“Sisters, let me just tell you this story, because there is a blessing in it.” With these words, an older man approached a group of our Sisters gathered recently at the wake of a Sister’s father. The man proceeded to recount an unforgettable four months of his adolescence.
A local religious congregation was building a mausoleum but had to halt construction during the frozen winter months. During that time, one of their Sisters died. They came to his father, the owner of a funeral home, to ask what to do. “Sisters,” his father told them, “we will keep the body here until you are able to bury her. You can come here as often as you like to visit her.” From that day on, four or five Sisters appeared every evening at the home; they would sing hymns by their Sister’s body, and, while there, would visit families waking their own loved ones, to pray and sing with them. “We laughed with the Sisters and just had great times with them. I will never forget it,” the gentleman concluded.
In a few months, the Church begins the Jubilee Year of 2025, the Jubilee of Hope. Of the three theological virtues — faith, hope, and love — hope is often the forgotten virtue. It is harder to pin down than faith and love and less easily defined.
Hope is the virtue by which we trust God’s promises and desire Him. It is not simply “wishing” that something will happen — “I hope I get a good grade on this test” — and it is not optimism, a focus on the positive rather than the negative. Hope’s symbol is an anchor because hope roots us in the realities of God’s goodness and fidelity. We do not simply “wish” for heaven: we know with certainty, because God has promised it, that we will attain heaven if we love Him and others on earth. And hope does not require us to ignore or minimize suffering: it rather reminds us that, in the depths of our suffering, God is near us, and that He has conquered suffering and will also conquer it in us.
One of the most moving homilies I have ever heard was Archbishop Guido Marini’s reflection on Isaiah 12:3 for the 2022 opening Mass of the Angelicum school year. “You will draw water joyfully from the springs of salvation,” the Archbishop repeated, quoting the first reading. “This is a promise! It is not something that might happen. God promises it will happen. In your academic life, you will draw refreshing water from the springs of truth, and at the end of your life, if you have been faithful to Him, you will do it forever in heaven.”
Hope is the reason, 50 years ago, those Sisters were singing daily around their Sister’s casket and enjoying lighthearted moments now forever imprinted on the heart of the funeral director’s son. It is why, last weekend, at our Sister’s father’s funeral, we stood around the casket, hands upon it, and sang the Salve Regina to end his funeral Mass. “Mother of mercy,” we sang with confidence, as Dominicans for 800 years have done around the bedsides of the dying, after “this valley of tears, show us Jesus, the fruit of your womb.” Singing is a hopeful act; it bears witness that sorrow is not the end. The end is Jesus, and joy.
Sr. Maria Veritas Marks, OP, is a member of the Ann Arbor-based Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist.
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