Hope is not something ether-eal. Hope is tangible. It is reality-oriented. Real hopes are those that can be reached. The first place whereby hope is accepted or rejected is within the human person herself/himself. Hope is, first and foremost, an attitude or a disposition that exists in the heart of our being. Because of its staying ability, hope makes our existence worthwhile. It has the power to widen the horizons of our endeavours. It tells us that life goes on and that the future is never closed to us. On the contrary, the future holds changing possibilities.
The more we crave for our hopes, the more we tend to let our emotions get in the way and tarnish our hoping spirit. The hoping person is assailed by three destructive attitudes that may put her/his hope into serious trouble. These are despair, apathy and shame.
Despair is when we perceive that what we hold dear and realisable to us will never happen. Despair leads us to deep frustration and depression. No matter how hard we try to get our plans working, we feel
disconnected from them. Unfortunately, most of the time it happens that we become so disillusioned and disheartened with ourselves over what is happening that we simply channel all our anger and frustration on ourselves. We start blaming ourselves for what has been happening to us. Caring pastors can help people who are caught up by despair by gently inviting them to have a less intense view of life, assisting them to focus on short-term goals and also encouraging them to widen the circle of their acquaintances.
Apathy is an attitude that floors hope. It is that state of desirelessness that is accompanied by the feeling of “not caring” about everything that is occurring around us. Four very useful inner strengths that counter apathy are fortitude, courage, diligence and constancy. Fortitude is the rejection of the annoyances that obstructs the accomplishments of good and worthy tasks. Courage empowers people to embark on difficult and painful things willingly, wisely and reasonably. Diligence is the capacity to finish valuable tasks that one starts. Constancy is stability in courage. Pastors are to promote these healthy attitudes in their ministry since they are the backbone of an eternally hopeful self.
The last hazard that erodes hope is shame. Shame is the painful awareness that events have turned out to be the very opposite of what we would have hoped and liked them to be. Feelings produced from shame are embarrassment, humiliation, self-pity, worthlessness and feeling totally exposed to others’ ridicule and disrespect. Shame reveals our failure because it undermines our ability to foresee what may happen in our lives and what is really possible for us. Caring pastors are the ones who empower other people’s selves. This is done by instructing them to keep a list of things they are to be proud of, helping them to nurture and forgive themselves and encouraging them to confess their failures to themselves and/or others and move away from them.
Hope is not left unattended. Inasmuch as it has threats, hope also has its allies. The key attitudes that sustain hope are trust, patience and modesty. Trust grants the indispensable prerequisites for hope, patience acts as a vital role in supporting hope and modesty helps us put our hopes into perspective.
Donald Capps defines trust as that “confident expectation, anticipation, or hope for the future”. In other words, in some way or another everything will be okay in the end. Trust makes us believe that the other is to be entrusted because s/he will not disappoint us. Trust is a powerful ally to hope. When we experience trust ourselves, both in confiding in someone and in being confided in in return, we start believing that hope is possible. Also, this experience makes us aware that the universe is reliable. There are people around us in whom we can trust. Such an assurance will make us trust that what we consider dear to us will in fact happen. Thus, trust protects us against one of hope’s archenemies: despair.
Patience is tantamount to “steadfastness, endurance, or perseverance in accomplishing a task”. It empowers us not to give up amid the frustrations that can come about when our hopes are not being fulfilled. It redirects and connects our frustrations toward the accomplishment of our hopes.
The last attitude that reinforces hope is modesty. The latter is the refraining from letting oneself be absorbed by the excesses or extremes that life presents. Modesty orients our hope to what is real and possibly achievable. It also makes us accept the harsh yet liberating reality that certain hopes cannot actually happen. In this sense, the attitude of modesty recalls Jesus’ words: “the truth will make you free” (Jn 8, 32).
The good news about hope is that it can be reframed. Hope can change its meaning or be reframed. Reframing means changing the frame in which a person interprets the world of events in order to alter their meaning. A change in meaning implies a change in the way that person responds and behaves. In this respect, the most pastorally pertinent question becomes the following: in what ways can the pastor reframe hope? Two ways by which hopefulness can reframe are envisioning the future and revising the past.
The first mode is by envisioning the future. As has been said earlier, the future can be different from what the present difficulties and problems show would happen. Hope is instilled in such situations because the person can become aware that s/he has the power to shape her/his own future by choosing another course of action. By envisioning the future and being committed to work on its desired outcome, a person seriously undertakes her/his autonomy and works responsibly for the betterment of her/his own life in the present. Therefore, the present becomes the place where the future starts being reframed and redeemed.
The second mode is that of revising the past. Contrary to what many people think, the past can be redeemable. Unfortunately, there is a tendency to look at what has happened as something that cannot be changed. In actual fact, it can. A hopeful interpretation of the past has the power to render it as a “source for solutions”. Through a repentant reinterpretation, the past can be corrected and rectified. The method by which the past is rectified, corrected and given new meaning is called biographical rehabilitation. In such an approach the past is as open and possibility-filled as the future. In fact, the past can be a source of hope, provided that we are open to the new acquired meaning we ascribe to it.
Having a hopeful attitude to life means that, in every experience we go through, nothing is lost to us. The basis for such a hope is God, the reliable Other who has and will never abandon us. All we need to do is to have an open heart, mind and will to let ourselves be embraced by his unconditional love he has for each and every one of us.
Fr Mario Attard
OFM Cap