“Hope Does Not Disappoint”

Hope and Mercy are intertwined gifts of the Spirit, both inviting us to trust, to smile, and to act with compassion. Drawing inspiration from Pope Francis and Catherine McAuley, Sister Nancy Houlihan, RSM, reminds us that the Mercy charism calls us to live with “outrageous hope” – a hope that trusts in God’s Providence and renews our capacity to smile, serve, and love. Sister Nancy serves as Assistant Director of Mission Integration at Mother McAuley Liberal Arts High School (Chicago, Illinois).

“And hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us..”  Romans 5:5

When Lent came this year, I couldn’t have been more ready for it. In the weeks leading up to it, I felt like I was just going through the motions, doing what had to get done but never really catching up.  Nothing seemed to be going smoothly, and the same people kept making the same mistakes. More than once, I found myself muttering sarcastically, “They never disappoint!” (I said some other things too, mostly four-letter words, but only to myself.)

At the beginning of Lent I was gifted a book written by Pope Francis. When I read the title, I discovered a new four-letter word that had been missing from my silent litany of rage: hope. In his book, On Hope, Pope Francis points out in Chapter 1 that when people distance themselves from God, their smile is the first thing they lose.  They might be able to laugh or joke, “but their smile is missing. Only hope brings a smile: it is the hopeful smile in the expectation of finding God.”  I began looking at my own patterns of smiling (or lack of) as part of my Lent practice.

As I continued reading the book, my margin annotations often reflected and echoed Mercy. I would write: “this is Mercy” … “Catherine said this” … “Catherine did this.”  This coupled with the Pope’s reiteration “hope does not disappoint” brought a new spin to my ongoing reflections found in Scripture.

Fueled by my margin annotations, I sought more resources on Catherine McAuley and hope. Sister Brenda Dolphin, RSM, the postulator for Catherine’s cause for sainthood, had given a talk entitled “Gathering the Harvest of Catherine’s Hope”, in which she states:

“Following Catherine McAuley there is no doubt that we are called to be [people] of ‘outrageous hope’ for Catherine was a woman of ‘outrageous hope.’”

“The kernel of her hope was her trust in Divine Providence.”

As stated in the original Rule and Constitutions: “God and God alone must be the principal motive of [our] actions – it is the pure intention of pleasing God that renders the good work valuable.” God’s hope and Catherine’s sense of hope do not disappoint.

Thanks to Pope Francis and Catherine, my Lenten journey was taking me from raging hopelessly to outrageous hope.  I found myself smiling!

Now, as I continue my journey, my travel companion continues to be Hope.  Hope, the gift of the Holy Spirit,  does not lead us to do what is right out of frustration, but freely allows us to respond in Mercy.  Hope does not disappoint, and I am smiling more!