Welcome to the First Sunday of Advent, this beautiful season of promises fulfilled, light emerging into darkness, waiting in joyful hope. Hope is a theme that emerges over and over during this gentle season. I don’t know about you, but I could use a little extra hope these days. So, let’s allow ourselves to reflect a little more deeply on this virtue.

A few years ago, Krista Tippett ran a series for her On Being Podcast about hope. I revisited an episode of that series called “The Future of Hope 3,” which featured a conversation between Elizabeth Gilbert and Pico Iyer. Elizabeth Gilbert reflects on hope through a quote from the Tao Te Ching which says, “Hope is as hollow as fear.” She says that “the reason [hope and fear are] hollow is that they both orient you toward imagining a future, and that is a fantasy. Fantasizing about an apocalyptic future is just as much of a fantasy as fantasizing about a utopic future; you’re still not here in the present moment because the realest, realest reality is that you cannot know what is coming.” She goes on to describe how, when her partner was diagnosed with stage four cancer, friends kept coming with stories about miracle cures of other people diagnosed with series illnesses. Up until the day she died, people were expecting a miraculous recovery. Elizabeth Gilbert is grateful that she did not give herself over to false hope. If she had spent the final moments hoping for a miracle, she says, “I wouldn’t have been able to be as absolutely present to her as I was, breath by breath, moment by moment, as this great being left the world.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about this and how hope functions in my own life. I, too, have heard people offer pithy platitudes when faced with dire circumstances, particularly other people’s dire circumstances: “Everything happens for a reason. This is all part of God’s plan. If you pray hard enough, a miracle with happen.” To me, these are more a form spiritual bypassing than genuine hope. Hope can sometimes function like an emotion. It’s a positive feeling, and like Elizabeth Gilbert says, an expectation for the future. I don’t think that’s a bad thing in and of itself, but it can be fleeting, maybe even a little hollow. The kind of hope that we pray into during Advent, though, is not just an emotion. It’s a virtue, which means that it’s both a gift from God and something we practice. It’s a little bit about expectation and a lot about trust – trusting that God seeks to bring about our good – our good, which is, ultimately, union with God. When we as Christians hope, it’s not fantasizing about the future; it’s leaning into something we already know to be true.

During Advent, as our Scripture readings tell us about the coming of Christ and how his conception came to be and all of the events surrounding his birth, we don’t pretend we don’t know what will happen. Of course we know what’s going to happen. We prepare for it because, although it was a historical event, the experience of the coming of Christ into each of our lives and our collective life happens every year — and all the time. We’re growing in our faith moment by moment, day by day, and as we do, we live into Christ’s life and mission, as well as his suffering, death, and resurrection. We can trust this process of growth because we experience it. So, we have one foot in the reality of God’s love and care, of God’s justice and equity, and we also look toward the future where we’ll have the fullness of these things. We can root ourselves in the hope of the present moment and allow that to propel us into action — to work to bring about the fulfillment of God’s promises.

Sunday’s First Reading from Jeremiah tells us:

The days are coming, says the LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and Judah. In those days, in that time, I will raise up for David a just shoot; he shall do what is right and just in the land. In those days Judah shall be safe and Jerusalem shall dwell secure; this is what they shall call her: "The LORD our justice."

Safe — what a fitting word to use. It seems like these days a lot of people are worried for their safety, maybe not like we once did during that pandemic years, but not it feels more existential. I sense, and feel in myself, a low-grade kind of dread. And there are some, like immigrants and refugees and their families, who genuinely fear for their safety here in the United States. With everything happening, I find myself doing what Elizabeth Gilbert describes, succumbing to the hollowness of fear. I’m not fantasizing about the apocalypse exactly, but I’m filled with worry about the future. Lately I’ve tried to be intentional about reassuring myself in the present moment. A mantra that I’ve been using lately comes from another podcast, Dan Harris’s Ten Percent Happier Podcast, and it says, “Right now, it’s like this.” I find that so helpful. “Right now” grounds me in the present, and “like this” helps me to acknowledge how I’m feeling. This phrase also reminds me that, when things are hard, the experience and emotions are fleeting, and that things will inevitably change, as things always do. When things are good, it helps me to remember to savor the moment. I took this mantra and put it on my phone screen so I always remember, every time I pick up my phone. Dan Harris’s wife had it tattooed onto her arm, That’s one way to remember! For now, my phone is sufficient.

The reality is that God is with me and I am safe. Hoping in God’s promise is not some superstitious kind of thing, like if I pray hard enough, God will keep bad things from happening. It’s more like, no matter what happens, God will be with me. It’s a long-view hope. It reassures me that, despite suffering, God moves us toward the good, holding us in love and care. Like Christ came into this world during a time of peril and hardship for most of the people around him, and like he later rose from the dead, we will somehow be alright too.

Maybe the emotions of hope and fear do look toward the future and feel some kind of way about it. However, the kind of hope that comes from God reassures us of God’s love and presence, both in the future and right now, in this moment, in this first week of Advent in the year 2024, with all that’s happening and all that will unfold. God’s promise isn’t hollow; we know that because we experience the fulfillment God’s promise in the coming of Christ every day and in God’s presence in each moment.

I want to close by quoting one my sisters, Sr. Barbara Rohe, in her Advent reflection for my community:

“O Emmanuel, help us to realize you are with us already! Give us what we need to make a difference in our world! Remind us that how things are now is not how they’ve always been; nor is it how things will always be.” When it seems like the war, poverty, trauma, and grief around the world makes peace feel like a pipe dream; when the rhetoric and falsehoods of politicians who promise what they cannot possibly deliver make us lose hold on any hope of justice prevailing; when we seem to have little reason to find glimmers of hope; we need to be reminded that hope has its own creative, restorative power. . . . This, however, requires a conscious choice. . . . And how do we make this choice — with the help of the one who came as the light of the world. Our hope is in Emmanuel, God with us.

For Reflection:

• Have you ever experienced the hollowness of fear? What was it like? How was god with you in that fear?

• How do you experience God in the present moment?

• Do you trust that God is moving you toward the good, that God is caring for you?

• What helps you to choose hope over despair?

• How is God’s promise being fulfilled in your life right now?

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by Sister Leslie Keener, CDP

Sister Leslie Keener, CDP is the director of God Space, a community-building spirituality ministry in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. She’s a Sister of Divine Providence with a Masters in Ministry and a Certificate in Spiritual Direction and Retreats from Creighton University. She directs retreats, meets with people for spiritual direction, and serves as the vocation director for her community. She also serves on the Coordinating Council of Spiritual Directors International. She enjoys music, dancing, meaningful conversations, and spicy food.