The Healing Journey

August 3, 2026

We’ve all heard of the three theological virtues — faith, hope and charity. Faith and charity are easy to grasp, but what about “hope”? Does that mean having a desire to win the lottery? Does it mean wishing things will get better in your family life? Does it mean your chronic illness will vanish?

For many people, it’s hard to have hope. While it sounds good in theory, applying it to our lives can be difficult if we are grieving and prone to depression and despair, especially when someone we love dies and the future is fraught with trials, loneliness and suffering.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says this: “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.”

So hope keeps us from being discouraged, it buoys us when we feel alone and abandoned, and it opens our hearts in expectation of external salvation. So hope is a pretty amazing thing.

But definitions, alone, won’t give us hope in our darkest hour. Having hope doesn’t mean you won’t suffer, it doesn’t mean your suffering will vanish, it doesn’t mean you’ll live happily ever after in this life. It does mean that in your darkest hour, you’ll realize you’re not alone, that you haven’t been abandoned, and there is a light, which might seem infinitesimally small, but will lead you from despair.
©J Pisani

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