Faithful to Hope

It seems everyone wants to be successful, but when it comes to faith this can be a dangerous goal. You see, we always tend to measure success on the world’s terms. Do people like us? Are we getting ahead? Yet, in the Scriptures we see that sometimes the heroes are the ones that seem to be most defeated. The martyrs are killed, the apostles are put in prison and then killed and on and on. This sure looks like a lot of failures. Mother Theresa gives us the perfect answer to this problem. She tells us that God does not call us to be successful, but faithful. Faithfulness, no success, is our goal.

This is why we can have great joy even amid worldly failures. This world is not our goal. We live this life knowing that Christ has already won the victory and that if we follow him, our good shepherd, then nothing can take us out of God’s hand. God would never allow the slightest evil in the world if he were not able to bring about an infinitely greater good. The Father is greater. This leads to the virtue of hope. Even in our darkest moments, with all the pain and suffering that we’ve seen even just this week in Boston and other places, in the middle of all the apparent failures, we have joy and hope. In the end, we win. Therefore, let us not despair but remain faithful to hope.