Salesian Optimism and the Jubilee Year of Hope

DeSales WeeklySpiritual ReflectionsGod's WillFree WillHuman Nature

Oct 1

Salesian optimism emphasizes finding joy and hope in everyday life, even amidst challenges. The calendar year 2025 is a Jubilee Year of Hope, emphasizing renewal of hope in the risen Lord despite challenging circumstances.

Sometimes circumstances are so challenging that it seems there is no reason for hope. When I was only six years old, my father left my mother, my brother, and me. It was a time when divorce for a Catholic family was anathema, especially in the small Polish parish school where I grew up. For fifteen years, my only hope was that they would reunite; it was my constant prayer, my most ardent prayer to God. That hope was shattered when first my mother and then my father married someone else. What good could come from that? What reason was there to hope?

Years later, after I was ordained to the priesthood, it fell to me to tell my father that he had terminal, untreatable cancer. I suggested to him that I send to the hospital one of my Oblate brothers so that he could be reconciled, anointed, and receive the Eucharist before he died. He told me that I could hear his confession and give him the sacraments. It was, perhaps, the most humbling moment in my life as an Oblate priest. It was a sacred moment to offer the sacrament of Reconciliation, Anointing of the Sick, and the Eucharist to my estranged and dying father. Soon after his funeral, my mother, too, was able to return to the practice of our faith. This is not to say “there was a reason” for my parents’ divorce, but in God’s time, good did come from it.

Yes, all things do work unto good for those who love God (Romans 8:28). How often it has been said that God can write straight with crooked lines!

Many years have passed, and now I have become a very optimistic and hopeful person. Every life is filled with highs and lows, disappointments and successes, sadness and joys. Prayerfully reflecting on the vicissitudes of our lives we should see God’s guiding hand in all things, and those reflections should reinforce our optimism and hope. In prayer, we realize what St. Francis de Sales wrote 400 years ago, “Do not look forward to the mishaps of this life with anxiety, but await them with perfect confidence so that when they do occur, God, to whom you belong, will deliver you from them. He has kept you up to the present; remain securely in the hand of his providence, and he will help you in all situations. When you cannot walk, he will carry you. Do not think about what will happen tomorrow, for the same eternal Father who takes care of you today will look out for you tomorrow and always. Either he will keep you from evil or he will give you invincible courage to endure it.”

Salesian optimism and the virtue of hope are not just wishful thinking; they are firm convictions. We only lose hope and optimism when we think that we know what is best and that we need to be in control, failing to realize that God knows best and God is in control. And trusting in God we need always remember, “With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not being slow in carrying out his promises . . . he is, rather being patient with you, wanting nobody to be lost and everybody to be brought to repentance” (2 Peter 3:8-10).

The ecstasy of Easter following the horror of Calvary is God’s own testimony that we should never lose hope, even in the most challenging of circumstances. The calendar year 2025 is a Jubilee Year of Hope, emphasizing renewal of hope in the risen Lord. It is in the Risen Lord Jesus Christ that our optimism and hope must always be centered.