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What if he can’t fight this...? I wondered. My closest friend’s six-week-old baby boy was diagnosed with a rare terminal illness and dreams for their long awaited first child were tragically shattered. Our community rallied around them as this tender infant battled surgery, chemotherapy, and blood transfusions, including one week on the ventilator. But of all things that could have occupied her heart that evening, she was thinking of me.

"Hoping against hope, Abraham believed, and thus became the father of many nations." // Catechism of the Catholic Church 1819 No statement better summarizes Abraham, the "archetype of hope" unto whom God promised to make a great nation (see Genesis 12:1-4). But ninety-nine years passed and Abraham still had no heirs (see Genesis 17:1-2), yet he continued to "hope against hope" (Romans 4:18).

It was a busy day at work when the phone rang. The tone of my husband instantly spelled dreadful news. “I’ve been arrested,†he said.

Soon after Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese Army in 1975, thousands of civilians were imprisoned. One of these was Saigon’s newly appointed archbishop, Francis Xavier Nguyen van Thuan, seized on August 15th.

My mind froze trying to grapple how a friend—someone who knew me so intimately—could betray me. I often chide and say that if there ever were a binding contract for pastoral ministry, the fine print would warn the undersigned that ministry is hazardous, that it would subject them to expressions of animosity, slander, and betrayal. In my grief, I whispered, "Lord, I need hope again!"

Omnipotent. I remember learning this word while studying vocabulary, and the example used was that of an “all-powerful†God. I love this word! Partially because it brings back memories of one of my favorite school subjects, but also because it has such an authoritative tone.

The idea of “living in the moment†sounds blissful, right? Yet sometimes it can be so very hard to do.  I am self-admittedly impatient. This posed a challenge for me when it came to my husband and I planning to start our family.

Years ago, shortly after my grandfather died, I asked my grandma how she was doing and what it was like to wake up everyday without him. She amazed me with a response I didn't expect, and she spoke so simply and matter-of-fact.

I was going for an afternoon walk with a friend when she was telling me about a conversation she had with her spiritual director. The Priest had asked her, “Out of the three theological virtues (faith, hope, and love) which virtue do you feel the weakest in?â€

A couple of years ago, I went to the funeral of a five-month-old baby boy. He passed away after fighting against the life threatening birth defects of Trisomy 18. That night I wept. Especially after listening to a worship song about joy coming in the morning. “What a lie,†I thought.

Hope in the Lives of the Saints // Saint Gianna Beretta Molla Saint Gianna Molla had four children in six years. Because of this, I naively assumed that when it...

The prophet Jeremiah lived around 650-570 BC and is known as “the weeping prophet.†As the author of three heavy books of the Bible (Kings, Jeremiah, and Lamentations), his message is not always an easy one.