Howard became a successful professional and was very well respected. He was great at his work but not such a good judge of men.

Howard fell prey to a couple of swindlers. He wanted to talk with me.

I went to his house and sat and talked with him for three hours next to his pool. He told me what was going on. From my work I recognized the names of the swindlers. This was not their first swindle and I knew what they had done in the past. One of them was an attorney who supposedly was trying to help Howard. I knew he was not helping Howard, but I could not tell Howard what I knew about the swindlers as it was not public information and I could not disclose it. I was advising him on things he could and should do to deal with this.

After Howard told me about his current trouble, he told me how he had had to clean up the mess his brother’s suicide had made when the bullet went through the roof of his mouth and out the top of his head. He also told me he had not received any counseling or therapy after his brother’s death because of the stigma attached to someone who received psychiatric or psychological therapy in those days. He had borne that memory and guilt all by himself.

I told him we needed to find a different attorney who would truly help him. I told him not to do anything more until we talked again. He did not take my advice. He spoke with the swindlers that night.

The next morning I received a call from my mother. Howard had left for his office but had not arrived there.

Howard was found by his son and daughter in an outbuilding on his property. He had taken his life.

The swindlers told Howard some lies that were going to be spread about him. His despair became too great. He left a recording. His last words were, “I go to Ed now.”

I had learned a lot about depression and despair in the thirty plus years that had passed between the death of Edward and the death of Howard. I had learned never to joke about suicide. Suicide can ruin the lives of the loved ones who are left behind.

Suicide is the final act of someone who has lost all hope.

I was in my forties when I started going to a spiritual director, Sr. Antonia, and made a retreat using the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. I shared my two greatest fears with her. Number one was that something bad would happen to my daughters. Number two was I did not know what I would do when my parents died.

These might be common fears, I do not know. For me they created great anxiety. I also felt guilt about Howard’s death. My hope was not firm; strong. Fear and regret had weakened my hope.

At that time, while I knew what the theological virtues were, I really had not come to understand how they worked. I had the knowledge of the teachings of the church. What I didn’t have was the personal relationship with Jesus based on that knowledge.

One night during my prayer time, after I had progressed a good way through my retreat, I had another “aha” moment. I suddenly realized that God loved my daughters more than I ever could. He also had the knowledge of what the future would be if anything happened to them. Not only that, He had the power to prevent anything happening. If He allowed something bad to happen to them He would have a good reason to allow it. Given all of that, why was I wasting my time worrying?

Eventually I also saw this applied to the death of my parents. My job in life is to make good decisions. To do good things. To live my life according to the plan God has for it. Worrying is not part of my job description. Concern is. We should always be concerned for others, to want the good for them.

I came to understand this is what hope is. Hope allows us to live our life without fear. We have concern. We have our desires and our wishes. Through our faith we know God, and love God, and know that He loves us. We know He wants what is best for us. He has promised us eternal life with Him in heaven. All we have to do is accept His love and not reject it. Hope helps us to do that.

I also came to understand the need to follow the First Principle and Foundation taught by St. Ignatius of Loyola in his Spiritual Exercises:

Man is created to praise, reverence and serve God, our Lord, and by this means to save his soul.

The other things on the face of the earth are created for man to help him in attaining the end for which he is created.

Hence, man is to make use of them in as far as they help him in the attainment of his end, and he must rid himself of them in as far as they prove a hindrance to him.

Therefore, we must make ourselves indifferent to all created things, as far as we are allowed free choice and are not under any prohibition. Consequently, as far as we are concerned, we should not prefer health to sickness, riches to poverty, honor to dishonor, a long life to a short life. The same holds for all other things.

Our one desire and choice should be what is more conducive to the end for which we are created.

When we are attached to things or people that can hinder our relationship with God they can lead us to sin and despair. The center of our life should be God. When we lose sight of that we risk falling into despair.

Swindlers of all kinds take advantage of our attachments to created things.

I find these words from the Catechism very consoling. “Hope is … 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.”

The world needs hope. The young need hope to be able to see a future for themselves. The old need to have hope as they are approaching the death that takes us all. All of those between young and old need hope to deal with all of the challenges they face caring for themselves, their children, and for those who cared for them and whom they often are caring for in return.

I have seen the face of despair. I sat with it for three hours. I have seen the face of depression. I looked at it in the mirror daily for many months after Howard’s death.

I pray for Edward and Howard every day. Those aren’t wasted prayers. God hasn’t revealed to us exactly what happens to someone who has committed suicide.

Grave psychological disturbances, anguish, or grave fear of hardship, suffering, or torture can diminish the responsibility of the one committing suicide. [CCC 2282]

We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives. [CCC 2283]

I hope that what St. Faustina said about how Jesus calls to the despairing soul to offer His mercy is true and that both Edward and Howard accepted it.

Today I live with hope. It is one of the gifts God freely gives. We need to nurture that gift. We need to cultivate it. I still have many concerns.  I try to offer those to Jesus to handle for me. I will handle my part and I expect Him to handle His. I willingly accept His yoke so He can share my burdens.

We need to pray for God to give the world His grace to restore hope to those who have lost it and to give it to those who have need of it. In other words, to pray for all of us to live with hope.

It is Hope that helps us to see the world is not “all there is.” Hope enables us to look beyond our five senses. Hope enables us to endure the hardships, the disappointments of this life “as we await the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.”

 

Revelation 21:1–6

¹Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.

²And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband;

³and I heard a great voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them;

⁴he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.”

⁵And he who sat upon the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” Also he said, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.”

⁶And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water without price from the fountain of the water of life.

 

Greg Gillen

July 6, 2024

© 2024 Greg Gillen

Scripture/Revised Standard Version 2nd Catholic Edition

Image Credit/Anchor of Hope/ Kenneth Hagin Ministries/Rhema.org

When You Wish Upon a Star/ Leigh Harline and Ned Washington

Is That All There is?/ Jerry Leiber and Mike Stollerand

The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius/Translation by Louis J. Puhl, S.J.