Grace Notes: Pilgrims of Hope

In a time that needs the witness of Christian hope more than ever, our Holy Father, Pope Francis, says the following about hope, “It is a gift of God and a task for every Christian.”
He explains that it is more than just “a mere act of optimism.”  

Rather, it is “waiting for something that has already been given to us,” (salvation and full communion with the Lord.)  What might that look like in the world of today?

Many years ago, while presenting the pro-life position to a group of high schoolers, one boy asked what could be wrong with abortion if you were saving a baby from a terrible life of unhappiness.  Our seminarian responded by pointing out that if we were to follow that logic, we should take a gun out and shoot everyone who is currently unhappy. 

The young man was not operating from a vision of life informed by hope but rather from the belief that happiness and unhappiness are unchangeable and, in fact, the only thing that really matters. 

He did not have the wisdom to see that suffering passes, states of happiness come and go in this life, and therefore, our hope is fixed on the life to come, which will be unchangeable bliss if we know how to read the happenings of this present life correctly.

A recently canonized saint, (2021), Margaret of Costello, shows us what a life of hope looks like.  Margaret was born to a noble family in 1287 with severe disabilities. She was a dwarf who was blind and lame, with a severe curvature of the spine, which made her a hunchback.

If she had been born in our time, she most likely would have been “terminated” before birth. 
The reaction of her parents was functionally the same though the time she lived in dictated a somewhat different outcome.  She was born, but her parents, upon seeing the extent of her deformities, were ashamed to have her seen in public, so her father walled her up in a room with no door, which he attached to the chapel.

Her food and necessities were passed to her through a window.  Her only visitor seems to have been the parish priest, who took pity on her and visited her while instructing her in the faith.  She lived in this separation and isolation for close to 10 years.
 
When she was 16 years old, her parents heard of a place in a nearby city (Costello) where miraculous healings were taking place at a Franciscan shrine. They decided to take her there in the hope that she would be healed. When she wasn’t healed, they abandoned her and returned home without her.

The townspeople eventually took her in, and she became known for her holiness, serenity, and cheerfulness. She took on the education of the children of the poor and assisted the sick and dying, as a part of her work and penance, along with caring for prisoners and working to bring them to repentance.

She became a third-order Dominican, and her deep prayer life drew many of the townspeople to her for counsel and even prophetic exhortation. She never spoke an unkind word about her parents, and when asked why she wasn’t resentful of their treatment of her, she responded by saying that if people knew what was in her heart, they would understand. 

In fact, her inner life was marked by an intimate relationship with the Holy Family, Jesus, Mary and Joseph.  By the time she died at the age of 33, the whole town recognized her holiness and insisted she be buried in the church.  They attended the funeral as well, and it was reported that a young girl was healed during the funeral Mass.  Later, she was found to be incorrupt, and more than 200 miracles have been attributed to her intercession since her death.

St. Margaret’s witness to hope is especially appropriate for our age. She did not let anything take away her joy or her peace.  She lived the great gift of Easter, hope.

 “Christian hope which makes us have that confidence in God, in his ultimate triumph, and in his goodness and love, which nothing can shake.” - Cardinal Basil Hume. 

And, in her glory, in concert with Christ himself, she is one of the best arguments against the mindless embrace of hopelessness and the objection we so often make to sacrifice and suffering. St. Margaret, pray for us!
​GRACE NOTES
GRACE NOTES