Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Hope and Archbishop Chaput


In an Advent reflection  Archbishop Charles J. Chaput writes about hope and contrasts it with optimism:

Optimism, as the great Catholic novelist Georges Bernanos once wrote, has nothing to do with hope. Optimism is often foolish and naïve — a preference to see good where the evidence is undeniably bad. In fact, Bernanos called optimism a “sly form of selfishness, a method of isolating oneself from the unhappiness of others.”
Hope is a very different creature. It’s a choice — a self-imposed discipline to trust in God while judging ourselves and the world with unblinkered, unsentimental clarity. In effect, it’s a form of self-mastery inspired and reinforced by God’s grace. “The highest form of hope,” Georges Bernanos said, “is despair, overcome.”

Read the entire article.

No comments:

Post a Comment