Hope is Always Necessary

People are tired of waiting for the other shoe to drop, and of presuming that whatever it is that will happen, will be bad. 

There's a solution to this fatigue, to this constant anxiety.   

Will to hope.   Faith is a gift but it also must be grown and chosen.  The more we choose, the more we will find.  The smallest of seeds in the soul will become a large tree in which other souls can rest.  

So too hope, the second cardinal virtue is a willed thing, something that we can enkindle in others by our witness.  

How do we hope when there is so much wrongness in the world...our politics, the pandemic, economics,  institutions that betray trust, scandals, when there is so much hurt said and unsaid?  How does one hope in the face of suffering?   

The same way we hold onto hope when we are not suffering.  If our hope was in these other things, it was misplaced.  Hope to acquire the grace God is always offering.  Hope to learn whatever it is we need to learn from weathering this time.  We may wish this time never came to us, but that is what all people of good will wish.

"However, that is not ours to decide. What matters is what we do with this time that we've been given."  --Gandalf to Frodo in Fellowship of the Ring. 

So if you want to defeat the evil of this age, ride out and meet it.   Will to hope.