The Year 2024 has been a most difficult year for all of us. War, natural disasters, leadership in disarray, assassination attempts, moral confusion, and high inflation have challenged our ability to hope at Christmas. In Canada, a lingering December postal strike adds to the long list of disturbing problems. It has become difficult to find reasons to hope. We recall the words of Saint John Paul II in order to get recharged: “I plead with you, never, ever give up on hope, never doubt, never tire, and never become discouraged. Be not afraid.”
Hope and despair are opposite poles. Therefore, they differ as day and night, being and nothingness. Despair is not a virtue. It is a concession. It is a moment when a person gives up, calls it quits, surrenders to the dark night of oblivion. No resources are required to despair. In fact, despair is the rejection of the resources that are available to us. Despair is a choice to stop living before our life has finished its course. It is an end, not a new beginning.
Despair is not a solution; it is a temptation. And temptations can be resisted. We sometimes think that hope is for something that we might expect. But hope is far more than expectation. We expect the sun to rise each morning. But if we wake up sick, we hope that we will get well. When our life does not run smoothly, hope enters the picture. The greater the difficulties are that face us, the greater must be our hope.
“Hope never spread her golden wings,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson, “but in unfathomable seas.” In a less eloquent style, Frank Leahy, the former football coach of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, would tell his player that “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”
St. Thomas More’s encouraging words, “The times are never so bad that a good man can’t live in them,” are never out of season. The ocean does not sink a ship but actually supports it. A pandemic of problems cannot cause despair unless a person chooses to take it on board. Despair may be knocking at the door, but we do not need to let it in.
During the Christmas Season, joyful carols bring to our ears the encouraging words that are ambassadors of hope. Consider the words “God rest ye merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay. Remember Christ our saviour was born on Christmas Day to save us all from Satan’s power when we have gone astray.” They urge us to reject dismay which is a half-way house to despair. The theme of hope overcoming despair recurs again and again in various Yuletide carols. In O Holy Night we sing, “Long lay the world in sin and error pinning ‘till he appeared and the soul felt its worth, a thrill of hope the weary world rejoices.” Human beings are remarkably resilient creatures and have survived countless trials throughout history.
Laughter, in addition to singing, are effective weapons against despair. Remember, the devil cannot laugh, and it is doubted whether he can sing. They constitute proof that we can rise above our problems. We can laugh at nonsense and sing of hope. We also have community, church, heroes of the past and present, great art, family and friends to assist us in these anxious times.
We survey the moral, political, economic, and even the religious landscape of our era and are tempted to throw up our arms in despair. Our leaders are not leading, our morals are in tatters, and our economy is in a downward slope. The rates of abortion, euthanasia, crime, and violence are increasing. Yet, there is alive in us a spark of hope that can be enkindled by the Christ Child into a flame. Christmastime centers on that hope which gives us the strength to maintain self-possession, to resist the temptation to despair, and to continue on in spite of life’s turbulence. A Merry Christmas must also be one that is redolent with hope.
Christmas Day in 1863 was especially difficult for the great author Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. At that time, he was a 57-year-old widowed father of six children, the oldest of which had been nearly paralyzed as his country fought a war against itself. How does one find hope when his beloved country is at war with itself? Despite this gloomy moment, he wrote a poem seeking to capture the dissonance in his own heart and the world he observed around him on that Christmas Day. Below are select stanzas of this beloved poem:
And in despair I bowed my head
“There is no peace on Earth, ” I said
For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on Earth, good will to menBut the bells are ringing (peace on Earth)
Like a choir singing (peace on Earth)
Does anybody hear them? (Peace on Earth)
Peace on Earth, good will to men.
Let us all hear the bells that awaken us to hope on Christmas Day 2024.
Photo by Matteo Raw on Unsplash
