My mother’s message was ‘where there is life, there is hope'

My mother would often remind me that the key to her safety deposit box was in her sock drawer. When I looked in that drawer after she died, I discovered a little note card that she had left me. On the front was a picture of a sprouting flower and the words, “Where there is life, there is hope.” On the back she encouraged me to feel God’s peace in my heart, even amidst troubling times. That little card has given me much encouragement in hard times.

I have come to appreciate the virtue of hope. As the second of the three theological virtues, faith, hope and love, it seems to serve as a link between the first and the last, which is the greatest.

It has been revealed that if an expectant mother sees her baby on ultrasound and hears his heartbeat, she will likely choose life for her child. Her ability to see or hear new life growing inside of her shifts her focus entirely and gives her renewed hope. During that brief encounter with her baby, defense walls collapse, fear dissipates and hope rushes in. Where there is life, there is hope.

Hope has the ability to soften and strengthen us at the same time. Hope softens our hearts and strengthens our resolve; it is a grace from God. So often in life, fear blocks our pathway to hope. Fear can hinder our capacity to love, to have faith and to see life for the precious gift that it is.

Whenever I am asked to pray for a young woman set to terminate her pregnancy I always want to assure her that she is not alone, and that her child’s life is precious and willed by God. I often feel the same way when I hear of a couple contemplating divorce. Similarly, every marriage is precious in God’s eyes and has taken on a life of its own. Beginning in infancy as one flesh, it was born in love and given a new name. It grows over time and bears fruit in many ways, often with children. The marriage is alive – a life that is cherished by God, which he will not forsake.

Upon reciting the words “I take you until death,” our bodies, open to life, speak an everlasting language that upon conjugal unity may manifest itself in a whole new person. A child conceived in marriage is a living, corporeal sign of spousal love with its own eternal soul that gives tangible meaning to the words, “Love never ends” (1 Cor 13:13).

I’ve always perceived myself as someone who champions and supports all life causes, yet my divorce stands in stark contrast to that perception. Divorce is like death because it tears asunder a one-flesh union and, subsequently, breaks up a unified family. But, man cannot kill what God has blessed and joined together in covenant with him. Divorce says there is no hope, but there is always hope for every broken person or couple. If spousal love was born in him it resides in them and will not die, for in the Marital Sacrament it took on new life in Christ.

In his encyclical, Evangelium Vitae, Pope John Paul II warned of our need to embrace a “culture of life” and resist the emerging “culture of death.” For over 50 years we have endured an attack on life, marriage and family. Our culture can turn from death to life if each of us commits to saying yes to life in our wombs and in our marriages. The decision ultimately lies within our own hearts. We believe in the God-given dignity of every human person. If, in the past, we have not chosen life, we can seek God’s mercy and forgiveness now and vow to live as new persons in Christ. His Spirit, which came at Pentecost and we receive in Baptism, means that each of us can be a light of hope in this world blighted by darkness. For “hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us” (Rom. 5:5).

We tend to think of hope with uncertainty. However, God’s Word speaks of hope as confident expectation because it is grounded in Jesus Christ. Easter means hope. His Resurrection reveals that death is not the end. “It means reviving every human activity with a supernatural breath, it means making ourselves joyful proclaimers and witnesses of the Resurrection of Christ, living for eternity,” explained Pope Benedict XVI.

The message on my mother’s card was a warning to not squander the hope that lives within me. Let us have the courage to love others as Christ would love them because he is with us and in us. Let us become witnesses to the hope that lives within us, a hope that will not disappoint.

Anna M. Githens is a freelance writer with a career background in finance, teaching and journalism. She holds an MA in Theology, a BA in Economics and a Certification in Theology of the Body.