Renewed by Hope

+JMJ+

Faith enables Christian hope to be more than mere expectation and to become at every moment an immediate embodiment of love.

Faith is a force, one so powerful that it cannot tolerate anything next to it. How weak in faith we are: we are constantly letting things outside of God take up space in us!

~ Adrienne Von Speyr

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The above are taken from my most recent purchase, Lumina ++ New Lumina, a collection of thoughts and antidotes from the journals and notes of Adrienne. Von Balthasar comments that these are fruits of Adrienne's contemplative union with God, perhaps she wanted to use them for manuscripts, but they never were incorporated into her other works.

What a lesson for me these above thoughts on Faith, Hope and Love truly are! Perhaps you've experienced a little hopelessness lately? I've been rather down regarding the state of our country and the current political landscape. Living in Chicago--a.k.a. Obamanation--is often demoralizing. Yet, should I really be living with a mindset of gloom and doom?

The reality is, as Papa Benedict said while visiting the US in April--Those who have HOPE live differently! And, this is not the Obama definition of hope: hope in ourselves and our own ingenuity, hope that is a vague, undefined ideal. This is the theological virtue of HOPE that Papa Benedict preached while in our nation. This is the REAL DEAL.

If we have Hope, then we will live differently. We'll know that this life is NOT what it is all about. Even if Obama becomes president and the nation goes to pots, even if FOCA is signed into law and we experience radical socialist agendae, in the end...it will not matter.

Why? Because we KNOW the story's ending. We know, as proclaimed in the Gospel, that Christ will come again--we know, as Our Lady of Fatima said, that in the end HER IMMACULATE HEART WILL TRIUMPH.

There will be sorrows, persecution. We see it now--as we've seen it over the past 2000 years--even today our Christian brothers and sisters are being killed in Iraq and India...and other places around the globe. But, as was said so long ago, the Blood of Martyrs is the Seed of Christians. These men and women dying for the Faith are heroes, and what a consolation to know they are in Heaven praying for us even at this very moment?!

There is nothing to fear. Thursday (Oct. 16) was the anniversary of Papa John Paul's election as Pontiff. Do you know what he said on that day?? "Do not be afraid. OPEN wide the DOORS to Christ." What did Papa Benedict remind us of while in the US? "CHRIST is our HOPE!"

Seeing with the eyes of faith changes our perspective. Today at Mass I heard a homily preached, and the crux thereof: We must view the word through the prism of the Gospel! What a lesson for us right now, today!

I hear so many faithful men and women so discouraged by our world, saddened by the nearly 4,000 abortions daily in the US, discouraged by the secularization of the Western world...and honestly distressed at general apathy towards God. But, didn't Jesus say in the Gospel of John, "Do not let your hearts be troubled...Do not be afraid...for I have conquered the world." Didn't He promise He would come again? Didn't He say that if we are faithful, we have no reason to worry?

Life is so short! This is just a speck. How silly of us, as Adrienne reminds, to even allow ANYTHING to consume our time or our selves that is not in essence Faith, not in essence God?!

And, if we allow Hope to truly live in us, we will be what we have been created in the image of...God Himself, who is Love!

In these troubled times, may we look forward to the fulfillment of God's promises. May we rejoice in the Crosses we are invited to bear, may we accept the challenge of living true Hope in a world confused and starving for Truth. May we not allow politics, apathy or even our own weakness distract us from the Source and Summit of our lives, God...Who is so humbly and perpetually available to us, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar!