A Chaplain’s Thoughts: You’ve got to have hope
By Rev. James F. Quigley, O.P. ’60
Associate Chaplain, National Alumni Association
Some time ago a student came to me and was pretty upset. She had broken up with her boyfriend, she was due to graduate but had no idea about her future, she hated the thought of moving home after four years away living with friends. In frustration she asked, “Why is life so hard?” As a priest I wanted to support her, but I had no easy answers for her. This young woman thought life was not supposed to be hard. You don’t have to be too old, though, to know that for some life is hard all the time, for most life is hard some of the time. As a friend puts it, “It is good to remember it is not only raining on you.” That’s when and where hope comes in!
Vaclav Havel, former president of the Czech Republic and a playwright, claimed, “The more propitious the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper hope is … hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well. Rather it is the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.”
Hope, not simply optimism, is a character trait, a virtue, a graced power to face difficulty, to overcome difficulty, to reach beyond difficulty. It is faith in the future. Hope is the conviction that God is guiding me to what makes sense. The Jesuit theologian Rev. Karl Rahner said, “Hope is a response to God’s presence, a radical self-surrender, self-submission to that absolute uncontrollable.”
Real hope, hope rooted in faith, lets me believe God is at work to redeem all things regardless of how things are turning out for me today. Aquinas facetiously says that hope without God is found only in the young or the drunk! It’s just wishful thinking.
As a new year begins, believe and know that you are loved, cared for, supported by a providential God. You’ve got to have hope that your God would never forget you, ignore you, leave you alone no matter what is happening in your life.
