We are told in Scripture, “Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope” (1 Peter 3:15). What happens, though, when we notice that the world is broken—whether by turning on the news or simply by the vicissitudes of our daily existence?
A brief catalog of events within recent memory is illustrative. Christians in Sri Lanka died in horrific explosions on Easter morning in 2019. Kidnappings and murders of Christians, particularly Catholic priests, have become more common in Nigeria over the last decade. In the last three years, we have watched conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine that both have potential to escalate into global conflagrations. In our own country, we have witnessed too many terrible school shootings that have left children dead, a political assassination, and a targeted attack on Mormon church services within the last month. This short list is accompanied by natural disasters, such as floods, fires, and earthquakes, that cause incalculable damage. Aside from natural and moral evil, there is the weight of the litany of struggles that accompany daily personal life, such as physical or mental illness, financial difficulties, or simply dealing with difficult people.
If we do not know what real hope is, or we do not have the tools to cultivate hope, we will struggle mightily to endure the challenges . . .
There is hope! Yet, if we do not know what real hope is, or we do not have the tools to cultivate hope, we will struggle mightily to endure the challenges we all experience in our daily lives, and the tribulations that plague the world just as often.
Venerable Fulton Sheen provides us with a great starting point for knowing and cultivating hope. His writing and preaching provided a clear and approachable reason for the hope that resided in his heart and soul. That same writing and preaching provides a way to approach daily life with hope. Simply, Sheen was a prophet of hope for the modern world.
First, Sheen made an important distinction. “The virtue of Hope,” he wrote in his 1940 book The Seven Virtues, “is quite different from the emotion of Hope.” He continued:
The emotion centers in the body and is a kind of dreamy desire that we can be saved without much effort. The virtue of Hope, however, is centered in the will and may be defined as a divinely infused disposition of the will by which with sure confidence, thanks to the powerful help of Almighty God, we expect to pursue eternal happiness, using all the means necessary for attaining it.
The distinction between what a person feels in his emotions on any given day and a “sure confidence” rooted in his will is of the utmost importance. One can change based on the fluctuations of the stock market, personal or global tragedy, or even temperamental weather; the other cannot be moved.
Years later, in a newspaper column from 1968, Sheen continued to highlight this distinction, adding an important layer. “Hope is not optimism,” he wrote, “It is something born in defeat, agonized amidst anxieties, and yet never giving up because one day a Judge Who sentenced me justly for my crimes, came down from the bench, paid my debts as if they were His own, and then took me to Himself.” This thought conveyed the reality that authentic hope is never founded on the work a person has done, the effort she has made. Instead, real hope can only ever be founded on the merciful, faithful actions of the God who overcame death for the sake of life-giving relationship with human persons.
So, then, what were the sources of hope that buoyed up Fulton Sheen during his earthly life and priestly ministry?
Humor was a first and constant source of hope. In his autobiography, Treasure in Clay, Sheen noted the intimate, inseparable connection between humor and faith. He opined, “Humor . . . is ‘seeing through’ things like a windowpane. Materialists, humanists and atheists all take this world very seriously because it is the only world they are ever going to have.” His conclusion to this line of thought was that the person who has faith and hope “knows that this world is not the only one, and therefore [it] can be regarded rather lightly.”
Education, especially great literature and poetry, was another source of hope for Fulton Sheen throughout his life. He read voraciously, earning the title of valedictorian of his high school class. Throughout his priestly ministry, and in his preaching and writing, he made frequent references to great literature, such as the novels and short stories of Fyodor Dostoevsky. It seems that Sheen’s favorite poem was “The Hound of Heaven” by Francis Thompson, whose radical conversion to Jesus and the Church inspired him as a young priest. In 1967, Sheen edited a book of poetry entitled That Tremendous Love, which included a fair number of his own poems. All of his education and reading led him to a conclusion he spoke at the close of his fifty-part catechism series: “Yes, there’s hope even in the midst of all our trials, disasters, and darkness, for we are never without God. If we return to Him, all can be changed.”
Out of our Christian hope, he knew, we have an obligation to be on mission.
Mission, instantiated in the works of mercy, was a way to increase hope, both in the one completing the action and in the recipient. Beginning in 1950, Sheen served as the director of the National Society for the Propagation of the Faith. His role was to support missionaries as they engaged in charitable works around the world, which opened up avenues of evangelization and catechesis. In Treasure in Clay, he summed up what had been his attitude throughout his career, especially in that post: “Wealth hoarded makes its keeper a miser. Learning for the sake of learning makes the student proud. . . . The Logos or Word of God taking a child on His lap will forever remain the mission of education—to share it as wealth must be shared.” Sheen knew that human persons put their hope in the things they believe will fulfill their lives and purposes, and these are the things they share with others. Out of our Christian hope, he knew, we have an obligation to be on mission.
Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary was another prominent source of hope in Sheen’s life. On receiving a First Holy Communion prayer book, he began daily recitation of the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary. After his priestly ordination, he celebrated Mass every Saturday in her honor, invoking her intercession for his continued conversion. He made more than thirty pilgrimages to Lourdes. He dedicated all of his books to Mary under her many titles. In 1952, he brought together all this devotion and thought, publishing it in his great book The World’s First Love. In an earlier book, The Mystical Body of Christ, he used the moments of the Blessed Mother’s life recounted in the Bible to illustrate how she could instill hope in her Son’s disciples: “When the wine of life is failing and our faith is weak, and our charity growing cold, we go to her who at Cana’s feast interceded.” Until the day of judgment, he continued, “We live in hope of that Eternal Union with the Daughter of the Father, the Mother of the Son, and the Spouse of the Holy Ghost.”
His daily holy hour was the last—indeed, the greatest—source of hope. On the day of his ordination, Sheen resolved to make a daily holy hour: sixty minutes “in the presence of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament.” Despite the challenges of schedule and travel, he kept this resolution for sixty years. On one occasion, he even sat on concrete outside the door of a locked parish, simply to be as close to Jesus as possible. He encouraged priests and laity to undertake this resolution, too, as he knew it would be the source of much evangelization and conversion while the Church engaged in mission around the world.
These five dispositions and habits put Sheen in an ever-deepening relationship and communion with Jesus Christ. That is why he could make the proclamation he made in a newspaper column from early 1951 entitled “There Is Hope,” which makes a fitting conclusion because it still applies to us more than seven decades later. He recognized that modern technical “progress” had become paramount in Western culture. Because of that development, he pointed out, “Our world is full of prophets of gloom, and I would be one of them if I did not practically believe in God.” Instead of purveying pessimism with the other modern prophets, Sheen saw through a different lens and spoke through a different microphone. “God is permitting us to feel our inadequacy,” he wrote, “so long as we trust only in ourselves.” God was allowing that culture—the culture that has wrought our own—to recognize that it could not prosper, it could not hope, without him. Sheen wanted his audience, including us, to know that God’s power in Jesus Christ was (and is) far greater than our own inadequacies.
Such hope dwelled within Sheen’s soul because he had cultivated a deep communion with Jesus, the God made man. That hope was assisted by the intercession of Mary, the Mother of God. It was emboldened by acts of self-donating love and mercy born of communion with Jesus. It was fostered by the development of his intellect and the formation of his will through great reading and education. It was sustained by laughter all along the way. These were the ways he found hope in a broken world, ways that we can learn from him to live in hope as well.