August 25, 2025
Don’t Fall Prey to False Hope
by Karen A. Avitabile
Recently, I attended a fundraiser and bought tickets for a raffle of various items. It was one of those raffles where you purchase a sheet card with the same number on it, and you just rip off tickets and put them in the small bin for the item(s) you hope to win.
During the auction part of the evening, the audience quiets down. The speaker holds the item and then calls out the number of the winning ticket.
It’s always exciting when the winning numbers start being called. Everyone looks at their arm’s length of tickets. Maybe the number called is close to the number you had, maybe not.
While I knew which bins I had put tickets in, I still studied my tickets when the winning numbers were called for raffles I had not entered. Now, of course, winning a prize that I had not entered a ticket for is not possible. But it was false hope; hope that I had in the moment.
It is that false hope that we all experience in our daily lives.
There are many things we wish for, and we hope for outcomes to situations and experiences that we don’t have control over. Oftentimes, we go through life wishing and hoping for the impossible. It’s a waste of energy.
Instead, we need to change our focus and attention to what is possible or even what is guaranteed. We know that we have a God who listens to us and who loves us. That is something we have been lucky to have since our baptism when the celebrant said, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
God’s love is guaranteed. It is not false hope.
(Karen A. Avitabile is the editor of the Catholic Transcript magazine.)
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