I remember attending a Jesuit Retreat at Canisius College some 40 years ago and the Retreat Director made this poetic metaphor,
‘Each of us rides the toppling wave of Hope”.
This has
lived with me all these years in the back roads of my mind. While more and more
seeing myself as a cork bobbing up and down in the breaking waves, I’ve come to
see a great difference between Hope and Optimism.
Having
twice seen, ‘The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’, I delighted in the lunatic hotel
manager, formerly of Slum Dog Millionaire. “Yes, yes. I am so terribly sorry
that the room has no door, the window will not open and the shower has fallen on
your head. These are catastrophes. However, my Uncle said to me that all will
be well in the end. So this is not the end!!” Unbridled Optimism.
It’s only when Maggie Smith, the movie’s supreme English Racist, takes over the
management that Hope enters.
The
distinction between Hope and Optimism could not be better portrayed. Optimism
is the belief that somehow, somewhere, sometime, things will get better.
Whereas, Hope is the energy and result that we find within ourselves, in our
very guts, to do something about the situation, well aware of the apparent
impossibilities and challenges that lie ahead. Hope is active, whereas Optimism
is passive.
This is
true about the present situation of the Institutional Church and during the
past decades of the Vatican Council there was plenty of Optimism, now there is
only Hope. That’s where this meeting of our PFGM is so vital. We are given the
gift of Hope, as Jesus was in His Ministry when everything was going against
Him, and even the Father was silent. There was still the Hope of the
Resurrection when the Father raised the Son into Light and Life.
