Dare we hope?

World prospects seem bleak as 2025 begins, but Julia Wdowin still finds reasons for hope.

As we move into a new year with wars raging and ever more forms of injustice throughout the planet, it can seem naïve or even senseless to be hopeful. Isn’t it more natural and only right to despair? What sense does hope make?

But hopeful we are, almost in spite of ourselves. Hope permeates our daily speech and communication – we express the attitude in various ways. We hope, for instance, that someone might feel better, that the weather will hold out, that an embarked upon endeavour will be successful and bring fruits. 

At the same time, we also frequently sense the frailty of these kinds of hopes – the outcomes are often mostly, or entirely, out of our hands. They can seem little more than a vague wish. And indeed, if hope were only wishful thinking or hankering for things to be alright or better in our lives and in our world, then the idea of hope could indeed seem futile, even escapist. 

So why do we keep on hoping? Why this persistent response in the face of difficult events and situations? What does this tell us about the human person?

Is man, and woman, a being made to hope?

Certainly hope is tied to a kind of optimism, sometimes resilience, and it offers us some comfort and stops us from falling into despair. Is it then just an evolutionary mechanism to ensure our survival? For our hope is not always rational. We experience a tendency and a longing to hope, even when we are unable to rationalise whether that hope is well founded. 

A longing of the heart

Could it be that our very capacity to hope suggests a purpose, a telos, to our existence? Because we naturally hope for a good which is to come. And this suggests a sense that – beyond the uncertainty – we intuit there is something worth hoping for. 

Yet this goes beyond wishful thinking because, while we can just about deal with a hard situation not improving, we absolutely need a sense that it has a meaning. We don’t always hope for well-being but we certainly hope for purpose.  

This is why hope for something not yet apparent has a different quality and value to wishful thinking. It is inextricably tied to a deeper need to transform and to act (in our attitude and actions) in the present moment and within the present reality. Or put more simply, hope longs for agency, something we can do or at least make sense of. Despair is precisely when there is nothing to be done.

Crossing a threshold of hope

For Christians hope is not wishful thinking, or even mere optimism, but is grounded in concrete beliefs, in a worldview which sees creation willed and guided by a loving God. This gives deep hope.

But it never leads to passivity because this God charges us to be instruments of his love in the world. Hope, therefore, goes beyond wishes towards thoughts and becomes a springboard to action.

Hope is more than an attitude; it is a choice. 

Yet it is never a comfortable escape because it always calls us to act to do the good we can, while leaving the result in God’s hands.

In a notable exchange in the film of Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo shares with Gandalf a moment of lament, we could call it wishful thinking, as he discovers the history of the pursued ring and the life-changing and challenging implications for him that he senses the ring brings with it:

“I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.”

Frodo laments but by making the decision to persevere and by taking on the task of destroying the ring for Good to prevail (only an intuition to Frodo at this point), he nonetheless displays a deep hope – one that, despite not knowing the end outcome of his journey, spurs his choice and actions. Hope for what is good and right in the world strongly underlies his decision.

The character Frodo finds the reason within himself to pursue the demanding path ahead since, as I recently saw written, ‘hope loves what will be’. Hope loves not the present, but what will come. Yet, to prepare for what will come, to pave its way, we need to embrace the present, the here and now. It is in this way that hope gives sense to the present moment, to our choices and actions now. 

What is more, without hope, the present loses its meaning, too. That is why Pope Francis has urged again and again: “don’t let anyone rob you of hope!” Without it, the present moment is lost to us: we cannot move forward in our lives. By losing hope, all the potential that lies ahead of us is at risk of being impoverished. 

For Christians, hope is linked to a very concrete belief – hope for heaven, hope for eternal life with God after we die. Perhaps paradoxically, this hope gives shape to the Christian’s life in the present moment. 

Hope for heaven, and for things to come, is not abstract and unearthly, but means an even greater commitment to the here and now, in this life and this world!

For getting to heaven (or not) depends precisely on the use we make of life on earth. So, hope doesn’t allow for distance and passivity towards the world as it is. 

As CS Lewis in Mere Christianity observes:

“If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven.”

The tie between hope for eternity and our present lives is a strong one. Real hope drives what we do with our lives. Those with the strongest hope are often those who have trodden the ground most firmly, far from all resignation, passivity or wishful thinking.

Jubilee Year

It is in this light that Pope Francis has declared a Jubilee Year of Hope in the face of so many seemingly hopeless situations across the world and closer to home. The Catholic Church celebrates a jubilee year every twenty-five years to commemorate the birth of Christ, and each one carries a different theme. 

The proposed theme encourages individuals to focus intentionally on a particular aspect of their faith. At a time when there could be much to despair about, feel concerned or discouraged by, in our personal lives and at large, Pope Francis invites us to renew our hope, recognise our reasons for it, and consider how we might better integrate it into our lives.

The focus on hope throughout this jubilee year is not, therefore, to cultivate a sense of comfort or feel-good ‘positive thinking’ in a troubled world, but rather to encourage us to discover what true hope means, how it can transform us, and what it can lead us to do. And such a renewal could be transformative of our own lives and those of others.

Again, there is no sense of escapism in what Pope Francis proposes. Indeed, in the document outlining his vision for the jubilee, Spes Non Confundit, the Pope is thoroughly practical. He lists a whole series of specific actions which could foster hope, beginning with greater efforts by the international community to promote peace.

This could seem obvious but others are perhaps less so. The next measure the Pope proposes is arresting the declining birthrate in numerous countries (a decline which reveals a loss of hope and trust in the future).

He talks of the need to ‘work for a future filled with the laughter of babies and children, in order to fill the empty cradles in so many parts of our world’.

He recommends initiatives to give hope to prisoners, including ‘forms of amnesty or pardon meant to help individuals regain confidence in themselves and in society; and programmes of reintegration in the community’.

He calls on richer nations to pardon the debt of poorer ones to give them hope. Signs of hope, he says, “should also be shown to the sick, at home or in hospital.” And likewise to the disabled, he writes slightly later. 

The sufferings of all these people “can be allayed by the closeness and affection of those who visit them. Works of mercy are also works of hope that give rise to immense gratitude.” 

And practical steps, the Pope says, should also be taken to offer hope to the young, the elderly, the poor and migrants and refugees.

Pilgrims of hope 

Yet, precisely because of the scale of challenges and hardships we face as individuals and together, pursuing and maintaining such hope is not an easy feat. 

We need to learn how to hope, take steps in growing our hope, and dig deep to hope in a way that penetrates all our attitudes and relationships. 

To this end, we can notice the call of the new year’s jubilee to be ‘pilgrims’ of hope – not beacons of hope, not carriers of hope, but pilgrims. To keep journeying in hope and with hope, taking one step after another, encountering ourselves, God and others along the way, and letting ourselves be changed and transformed as we head towards our destination.

The Year of Hope will be what we make of it, but it offers a real opportunity for a renewal of ourselves and society. Hope is not the end of the story, but it is an indispensable part of the way. Becoming pilgrims of hope, we can remind ourselves that life is a journey with a direction. 

Hope is active and it carries with it a choice, and that is why this jubilee year and our conscious decision to be pilgrims of hope matter so much. As a new year begins, it is worthwhile considering what hope we carry within ourselves.

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