Hope does not Disappoint-Dinna gie in!
This Christmas Eve in Rome our Holy Father Pope Francis inaugurates the Jubilee Holy Year 2025 and has asked our Bishops to mark its opening in our dioceses on the Feast of the Holy Family, Sunday 29th December. He has declared this Year be a Holy Year of Hope, a virtue most welcome in our uncertain and unstable world of today.
How do we live and practise the virtue of hope in our families, our workplace, our communities and our country?
Hope is more than the optimism that chooses to see the glass half full. Hope, instead, endures though good times and bad in the grace to accept whatever comes our way and see God’s saving power in everything, and His plan for all things to work for the good for those who love GOD. (Rom 8:28).
When life is tough, when we are struggling, when we cannot see light at the end of the tunnel, hope allows us to discern the signs of God’s Kingdom even in the world such as it is.
Through baptism we have been given hope of eternal life and the Sacraments nourish that hope until the Lord comes again in glory and majesty and all is at last made manifest.
As Catholics we are not just invited into the consolation of hoping in the Lord but are called to champion the sort of hope that can transform our world.
Our current times can tempt us to despair in the secular values and individual choices that trump every other consideration. So, we watch on as the gap grows between rich and poor; as babes in the womb lose their sacredness; as the anxieties and troubles of our youth intensify; as the elderly, sick and dying worry about their worth; as world leaders turn to violence and war; and as social media makes its brutal commentary. In such a world, modern living enslaves and weighs us down.
More than ever, we need examples of hope to inspire us, and few better for Scotland than Venerable Margaret Sinclair, who belonged to the modern world –of mass industry, the movie theatre and high street fashion- and whose young face, captured on camera, is of a modern girl and one of us.
Her mother, providing for the family amid the poverty of Edinburgh’s Cowgate with constant money concerns, sometimes came close to buckling beneath the weight of worry, and would often find comfort in Margaret’s words: Dinna gie in! Not giving up was the hallmark of Margaret’s short life, from the poverty of her youth to the sickness of her final years. Don’t give in!, a fine combination of steely character and supernatural trust.
Margaret lived in hope, and that hope came from following Jesus Christ as her Lord to Whom she always turned, especially in the Blessed Eucharist, sure she would find in Him an ear to listen and arms to hold her. She went to Mass and Holy Communion daily, not because she was good but because she wanted to be good.
Margaret strove for sanctity wherever she found herself, whether at home, or in the factory or the convent. Because she was set on doing God’s will she had the firmest hope, often in times of extreme trial, that the Lord would see her through.
Margaret was a commonplace young woman who looked for personally holiness and is an example to all of us who want to live our own ordinary lives in the modern world for God too. Perhaps our prayers for her help will open the door to a miracle through her intercession that raises her to the altar of the saints.
Pope Francis encourages us to live in hope this Holy Year. As the Catholic community in Scotland, this Jubilee is an opportunity for us to get to know and follow Margaret Sinclair and her example of living in hope for ourselves, and of sharing it in our families, our Church, our country and world.
Bishop John Keenan
President of the Bishops' Conference of Scotland
