The Poverty of Our Hopes

A Reflection for the 1st Sunday of Advent 2025

The start of this Advent season is the bookend to the Jubilee Year of 2025. We have journeyed through the Jubilee of Hope, a time meant to be a pilgrimage of return and rejoicing as we draw ever closer to the Father’s Heart. The year began with the words - those oh so important words - that Jesus ascribed to himself in the Nazareth synagogue:

“{Jesus} opened the book and found the place where it was written,

‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed. to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.’

And he closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant, and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, ‘Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’” (Luke 4:16-21)

It is the proclamation of a Jubilee Year, and it is why hope is a central theme of any Jubilee, but especially this one. It is a time of forgiveness, of freedom and healing, a time where injustice is rectified and a new start is offered to all.

Does that describe your experience of the past year?

If not, don’t worry – I’m with you!

Maybe you too have experienced fetters rather than freedom, confusion rather than clarity, bad news upon bad news. Maybe it seems like the only thing you’ve found fulfilled in your hearing is oppression and obstacles.

Does that mean it’s been a bad Jubilee Year? Does that mean your portion of hope has been reallocated to someone “more deserving”?

It’s okay if you’re wrestling with those questions; I sure have been. At the urging of the Holy Spirit, I returned to the wisdom of Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical Saved in Hope (Spe Salvi), searching for answers for the seemingly elusiveness of hope.

As he unpacks the understanding and experience of hope, Benedict emphasizes that true Christian hope isn’t just a theological concept. It isn’t an idea. It isn’t a naïve optimism that things will get better. Hope is lived. It is, in his words, “the expectation of things to come from the perspective of a present that is already given.” Did you catch that? Hope is the experience of a future good in the here and now that strengthens our desire for that very good. Put simply: Hope comes from encountering Jesus now.

From a Christian perspective, our hope is not in something; it is in someone. Hope, as the Catechism says, is the way we “desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness.” To hope for anything less is a “hope” not worthy of the name. In my own life, I recognize that I struggle with hope only when I begin to hope for too little! The real crosses of the present moment can, too often, cause mediocrity to infect my desires. I hope to feel better or to be understood; I hope to have an easier time at this or better luck at that. And, to be sure, those can be good things to desire. But I can be so numbed by the sufferings of the present that I forget my identity is as a beloved son of the Father who has been promised a divine inheritance, settling instead on being a slave begging for scraps from the table. If my hope is directed towards anything less than Jesus, then it is a poor, poor hope indeed.

But again, as Benedict noted, the wellspring of hope is an encounter with Jesus now, not at some unknown point in the future. Therefore, for hope to move from the realm of abstract ideas to enter the reality of our lives, a bridge must exist that makes Jesus’ victorious power present to us, even in a small way, here and now.

I remember when, in seminary, my understanding of hope shifted. There was a single passage in Paul McPartlan’s book Sacrament of Salvation that unveiled to me the gift that was placed in my soul at baptism. I quote it here in its entirety because I think it provides rich material for reflection:

“In everyday life, some of what we call our hopes materialize, many do not. This seems reasonable because, from the firm ground of the reality of the present, hope makes a projection into the uncertain future and so … is bound to be disappointed often by the way things actually work out.

In sharp contrast … the future is not uncertain for the Christian, and so the Christian’s hope does not disappoint. By the work of the Holy Spirit, it is the future that becomes firm ground for the Christian as he or she faces an uncertain present. When the Holy Spirit is active, time ceases to obey everyday rules … {and} we must expect strange things to happen.

{Through the Eucharist} each of us samples an identity that we shall not fully possess until the last day. Because of our regular celebration of the Eucharist, the future is no stranger to us. Through the Eucharist, it becomes the foundation upon which we build our daily Christian lives.”

“Because of our regular celebration of the Eucharist, the future is no stranger to us.”

At Mass, we experience the eternal victory that has already defeated the powers that harm us. Through the Eucharist, we become united to He whose love for us – for you! – is so unconditional that, if necessary, He would again allow Himself to be nailed to the cross just for you. Through the liturgy, we are drawn into the everlasting victory that is so reality transforming that our eyes are too weak to perceive its unfathomable presence.

The Eucharist is our hope, and our hope is only found through the Eucharist!

It is natural for hope to struggle when it seems like God’s promises are delayed. A healing that fails to manifest before the cancer is victorious; a betrayal that remains hidden yet changes the course of our life; the suffering of an innocent that no human effort can relieve – these experiences can shatter our hope.

In fact, in our Sunday Gospel, we find Jesus warning His disciples of that very danger. Yet it is no coincidence that, almost immediately after this dialogue of warning and exhortation to vigilant hope, Jesus and his disciples celebrate the Last Supper. He knows that it is no more effective just to tell them to keep hoping than it is when someone says to us, “You just have to have a some hope.” Wrong. It is not something we can just “do” ourselves, and we needlessly beat ourselves up when we struggle with hope if we think otherwise.

Jesus both exhorts them to vigilant hope and gives them the power to do that by giving them Himself in the Eucharist.

Hope and the Eucharist go hand-in-hand.

Can I suggest that this Advent, as we end the year of hope, we examine the presence of supernatural hope in our lives? Maybe the following questions can help guide our reflections:

• What do I honestly expect will make me happy: Jesus and the loving embrace of the Father, or comfort, success, approval, or control?

• Do I speak more often about my fears and complaints than about God’s promises and providence?

• Do I nourish my hope with Scripture (especially the promises of Jesus), or do I feed on news, social media, and human opinions?

• Do I allow discouragement to paralyze me, instead of asking the Holy Spirit for the virtue of hope and drawing close to Jesus in the Eucharist?

• When I feel empty, do I look for escape in distractions (screen time, entertainment, pleasure, busyness) instead of letting my thirst lead me to Jesus?

• Do I come to Mass with the expectation of a real encounter with the risen Christ?

• When I leave Mass, do I act as someone who has been entrusted with a “pledge of future glory” and sent to bring hope into the world?

• This Advent, what concrete practice will I take up (daily Scripture, more attentive Mass, regular adoration, a good Confession, specific works of mercy) so that my hope is more deeply rooted in Jesus’ presence in the Eucharist?

You know, on second thought, maybe my Jubilee Year hasn’t been a failure. Oh sure, there have certainly been times when my hopes were too small. But I can say Jesus is as present - dare I say even more present - to me now than He was at the beginning of the year. And I have learned that no person or circumstance, no matter how unjust, can steal my hope because Jesus is always, always available in every tabernacle and at every Mass.

So maybe there is a little hope for me.

And you.

And everyone.