DARE to HOPE
Fr James McTavish, FMVD
All booklets are published thanks to the generosity of the supporters of the Catholic Truth Society
WEEK 1
What is Hope?
1. Hoping and praying
2. Hoping and listening (and dancing)
3. Drawing hope from the road already travelled
4. Hope and our vocation
5. Hope and trust
6. Hope and a sense of mystery
7. Walking forward in hope
Introduction
Week 1 Q
We are setting off on our pilgrimage of hope. I hope we are excited to start our journey. It will be an adventure of discovery, beginning with trying to grapple with what actually is hope. Pope Francis repeated often, quoting St Paul in Romans 5:5, “hope does not disappoint”, saying: “Hope does not disappoint”. Never. Never. Idols always disappoint; they are make-believe; they are not real”. We will see that a first setting for learning hope is prayer. This requires a listening with depth but also with breadth. We have to listen to all the areas of our lives. We can also draw strength looking back at the journey up until now. God has always been faithful, and the more I recognise this, the more hopeful I become for the future. At the basis of our hope in God is the need to trust Him. It helps to grow in the sense of mystery so that we can relax, let go, and let God take the wheel. This will help us go forward in hope and courage. Let us ask for the grace to dare to hope, to abound in hope: “To abound in hope means to never be discouraged; it means to hope ‘against all hope’ (cf. Rom 4:18), that is, to hope even when there is no human reason to hope”.
Week 1: Day 1
Hoping and praying
We groan inwardly.
(see Rom 8:23)
We begin our pilgrimage with enthusiasm. We would like to grow in hope. So, we are going to specifically exercise our hope muscles. We all have inklings of hope in us already, shown by the fact that we hope for many things. But we desire to grow in hope, we desire to practice hope. A principal way to do this is to pray. How does prayer help us to hope? I am sure you have had the experience when you are feeling a bit flat, a bit down or have a “low battery”, and you read a passage from the Sacred Scripture and you feel inspired, revived and a bit more energised. I was in that situation, in the face of a little challenge, and the words of Psalm 18 hit me: “You, O Lord, are my lamp, my God who lightens my darkness. With you I can break through any barrier, with my God I can scale any wall”. Reflecting on these words made me more hopeful and ready for action! Pope Francis, in his Bull to announce the Jubilee year of hope, underlines that “God’s word helps us find reasons for that hope”. We are so lucky and privileged to have the Word of God and to be able to pray.
Pope Benedict XVI writes:
A first essential setting for learning hope is prayer. When no one listens to me anymore, God still listens to me. When I can no longer talk to anyone or call upon anyone, I can always talk to God. When there is no longer anyone to help me deal with a need or expectation that goes beyond the human capacity for hope, He can help me.
It is a gift and a grace to be able to speak to God, any time, any place and anywhere. To speak to an important person, you might have to write a letter, and request an appointment months ahead. But to speak to God, you can do it right now. When I pray, I feel more hopeful. I can see more readily the good things in my life and give thanks for them. When my prayer is weak, my hope easily weakens! We see the vital connection between hoping and praying in the words of Pope Francis: “May the Lord help us to understand this link between prayer and hope. Prayer leads you forward in hope, and when things become dark, more prayer is needed! And there will be more hope”.
At the beginning of our hope-filled prayer journey, I feel it is important to exercise our thanksgiving. My capacity to give thanks is closely related to the extent of my hope. How so? Like most spiritual insights, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Try it and you will see. When we give thanks, we become more attentive
to the many graces that God showers on us each day. These graces are particular gifts for the good works He has in mind for us. We have received ‘grace upon grace’ (John 1:16) so let us not receive them in vain. It is good to give thanks to the Lord, always and everywhere.
Let us spend a moment in thanksgiving to God, reading some biblical texts to encourage us, one from the New Testament and the other from the Old Testament. St Paul writes: “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thess 5:16-18). The psalmist animates us: “My soul, give thanks to the Lord all my being, bless his holy name. My soul, give thanks to the Lord and never forget all his blessings” (Ps 103:1-2).
In exercising thanksgiving, we start to realise something – that everything is a gift! As Pope Francis reminds us: “if we learn to read everything in the light of the Holy Spirit, we realise that everything is grace! Everything is a gift! If we pay attention, in fact – in history, as in our life – it is not only we who are acting, but above all it is God”.
Let us now pause to reflect:
1. What biblical passage when you recall it, fills you with hope?
2. What graces have I received in these days?
3. Read 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 or Psalm 103:1-2.
What would you like to give thanks to God for?
Week 1: Day 2
Hoping and listening (and dancing)
We played the flute for you and you wouldn’t dance.
(Matt 11:17)
QI find it fascinating to recall that the very first question of God to humanity in the Bible is “Where are you?” (Gen 3:9). On a journey it is important to more or less know where we are. It is interesting to consider where we are spiritually, in our relationship with God. How is our hope for example? What things are helping me to hope? Am I able to spot how God is intervening in my life, the graces he is sharing with and through me? This really helps us to hope when we see the many gifts God shares with us each day. When we think of hope in the context of a loved one being sick, it is easy to see many people hoping and praying for the healing of a loved one, and rightly so. However, sometimes we can get annoyed or lose hope in God when the loved one is not recovering. But did we ever remember God in the many times He healed them, and got them through that prior sickness? Did you and I thank God for the gifts of vaccination, x-rays, blood transfusions, not to mention MRIs, CT scans and so many other medical miracles that God has gifted us through technology?
In responding to “Where are you?” it is helpful to look at the bigger and broader picture. How about spending a moment to also examine the following areas – Where are you: spiritually (how is my prayer life? When was my last confession?), emotionally, psychologically, physically (how is my health, my fitness level…) economically (anything to attend to, how can I be generous with what I have), relationally (with family, friends, parishioners, is there someone I need to contact?), professionally (is there something that I said I would do and have not done it yet?), formatively (what book am I reading? How am I nourishing my mind to avoid the brain rot from excessive social media?) you can include other areas if they come to mind.
In examining all of these areas, we are trying to “listen” more broadly to our life. Pope Francis had mentioned: “Do not forget that there is always a great connection between hope and listening”. We are reminded of the words of the prophet Isaiah: “Listen and you will live” (55:3). A wider listening allows us to capture more readily how God is working in our life. In seeing where he is working, we can collaborate more actively. Some spiritual authors liken this collaboration with God to a dance. One lady, who many are becoming inspired by, is a French laywoman called Madeleine Delbrêl, a French Catholic author, poet and mystic whose cause for canonisation is now underway. She has a nice poem
entitled “The Dance of Obedience” inspired by the line of Jesus in Matt 11:17: “We played the flute for you and you wouldn’t dance”.
Excerpts taken from “The Dance of Obedience” (English translation by Mgr Peter Fleetwood)
To be a good dancer, with you as with anyone else, we don’t need to know where it’s leading. We need to follow, to be cheerful, to be light, and above all not to be stiff. We don’t need to ask you to explain the steps you choose to take.
Lord, come and ask us to dance.
… And if people bump into us, we’ll laugh it off, well aware that that’s the sort of thing that happens when you’re dancing.
Make us live our life…like a dance, in the arms of your grace, in the universal music of love.
Lord, come and ask us to dance.
Let’s reflect on our dancing skills:
1. How is my dancing and hoping at the moment?
2. Am I treading on the Lord’s toes by being a bit stubborn in any areas of my life?
3. Where is the dance of hope leading me?
Week 1: Day 3
Drawing hope from the road already travelled
“Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way.”
(Deut 8:2)
The act of remembering can help us grow in hope. When we talk of “remembering” it is not only to remember where we put something, or where we left the keys. Remembering, at least in the biblical sense, comes as an invitation from God to recall his goodness and faithfulness on the journey walked so far. We find repeated calls to remember in chapter 8 of the book of Deuteronomy: ‘Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years.… Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God.… But remember the Lord your God’ (see Deut 8:1-20).
I mention this because it reveals that hope has a dimension of the past, lived experience. When we look forward to the future, we can feel slightly perturbed, and even lose a bit of hope. But if we look back, at the road travelled with God, we might feel more peace and hope because God had been faithful and trustworthy. Rooting ourselves in this lived experience of hope, gives us more confidence and hope for the future!
This experience is echoed in the words of a famous Danish philosopher and theologian, Søren Kierkegaard: “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forward.”
The act or exercise of recalling and remembering the goodness of God in our lives can fill us with a living hope for the future. Look at what happened with Joshua and the people. Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel together at Shechem; then he called the elders, leaders, judges and scribes of Israel, and they presented themselves before God. Then Joshua said to all the people,
“If you will not serve the Lord, choose today whom you wish to serve, whether the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are now living. As for me and my House, we will serve the Lord.” The people answered, “We have no intention of deserting the Lord and serving other gods! Was it not the Lord our God who brought us and our ancestors out of the land of Egypt, the house of slavery, who worked those great wonders before our eyes and preserved us all along the way we travelled and among all the peoples through whom we journeyed? What is more, the Lord drove all those peoples out before us, as well as the Amorites who used to live in this country. We too will serve the Lord, for he is our God” (Josh 24:15-18).
What do we notice here? The people draw hope from the memory. They are not “newbies”, with no previous experience of knowing and hoping in God. In fact, they have already had an experience of God. And so do you and I! We do not have to begin our journey of hope starting from zero. How many times we can set off on the journey each day as if we had never walked a step with God! We forget the road travelled. Hope is not merely a forward-looking virtue! It is also rooted in our lived experience of the past, the accrued experience of God’s faithful and enduring love. The danger is to drown in the present moment, with no past to sustain us and no future to look forward to. I understand why Fr Elias Royon Lara, SJ, speaks of hope as a virtue which looks to the future, is lived out in the present, and is rooted in the lived experience of the past. To remember is extremely important, that is precisely why Pope Francis remarks:
Here then, is a fundamental dynamic of Christian life: remembering Jesus. Paul said to his disciple: “Remember Jesus Christ” (2 Tim 2:8); this is the advice of the great St Paul: “Remember Jesus Christ”. Let us remember Jesus, the loving fire by which one day we understood our life as a project of good, and with this flame, let us rekindle our hope.
The work of the bad spirit is always to make us forget the goodness of God – to not remember how faithful he
has been. It is so easy to lose focus and get distracted on the journey. “Lord, help us to remember the road travelled with you”. May we draw strength, comfort and hope from the journey thus far, and may that hope propel us forward in the journey that awaits us.
So now to reflect:
1. Read Deuteronomy 8:1-20. How would you describe your journey thus far with God?
2. Does the memory of his care and goodness fill you with hope and courage?