Love is Always Hopeful

“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.” 1 Corinthians 13:7-8

In April 2017, Pope Francis held a General Audience in St. Peter’s Square and he said:

“Of course, if we trusted only in our strengths, we would have reason to feel disappointed and defeated, because the world often shows itself immune to the laws of love. It prefers, so often, the laws of selfishness. But if the certainty survives in us that God does not abandon us, that God loves us and this world tenderly, then it immediately changes our perspective. ‘Homo viator, spe erectus,’ the ancients used to say [Latin: ‘Man is a wayfarer, (supported) upright by hope’]. Along the journey, Jesus’ promise ‘I am with with you’ enables us to stand with hope, upright, trusting that the good God is already at work, accomplishing what humanly seems impossible, because the anchor is on heaven’s shore. The holy, faithful People of God are a people that stand – homo viator – and walk, but upright, erectus, and they walk in hope. And wherever they go, they know that God’s love has preceded them: there is no part of the world that escapes the victory of the Risen Christ. And what is the victory of the Risen Christ? The victory of love.”

There is so much to ponder in these beautiful thoughts. So many people are feeling despondent and hopeless these days of the pandemic, that this quote supposedly uttered by business magnate Jack Ma of Alibaba has gone viral in Facebook and Twitter: “For people in business, 2020 is really just a year for staying alive. Don’t even talk about your dreams or plans. Just make sure you stay alive. If you can stay alive, then you would have made a profit already.” The thing is Jack Ma never said it. 

The year 2020 is unprecedented in its effect on the whole world. The more this year has to be about loving, and believing, and hoping and enduring. Not merely surviving.  Wherever we go, whatever we do, let us be certain that God’s love is already there and we are not alone, and we will not fail.