Christine McParland Rossi
St. Thomas More Writing Group
“Hope” can have very different meanings depending on the context. We hope for a warm, sunny Easter, but wake up to snow instead. Or we hope that God will answer our prayers to heal a loved one, and that loved one dies anyway.
This second form of hope is the riskiest, because its disappointments hurt the most. Get burned too many times, and our self-protective instincts take over. We shrink back, forfeiting hope’s possibilities for the comfort of certainty—even if it’s the certainty of not hoping at all.
In his Letter to the Romans, St. Paul speaks of an enduring hope: “We boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. . . . And hope does not disappoint us” (5:2, 5).
By itself, such a claim appears to be self-contradictory. What hope is there that does not carry with it the possibility of remaining unfulfilled? Even Paul, later in his letter, observes, “Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen?” (Rom 8:24).
Perhaps the key to disappointment lies not in the nature of hope itself but in the object of our hope. We can all recall things we’ve hoped for and didn’t receive (some of these, we realize in hindsight, wouldn’t have made us happy after all). Yet even if we’ve been blessed to enjoy many fulfilled hopes throughout our lives, is it not a disappointing reality that they must end at our death?
St. Paul writes about a different hope altogether, because its object is eternal: the love and glory of God. “Hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Rom 5:5).
We can imagine that it was this hope that sustained Jesus on the road to Calvary and through those agonizing hours on the cross. He realized his death would break his disciples’ hearts—and not just their hearts but also, very likely, their hopes for a Messiah. The crucifixion appeared to be the fatal blow to Israel’s hope that God would finally redeem his people from oppression and restore their earthly kingdom.
Had this version of the disciples’ hope for Israel materialized, the Romans would have been overthrown, and the Jewish nation would have enjoyed peace and prosperity for generations to come. But they would still bear the burden of their sins, symbolized by the endless sacrifices taking place in the temple. And they would still face death, no matter how peaceful and prosperous their lives had been.
This hope did indeed die with the crucifixion of their rabbi; but with the resurrection of their Lord, something greater took its place. A temporal wish had been replaced with an eternal reality that surpassed their imaginations: the hope of being free from their sins, free even from the curse of death, and free to live in the love of God for eternity.
Each life has its share of hopes that die and are buried in the cold dark of a tomb. But no matter how long our Good Friday and Holy Saturday stretch on, Easter is always coming. The cross and the tomb are no longer the end of the story. They weren’t for Jesus, and because of his resurrection victory, they won’t be for us either.
In this hope, perhaps we will find the root of all our hopes. From the passing wish for a sunny day to the heart-wrenching prayer for a loved one’s healing, we recognize a deeper desire for happiness, wholeness, and well-being—a desire that can only be perfectly and forever fulfilled in heaven.
Such hope, indeed, does not disappoint.