The Catholic Church is currently celebrating her Jubilee Year which Pope Francis has entitled: ‘Pilgrims of Hope.’  In this year of particular grace, the Church encourages her children to renew and deepen their life of hope, something quite apt given that the world we are living in seems to have lost almost all sense of this virtue. The wars, violence and indifference in the world can all be seen as symptoms of this malaise which eats away not only at our societies but also the hearts of us as individuals.

This Jubilee Year prompts some reflection on what it truly means to hope. When one thinks about the way this word is used in common parlance it is often along the lines of: ‘I do hope that parcel comes before I need to go out,’ or ‘I hope the dairy milk chocolate is still on sale in Morrisons.’ Here, hope is reduced to a vague optimism, a wishful thinking. How far this is from the authentic meaning of hope! Hope is a total and complete certainty in God, that all he says and promises is wholly and completely true. Not only that, as Pope Francis says: ‘Hope is a gift and a task for every Christian…hoping is waiting for something that has already been given to us: salvation in God’s eternal and infinite love.’¹ Our redemption, salvation and this promise of beatitude as already there, waiting for us, all it requires is for us to get up and move towards it, to desire it. This firm certainty needs to permeate and transform each aspect of our lives and to not be some kind of optional extra, for it is our duty to hope and it is our joy, a joy which is born of total trust and surrender in God and living in the freedom which comes from that.

We are blessed in the Church to have the witness of men, women (and children!) who have undertaken this journey before us, to show us that this way is possible and the destination is certain. A beautiful model of what it means to be a pilgrim of hope upon this journey is Thérèse of Lisieux. At first glance it may not appear she refers to this virtue of hope much, but upon closer inspection her vocabulary is filled with words such as ‘surrender,’ ‘confidence’ and ‘trust.’ Is this not precisely what hope entails?

One of the central ways Thérèse teaches us to live out this ‘gift and task’ of hoping is through the expansion of our desires. This is a central teaching in the life of Thérèse, she desired, she hoped for great things and so these great things were obtained. As she writes: ‘God would never inspire me with desires which cannot be realized; so in spite of my littleness, I can hope to be a saint.’² This teaching was also articulated beautifully in her Act of Oblation to Merciful Love: ‘My Beloved Spouse told us in the days of His mortal life: ‘Whatsoever you ask the Father in my name he will give it to you!’ I am certain, then, that You will grant my desires; I know, O my God that the more You want to give, the more You make us desire. I feel in my heart immense desires and it is with confidence I ask You to come and take possession of my soul!’³ As Conrad de Meester writes of Thérèse she ‘gambled on his goodness.’⁴ There is a sacred audacity here, a holy daring which delights the heart of God who ‘pours gifts on his beloved while they slumber.’⁵

God can only give us as much as we desire and we tend to set our expectations too low. We allow our horizons to become narrow whereas hope calls our hearts to be opened ‘in expectation of eternal beatitude.’⁶ We are made for such greatness, such glory!  However, this can only be given to us in the measure in which we desire it, as Thérèse teaches us: ‘To limit your desires and your hopes is to misunderstand God’s infinite goodness! We can never have too much confidence in the good God…as we hope in Him so shall we receive.’⁷ As the Catechism reminds us, our desires also need purifying, reordering,⁸ in order for us to reach that fullness of life and love God wishes to pour out into our lives: ‘The virtue of hope responds to the aspiration to happiness which God has placed in the heart of every man; it takes up the hopes that inspire men’s activities and purifies them so as to order them to the Kingdom of heaven.’⁹ In a world so marked by consumerism, individualism, hedonism and so many other ills, along with our woundedness through original sin, our desires can become distorted, but by and through hope these desires can be placed in their right order. Hope plants and grows within us the greatness for which we were created. That life to the full Christ promises us in the Gospel, that is, the journey to holiness and to wholeness. Thérèse teaches us to expand our desires, to be daring in what we ask of the Lord. And also to not ‘pass the buck.’ God calls all of us to the heights of holiness, it is not something just reserved for these wonderful saints, we are all called to tread that path! 

Thérèse also teaches us that to hope means to recognise that all which takes place comes from the hand of God, as she writes: ‘Everything is a grace because everything is God’s gift. Whatever be the character of life or its unexpected events – to the heart that loves, all is well.’¹⁰ This is the path of surrender, where we receive all from the hands of God with total trust, knowing that he gives us all we need from moment to moment. Again, it may not feel that way, in fact, it can sometimes feel quite the opposite. When confronted with the pain of sudden illness, the death of a loved one, or those infuriating little inconveniences that life throws at us, this sense of it all being grace can seem so far away, but herein lies an invitation to a deeper level of hope, of certain expectation in the providence of God. Our first reaction is often to cry out ‘why me?’ but we need to learn to ask instead: ‘God, teach me where you are in this.’ This is truly walking that little way Thérèse teaches us, this road Jesus showed her which is ‘the surrender of the little child who sleeps without fear in its Father’s arms.’¹¹ In the daily practice of living out our faith, walking this journey with our sin, weaknesses and foibles, we may and will fail time and time again, but hope, this joy-filled desiring, keeps us safe from discouragement and sustains us in times of abandonment,¹² as we remember and trust that our loving Father sustains and holds us. This is how joy springs up from hope as we actively surrender all we are, have and that is around us into God’s hands again and again.

Finally, Thérèse reminds us of how hope is a theological virtue, a gift poured into our soul directly from God and, therefore, something which is also beyond the realm of our thoughts, feelings and senses. I may not feel hopeful, but hope can be there all the same, existing deeper than feeling or thought. Thérèse witnessed to this throughout her life, but especially as she was dying. Looking at the narrative around the Assisted Dying Bill, recently passed here in Britain in the House of Commons, one of the key taglines used by proponents of the movement was ‘death with dignity,’ a horrific distortion of what a true death with dignity is. Thérèse battled excruciating pain and agony in the final months of her life, but what was arguably worse for her, was the sense of abandonment by God, the almost overpowering temptations to despair. Nothing seemed to lie beyond the grave, just darkness and emptiness.   It turns out that many in our society would say ‘assisting’ her death was the humane, the loving and caring thing to do. But nothing could be further from the truth. That stance is a complete refusal to hope. God is the Lord of life and of death, if Christ himself trod that path of suffering, pain, abandonment and a long, lonely death, what right have we to forgo that too? But it is not suffering for suffering’s sake. It is with hope that God, in his mysterious providence, is creating something beautiful for us to behold when we stand before him.

Though the feeling of hope was lost to Thérèse in those months, hope itself was never lost. Likewise, though we may not have that comfort of feeling a sense of hope, that does not mean it isn’t present in our lives. In fact, it can indicate hope is reaching its full growth, moving beyond what is human and tangible into the realm of grace and God.

As we journey together as pilgrims of hope, let us seek the intercession of St Thérèse that we may be renewed and strengthened in hope, ‘Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.’^{13 [13]}

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1. Pope Francis, ‘Hope Is a Gift and Duty for Every Christian,’ Vatican News, November 6, 2024, https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2024-11/pope-francis-hope-is-a-gift-and-duty-for-every-christian.html. ↩︎
2. St Thérèse of Lisieux. Story of a Soul: Study Edition trans. John Clarke (Washington D.C.: ICS Publications, 2019), 328. ↩︎
3. Story of a Soul, 276 ↩︎
4. Conrad de Meester. With Empty Hands: The Message of Thérèse of Lisieux (London: Burns & Oates, 2002), 108. ↩︎
5. Psalm 127:2 ↩︎
6. Catechism of the Catholic Church (London: Catholic Truth Society, 2012), 1818. ↩︎
7. Story of a Soul. ↩︎
8. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1818. ↩︎
9. Ibid. ↩︎
10. Daily Readings with Saint Therese of Lisieux (United States: Templegate Publishers, 1988), 65. ↩︎
11. Story of a Soul, 294. ↩︎
12. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1818. ↩︎
13. Hebrews 10:23 ↩︎