Echoes from the Bell Tower

This year of 2025 is a “Holy Year.” For Catholics, that means that our Holy Father (Pope Francis at the time) declared a Jubilee Year for the Church—which traditionally is done every 25 years, at least since the year 1300. During this year, Pope Francis called the faithful to focus on Christian hope and revive the notion of the Church being “pilgrims of hope.”

To encourage this among the faithful, I have been using Pope Francis’ formal pronouncement, a document entitled (in Latin) Spes non confundit (“Hope does not disappoint”), as a framework for retreats I’ve presented to religious and clergy during the Jubilee. For priests and deacons, my intention has been to reflect on the ministry of preaching to provide a message of hope that will help the faithful commit to being hopeful people in a world that, frankly, seems hopelessly violent and unjust.

For the religious sisters I’ve preached to, I focus on being pilgrims of hope and being communities of hope. But clergy too, to present a credible message through their preaching, must themselves strive to be what it is they are calling their congregations to become. St. Benedict understands the vital role Christian hope plays in our lives as monastics. In the fourth chapter of his Rule, he ends a long list of “tools for good works with the instruction to never to despair of God’s mercy. I read this line as a call to hope since, as I see it, the opposite of hope is despair.

Despair is what happens when we’ve lost a sense of God’s presence and feel as if God has abandoned us in the wilderness. In the Bible’s story of Exodus, ancient Israel struggled to trust that God was truly with them, shepherding them through the desert wilderness by the hand of Moses; guiding them to a promised land where they can make a home as God’s People. In their distress, they forgot the God who was their deliverer from slavery in Egypt, the God who promised to always be with them. It’s very easy to forget God when things are difficult or frightening—when loss, grief, or hardship occur. To forget God can lead to despair if we don’t stay attentive to what we’re feeling about what’s happening in our lives, and in society. Then we pray about it, because without prayer we can lose the sense of God being with us in it, helping us to rely on God’s goodness and grace leading us forward.  

In the prologue to his Rule St. Benedict quotes from Psalm 34 writing, “Are there any among you who yearn for life and desire to see good days?” Hope is the expectation of good things to come. But Christian hope is more than mere optimism, and much more than wishful thinking—hope is a faith - rooted disposition to trust God’s mercy and to rely on God’s goodness and God’s Word, who is Christ!

The monk, like any dedicated Christian, strives to live in hope by trusting and believing that God’s goodness will prevail, no matter what it may look or feel like in the moment (cf. Romans 8:28). The monastic community is made up of those who commit to a life to relying on God’s grace enabling us to participate in the goodness of God by doing good deeds in response to evil and sin, and the social effects of both on our world. Will you commit to the same? Be a Pilgrim of Hope for others by bringing hope to bear on the despair of those who suffer the evil effects of sin or hardship.