Pilgrims of Hope
Father Joe Nassal, C.PP.S.
Vice Provincial Director
In declaring the theme of this Jubilee Year, “Pilgrims of Hope,” Pope Francis calls us to be “tangible signs of hope for those of our brothers and sisters who experience hardship of any kind.”
When we are going through a challenging time, we often view hope as something that lies at the end of the rainbow when the storms have passed. But hope is what helps us get through those storms of life. “Christian hope,” Pope Francis writes, “is grounded in the certainty that nothing or no one may ever separate us from God’s love.”
In defining hope, Thomas Merton wrote, “Hope doesn’t mean an anticipation or expectation of a deliverance from an intolerable or oppressive situation or condition. That’s what most of us are doing most of the time: wanting something other than what it is. True hope is trusting that what we have, where we are, and who we are is more than enough for us as creatures of God.”
Hope is what gets us out of bed in the morning and motivates us to live in ways that will bring the world a little closer to the vision of God’s realm of justice, peace, truth, and love as envisioned and lived by Jesus. Love might make the world go round, and faith allows us to trust when all seems impossible, but hope is the starting point for all ministry and mission activity.
“The journey to the wellspring of hope is really a journey to the center,” Cynthia Bourgeault writes, “toward the innermost ground of being where we meet and are met by God.” When we plumb the depths of our soul to find the center of our hope, the reservoir that gathers the experiences of our lives in the caves of our souls, it feeds the stream of mercy that flows out of us to touch others with compassion and kindness. When we are connected to this hope, Bourgeault writes, “we are released from the grip of personal fear and set fire to minister with skillful means and true compassion to a world desperately needing reconnection.”
We must practice hope or else it will die. Krista Tippet calls it “a renewable resource for moving through life as it is, not as we wish it to be.” The more we practice hope, the more we form a “spiritual muscle memory” that allows us to orientate our life to view the world not through rose-colored glasses of optimism, but with a realistic vision that comes from deep within.
In choosing the image of pilgrim for this jubilee year, Pope Francis emphasizes we are all on a journey. In the words of poet David Whyte, a pilgrim is “someone who underneath it all doesn’t quite understand from whence or from where their next bit of bread will come, someone dependent on help from absolute strangers and from those who travel with them.” Pilgrims are “creatures of movement … with an unstoppable need to bring our skills and experience, our voice and our presence to good use in the eternal now we visit along the way,” Whyte wrote.
In January, we celebrate two pilgrims of hope who brought their skills, experience, and voice to draw all people near through the Precious Blood of Jesus. May the birthday of St. Gaspar on January 6 and the beatification of Giovanni Merlini on January 12 inspire and energize us to be pilgrims of hope in our eternal now.