Vigils Reading

Hope – A meditation by St Charles de Foucauld

O God, tell me about hope! How can hopeful thoughts originate in this poor world? Are they not bound to come from heaven? Everything we see, all we experience, all we are only proves our nothingness to us. How can we realize we were created to be Jesus’ brothers and co-heirs, and your children, unless you tell us so? Mother of Beautiful Love and Sacred Hope, pray to your Son Jesus for me and inspire in me the thoughts I should have.

The hope of being one day in heaven, at your feet, my Lord, in the company of the holy Virgin and the saints, gazing on you, loving you, possessing you for all eternity, with nothing able ever to separate me from you for a single moment, my Good and my All – what a vision that is! A vision of true peace, of heavenly peace indeed. It is a hope far above our dreams and raises us far above our normal selves. Yet you not only permit us to have it, you tell us we must have it. Could you possibly have given us a pleasanter commandment? O God, how good you are!

Hope is symbolized by an anchor – and how secure that anchor is! However wicked I may be, however great a sinner, I must hope that I shall go to heaven. You forbid me to despair. However ungrateful or lukewarm or cowardly I may be, however much I may misuse your graces, O God, you make it my dutyto hope to live eternally at your feet in love and holiness. You forbid me ever to be discouraged by my shortcomings, or to say to myself, “I can go no further. The road is too bad. I must go back – right back to the bottom.” You forbid me to say to myself at the prospect of the sins I renew daily, the sins I ask you daily to forgive and continually fall back into: “I can never correct myself; holiness is not for me; heaven and I have nothing in common and I am too unworthy to go there.” Even when I think of the infinite graces you have heaped on me and the unworthiness of my present life, you forbid me to say to myself, “I have gone too far in misusing my graces; I ought to be a saint, but I am a sinner; I cannot correct myself, it is too difficult; I am nothing but wretchedness and pride; after everything God has done, there is still no good in me; I shall never go to heaven.”

In spite of everything, you want me to hope, to hope always that I shall receive enough grace to be converted and attain glory. What is there in common between heaven and me – between its perfection and my wretchedness? There is your Heart, O Lord Jesus. It forms a link between these two so dissimilar things. There is the love of the Father who so loved the world he gave his only Son. I must always hope, because you have commanded me to, and because I must always believe both in your love, the love you have so firmly promised, and in your power. Yes indeed, remembering what you have done for me, I must always have such confidence in your love that, however ungrateful and unworthy I may seem to myself to be, I can still have hope in it, still count on it, still remain convinced that you are ready to accept me as the father accepted his prodigal son – and even more ready – and still remain convinced too that you will not stop calling me to your feet, inviting me to come to them and giving me the means to do so