Written by Jennifer Thomm, teacher, Spiritus Sanctus Academy; content and marketing coordinator, Openlight Media, [email protected]
“Hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” (Romans 5:5)
Often my heart swells in gratitude to God for pouring into my soul, at Baptism, the virtues of faith, hope and love to sustain me while I live my vocation. I truly believe that each of us needs to draw on the graces of specific virtues in different seasons of our life. As educators, we witness to our students (and our children) how God’s life—grace—operates in our life. His love is real, and our response in living these virtues transforms them from words to be memorized to words to be lived.
The truth that “hope does not disappoint” became a reality for me when I lost my husband of 19 years at the age of 41, after a 14-year battle with a brain tumor. Throughout those years, we struggled with infertility, had one biological child, adopted two more and fostered for a number of years. If God had showed me how my life would have played out when we first met, I’m not sure I could have handled it. But that’s kind of the point. WE aren’t supposed to handle it!
It is through this lens that I know to the core of my being that hope does not disappoint. Hope is often misunderstood as optimism or overshadowed by the sins which darken its beauty. Today we witness a spirit of presumption relying on one’s own capabilities, or worse, despair, that is an intellectual and willful giving up on God’s love and mercy. When we view life from either one of these perspectives, it makes it so much harder to embrace the inevitable: suffering.
My husband and I were both type A personalities and loved to have a plan. The day I learned that “hope does not disappoint” is forever imprinted in my memory. Just after his 27th birthday, we found ourselves in the emergency room to discover he had a brain tumor. As reality sank in, I also experienced an inner surge of strength beyond my ability. Faced with this stark reality, we had no control, no plan except two options: either anger and bitterness, or surrender. For us, the response wasn’t even a choice. “Jesus, I trust in You” became our constant prayer and in accepting the cross we discovered freedom, peace and that the anchor of our lives was now found in God alone.
We understood immediately that the Lord had a lot of work to do within us. Surely, He would use this cross to work in the lives of our family and friends, but we also recognized that if we said yes, if we gave our complete surrender and allowed Him to use us, the ripple effect would be huge. So that’s what we did. We lived out loud, in all our vulnerability, and suffered with the intention to win as many souls for the Kingdom as we could.
The Lord placed in our hearts the mission and desire to suffer well. While it was rarely easy, God’s grace was enough. For 14 years, our “normal” life consisted of surgeries, chemo and radiation. He continued to work and live fully his vocation as husband and father. The last three years were marked by a steady decline with an inability to speak and motor issues on one side. Hence, he removed himself from his job at a Catholic radio. But through it all, we lived in hope, firmly believing that God is already there ahead of us, and that by sharing in His death we also share in His Resurrection. If this is true, why do we spend so much time worrying? God has already won the battle!
By virtue of being Christians, every one of us will undergo some kind of suffering. Jesus never says that following Him will be easy. His invitation is one of picking up our individual cross. Hope gives us the confidence to boldly step out into the unknown, because although we do not know what the future holds, we do know WHO holds our future. In the joyful acceptance and embracing of our cross, we are purified and become more and more like Jesus. I was privileged to have a front row seat. Hope fixes our eyes on Jesus and brings freedom because we live in the expectation of Heaven. Hope anchors the soul in God and enables us to be joyful when facing affliction.
The hardest thing I have ever had to do is to look my husband in the eye and give him permission to go, but God is faithful as He’s always been! It’s a strange existence to live with one foot in Heaven and one on earth. Everything here loses its luster. The veil was so thin; to watch as he experienced tastes of Heaven at various times in the final days solidified my resolve to do whatever it takes to get us all to Heaven so we can be together again. Indeed, hope does not disappoint.
Each year we wait in expectant hope for the coming of the Messiah. We welcome Him into the humble stables of our hearts, and when He arrives, we are forever changed. The broken pieces of us are made beautiful as He continues to mold and shape us with our yes.
As Advent begins, the Catholic Church is also ushering in a Jubilee Year of Hope! The roots of a jubilee year come from Jewish tradition and have been continued in the Catholic Church. Throughout history, a jubilee year has been a celebration of forgiveness, reconciliation and renewal. Debts were forgiven, prisoners were set free and everything was reset.
What a wonderful opportunity to restore our identity as a people of HOPE! In this season of Advent, as we anticipate the arrival of the Messiah, let us look to Mary and Joseph as our witnesses to hope. They did not know all the details of God’s plan before it unfolded, yet they trusted in a God who is love and mercy itself. They humbly gave their fiat, confident that they were truly known and seen by the One they served. May we all grow in recognizing how the Lord continually provides for us, and echo Mary’s fiat, Thy will be done, as we choose to joyfully embrace our crosses and follow after the One who loved us first. Let us become missionaries of HOPE to a world that desperately needs to be reminded of its true identity as children of God.
