A year for hope

(OSV News) -- "Bull of Indiction" is an intimidating term, but it refers to something simple. It is the papal document announcing the opening of a jubilee year, and detailing how the faithful are invited to live it. 2025 has been named the Jubilee Year of Hope.

Hope. It's a much more common word than "Bull of Indiction," yet perhaps just as little understood. We have largely lost our understanding of the theological virtue of Christian hope, trading it in for an easier, almost Hallmark-like version of wishing -- and perhaps wishing into existence -- a near future of ease, niceness and comfort.

With all that we face today, both around us and within us, that easy, Hallmark-like hope is sure to disappoint. Yet what is the very verse of Scripture with which Pope Francis begins this Jubilee Year's Bull of Indiction?

"Hope does not disappoint" (Rom 5:5).

Have not our hopes been disappointed? Then what kind of hope is St. Paul talking about? And how could it not be left shattered in the wake of all that we face, collectively and individually, today?

The Catechism of the Catholic Church lays out a very different understanding of hope for the Christian, not merely as an expectation, but as a supernatural virtue:

"Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ's promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit" (No. 1817).

Desiring "the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness" -- how often do we consider what we put our "happiness" stock in? Is it in things that are passing, and always have been? Things like health, wealth, relationships with no hitches, global stability, doing what you want when you want to? Or do we put your stock in the kingdom of heaven and in eternal life with Christ?

The catechism continues: "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; it keeps man from discouragement; it sustains him during times of abandonment; it opens up his heart in expectation of eternal beatitude. Buoyed up by hope, he is preserved from selfishness and led to the happiness that flows from charity" (No. 1818).

Here, the catechism keeps it real. It isn't pretending that we will somehow escape the earthly suffering that befalls fallen humanity. We will experience times of abandonment. We will be tempted to discouragement and to selfishness. This is stated straight-up. But the theological virtue of hope takes our desire for happiness and our drive to work towards it, and purifies them, so that we are working toward something that can never, ever be taken away, and someone who will never, ever abandon us.

And the catechism goes further: "Hope is the 'sure and steadfast anchor of the soul ... that enters ... where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf.' Hope is also a weapon that protects us in the struggle of salvation: 'Let us ... put on the breastplate of faith and charity, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.' It affords us joy even under trial: 'Rejoice in your hope, be patient in tribulation.' Hope is expressed and nourished in prayer, especially in the Our Father, the summary of everything that hope leads us to desire" (No. 1820).

So, if you're looking at the Jubilee Year of Hope and lamenting that it isn't enough to respond to the dire state of the world and souls today -- look again.

May your pilgrimage of hope purify the real and good desire in you for happiness. May it offer you the anchor, weapon and joy you need in your journey toward heaven, that at the end you, too, may be able to say with St. Paul that no matter what clouds roll in, truly: "Hope does not disappoint."