Thank you for joining us for the second of our Advent Saturdays.  

For our second week we reflect on what hope looks like in Advent.  How can we live our Advent in joyful hope, so that we can celebrate our Christmas well. 

There is no charge for this day or to follow the retreat online, but a donation is appreciated via the link below which will support our work and mission. 

“Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord

Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand;

and we boast of our hope of sharing in the glory of God. And not only that, but we

boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance

produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us,

because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who

has been given to us” 

Father, all-powerful God, 

your eternal Word took flesh on our earth 

when the Virgin Mary placed her life 

at the service of your plan. 

Lift our minds in watchful hope 

to hear the voice which announces his glory 

and open our minds to receive the Spirit 

who prepares us for his coming. 

We ask this through Christ our Lord. 

Amen.

The true history is not the one made by the powerful… the true history — that which will remain in eternity — is the one that God writes with his little ones: God with Mary, God with Jesus, God with Joseph, God with the little ones. Those little and simple people whom we see around the newborn Jesus: Zechariah and Elizabeth, who were old and barren, Mary, the young virgin maiden betrothed to Joseph, the shepherds, who were scorned and counted for nothing. It is the little ones, made great by their faith, the little ones who are able to continue to hope. Hope is the virtue of the little ones. The great ones, those who are satisfied, do not know hope; they do not know what it is.

It is the little ones with God, with Jesus, who transform the desert of exile, of desperation and loneliness, of suffering, into a level plain on which to walk in order to encounter the glory of the Lord. We have come to the ‘point’: let us be taught hope. Let us be confident as we await the coming of the Lord, and what the desert may represent in our life — each one knows what desert he or she is walking in — it will become a garden in bloom. 

Hope does not disappoint!

General Audience, 7th December 2016

"Always have your answer ready for people who ask you the reason for the hope that is in you" 

1 Peter 3:15

How do we offer hope as Christians?

How am I be part of the story of Hope?

 I am, God says, the Master of Three Virtues.

Faith is a soldier, a captain who defends a fortress.

A town belonging to the King,

On the marches of Gascony, on the marches of Lorraine.

Charity is a doctor, a Little Sister of the poor,

Who nurses the sick, who nurses the wounded,

The poor subjects of the King,

On the marches of Gascony, on the marches of Lorraine.

But it is my little hope

Who says good-day to the poor man and the orphan.

I am, God says, the Lord of the Virtues.

Faith is a church, a cathedral rooted in the soil of France

Charity is a hospital, an alms-house which gathers up wretchedness of the world.

But without hope it would be nothing but a cemetery.

I am, God says, the Lord of the Virtues.

It is Faith who watches through centuries of centuries.

It is Charity who watches through centuries of centuries.

But it is my little hope

who lies down every evening

and gets up every morning

and really has very good nights.

I am, God says, the Lord of that virtue.

It is my little hope

who goes to sleep every evening,

in her child’s bed,

after having said a good prayer,

and who wakes every morning and gets up

and says her prayers with new attention.

I am, God says, Lord of the Three Virtues.

Faith is a great tree, an oak rooted in the heart of France,

And under the wings of that tree,

Charity, my daughter Charity shelters all the distress of the world.

And my little hope is only that little promise of a bud which shows itself at the very beginning of April.

Charles Péguy, The Mystery of the Holy Innocents

“The faith that I love best, says God, is hope.

Faith doesn’t surprise me.

Its not surprising

I am so resplendent in my creation. . . .

That in order really not to see me these poor people would have to be blind.

Charity says God, that doesn’t surprise me.

Its not surprising.

These poor creatures are so miserable that unless they had a heart of stone, how could they not have love for one another.

How could they not love their brothers.

How could they not take the bread from their own mouth, their daily bread, in order to give it to the unhappy children who pass by.

And my son had such love for them. . . .

But hope, says God, that is something that surprises me.

Even me.

That is surprising.

That these poor children see how things are going and believe that tomorrow things will go better.

That they see how things are going today and believe that they will go better tomorrow morning.

That is surprising and its by far the greatest marvel of our grace.

And I’m surprised by it myself.

And my grace must indeed be an incredible force.”

Charles Péguy - Portal of the Mystery of Hope

Because my three virtues, says God. 

The three virtues, my creatures. 

My daughters, my children.

Are themselves like my other creatures. 

Of the race of men. 

Faith is a loyal wife. 

Charity is a mother. 

An ardent mother, noble-hearted. 

One older sister who is like a mother. 

Hope it’s a little girl, nothing at all…

+++

On the path to salvation, on the earthly path, on the rocky path of salvation, on the interminable road, on the road in between her two older sisters the little hope

Pushes on…

In between her two older sisters.

It’s she, the little one, who carries them all.

Because Faith sees only what is.

But she, she sees what will be.

Charity loves only what is.

But she, she loves what will be.

+++

Hope it’s a little girl, nothing at all…

It is hope that leads us along.

It is hope that runs along the path.

Charles Péguy - Portal of the Mystery of Hope

 “The kind of hope I often think about (especially in situations that are particularly hopeless, such as prison) I understand above all as a state of mind, not a state of the world. Either we have hope within us or we don’t; it is a dimension of the soul; it’s not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. 

Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons.”

Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but, rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more unpropitious the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper that hope is. 

Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. 

In short, I think that the deepest and most important form of hope, the only one that can keep us above water and urge us to good works, and the only true source of the breathtaking dimension of the human spirit and its efforts, is something we get, as it were, from “elsewhere.” 

It is also this hope, above all, which gives us the strength to live and continually to try new things, even in conditions that seem as hopeless as ours do, here and now.

In the same vein he says to the Thessalonians: you must not “grieve as others do who have no hope” (1 Th 4:13). 

Here too we see as a distinguishing mark of Christians the fact that they have a future: it is not that they know the details of what awaits them, but they know in general terms that their life will not end in emptiness. Only when the future is certain as a positive reality does it become possible to live the present as well. 

So now we can say: Christianity was not only “good news” —the communication of a hitherto unknown content. In our language we would say: the Christian message was not only “informative” but “performative”. 

That means: the Gospel is not merely a communication of things that can be known —it is one that makes things happen and is life-changing. 

The dark door of time, of the future, has been thrown open. The one who has hope lives differently; the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life. 

Spe Salvi 2

What does a hopeful person look like?

Does hope orientate my heart? 

Can I really say that hope makes me live differently?

“O Wisdom, You came forth from the mouth of the Most High, and reaching from beginning to end, You ordered all thingsmightily and sweetly. Come and teach us the way of prudence.”

“O Adonai and Ruler of the house of Israel, You appeared to Moses in the fire of the burning bush, and on Mount Sinai gave him Your Law: Come, and with an outstretched arm redeem us!”

O Root of Jesse, You stand for an ensign of mankind; before You kings shall keep silence, and to You all nations shall have recourse. Come and save us and do not delay.”

“O Key of David and Scepter of the house of Israel: You open and none may close, You close and none may open. Come and deliver from the chains of prison those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.”

“O Dayspring, Radiance of the Light eternal, and Sun ofJustice; come and enlighten those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death.”

“O King of the nations and Desired of all, You are the cornerstone that binds two into one: Come, and save humankind whom You formed out of clay.”

“O Emmanuel, our King and Lawgiver, the Expected of Nations and their Saviour: come, and save us, O Lord our God!”

Sometimes, when I think about the challenges before us, I feel overwhelmed. But I’m never hopeless. We are accompanied. We are being sifted, yes, and it is painful, any of us feel powerless and even afraid. But there is also an opportunity in this crisis to come out better.

What the Lord asks of us today is a culture of service, not a throwaway culture. But we can’t serve others unless we let their reality speak to us.

To go there, you have to open your eyes and let the suffering around you touch you, so that you hear the Spirit of God speaking to you from the margins. That’s why I need to warn you about three disastrous ways of escaping reality that block growth and the connection with reality, and especially the action of the Holy Spirit. I'm thinking of narcissism, discouragement, and pessimism.

Narcissism takes you to the mirror to look at yourself, to centre everything on you so that's all you see. You end up so in love with the image you created that you end up drowning in it. Then news is only good if it’s good for you personally; and if the news is bad, it’s because you are it’s chief victim.

Discouragement leads you to lament and complain about everything so that you no longer see what is around you nor what others offer you, only what you think you've lost. Discouragement leads to sadness in the spiritual life, which is a worm that gnaws away at you from the inside. Eventually it closes you in on yourself and you can’t see anything beyond yourself.

And then there's pessimism, which is like a door you shut on the future and the new things it can hold; a door you refuse to open in case one day there'll be something new on your doorstep.

These are three ways that block you, paralyze you, and cause you to focus on those things that stop you from moving ahead. They are all in the end about preferring the illusions that mask reality rather than discovering all we might be able to achieve. They are siren voices that make you a stranger to yourself. To act against them, you have to commit to the small concrete, positive actions you can take, whether you're sowing hope or working for justice.

From Let Us Dream - Pope Francis in conversation with Austen Ivereigh, 2020