A Month of Virtue: Hope: 30 Days to a More Expectant Heart

Most of us know we are supposed to hope. We find it harder to explain what that means - or why, in seasons of darkness and unanswered prayer, the hoping seems to have gone somewhere we cannot reach.

A Month of Virtue: Hope is a thirty-day formation book for souls who want to learn how the tradition actually hopes - not as a pleasant feeling that things will work out, but as the theological virtue the Church names alongside faith and charity: the soul's confident desire for eternal life, resting not on its own merits but on the omnipotence and fidelity of God who has promised it.

Each day offers a short reflection drawn from the Catholic tradition - from Charles Péguy's vision of hope as the little child pulling faith and charity forward, from Padre Pio's tested counsel to pray, hope, and don't worry, from Saint Thérèse's final words (I am not dying; I am entering into life), from the anchor of Hebrews 6:19 and the longing of Psalm 41 - followed by a verse of Scripture (Douay-Rheims), a single concrete resolution to carry through the day, and a brief closing prayer.

The book names and guards against hope's two enemies: presumption, which takes God's mercy for granted, and despair, which concludes His mercy cannot reach this far. It is written especially for souls who live closer to one side of that boundary than the other - those who have been discouraged by repeated falls, by unanswered prayers, by the darkness of the age - and who need not optimism but the thing the tradition actually promises: the anchor of Hebrews, firm and sure, fixed above every storm there is.