OPI
“Hope is not dead; hope is alive and it embraces our lives forever. Hope does not disappoint!”
“The one who has hope lives differently.”
“Hope never cuts everyone off.”
Maria “Montse” Montserrat Alvarado, president of EWTN News (the “global Catholic network”), was speaking to the women of the Knights of Columbus, gathered in Washington, D.C., for the annual convention of the Catholic fraternal organization. The lunch is mostly for wives of leaders in the Knights — women who are community leaders in their own right, albeit usually without the colorful titles the Knights are known for.
Montse shared the quote about joy, which comes from St. Augustine on his mother, St. Monica. His life was a moral disaster. It was an excruciating cross for his mother to bear. But she prayed. She prayed with every bit of energy and love she could muster. “You did not despise her tears when they poured down and watered the ground beneath her eyes wherever she prayed,” he wrote in reflective prayer in his “Confessions,” after his conversion — the fruit of Monica’s hard-fought dedication to hope.
Women who live real Christian hope inspire, Alvarado says, because of that trust they have in God and his promises. Her talk about living tomorrow’s joy today is possible because “tomorrow’s joy is our life in Heaven, and we can borrow small doses of that in our everyday lives to fuel our hope.”
The day before Alvarado spoke, Patrick Kelly, the head of the Knights, delivered his annual report. The theme of the Knights’ gathering this summer is “Heralds of Hope,” and so anything that can practically encourage living and radiating hope is what they need to be about. He quoted Pope Francis about hope being alive. It was Christmas night. That gives a visual about light in the darkness like nothing else. “The infinitely great has made himself tiny; divine light has shone amid the darkness of our world; the glory of heaven has appeared on Earth. And how? As a little child.” It is because of this, Francis said, “if God can visit us, even when our hearts seem like a lowly manger,” we can firmly and fervently be sure that hope is very much alive.
Alvarado wouldn’t be president of a network presenting news from a Catholic perspective, offering practical advice about hope to leaders from around the country, if it weren’t for EWTN’s founder, Mother Angelica. The woman was hope on steroids. When I met her in 2000, I entered the cloister visiting area in her monastery and I thought it was a vestibule to Heaven. She said on another occasion that hope does not lie. We sometimes think little white lies might bring hope — like telling someone their dress is beautiful, when it’s really a misfitting mess. No, it’s the real stuff that helps us live in hope. And it is for everyone.
Heralding hope is beginning again, no matter what stupid, evil, reckless, thoughtless, forgetful, embarrassing thing we did. Whatever is going on, we can’t kill hope.
Choose hope. Embrace others with hope. Hope will overcome the oppression of distraction so we can live tomorrow’s joy right now and with every breath of our earthly lives.
(Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow at the National Review Institute, editor-at-large of National Review magazine and author of the new book “A Year With the Mystics: Visionary Wisdom for Daily Living.” She is also chair of Cardinal Dolan’s pro-life commission in New York, and is on the board of the University of Mary. She can be contacted at klopez@nationalreview.com.)
