May 11, 2012

The Toppling Wave of Hope

What is HOPE? 
I remember attending a Jesuit Retreat at Canisius College some 40 years ago and the Retreat Director made this poetic metaphor
Each of us rides the toppling wave of Hope”.  
This has lived with me all these years in the back roads of my mind. While more and more seeing myself as a cork bobbing up and down in the breaking waves, I’ve come to see a great difference between Hope and Optimism.
Having twice seen, ‘The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’, I delighted in the lunatic hotel manager, formerly of Slum Dog Millionaire. “Yes, yes. I am so terribly sorry that the room has no door, the window will not open and the shower has fallen on your head. These are catastrophes. However, my Uncle said to me that all will be well in the end. So this is not the end!!”  Unbridled Optimism. It’s only when Maggie Smith, the movie’s supreme English Racist, takes over the management that Hope enters.

The distinction between Hope and Optimism could not be better portrayed. Optimism is the belief that somehow, somewhere, sometime, things will get better. Whereas, Hope is the energy and result that we find within ourselves, in our very guts, to do something about the situation, well aware of the apparent impossibilities and challenges that lie ahead. Hope is active, whereas Optimism is passive.

This is true about the present situation of the Institutional Church and during the past decades of the Vatican Council there was plenty of Optimism, now there is only Hope. That’s where this meeting of our PFGM is so vital. We are given the gift of Hope, as Jesus was in His Ministry when everything was going against Him, and even the Father was silent. There was still the Hope of the Resurrection when the Father raised the Son into Light and Life.