My dear parishioners,
Peace! On the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, 7 October, 2019, Pope Francis established the feast of Our Lady of Loreto, to be observed each year on the 10th of December. At the same time Pope Francis proclaimed a Lauretan Jubilee Holy Year to run from 8 December, 2019 through 10 December, 2020. There are fifty-five invocations in the Litany of Loreto. The following is a reflection on the fifty-fourth invocation: Mother of Hope, pray for us.
Pope Francis (b. 1936) has added three new invocations to the Litany in 2020: Mater Misericordiae, Mater Spei, Solacium migrantium. Saint John Paul II (+2005) added “Mother of the Church” in 1980 and “Queen of Families” in 1995. Bl Pius IX (+1878) added “Queen conceived without original sin” in 1854. Leo XIII (+1903) added “Queen of the most holy Rosary” in 1883. Benedict XV (+1922) added “Queen of peace” in 1917. Pius XII (+1958) added “Queen assumed into Heaven in 1950.
The Hebrew word mibhtah and the Greek words elpis/elpizo are translated as “hope” in English or spei in Latin. There are nearly two hundred references to hope in Sacred Scripture. Pope Benedict XVI (b. 1927) cited Saint Paul’s letter to the Romans (8:24) in his Encyclical Sep salvi (30 November, 2007), namely, in hope we are saved. Saint John Paul II (+2005) wrote about hope in his Post-Synodial Apostolic Exhortation Reconciliatio et Paenitentia (2 December, 1984), 4 : “When the church proclaims the good news of reconciliation or proposes achieving it through the sacraments, she is exercising a truly prophetic role, condemning the evils of man in their infected source, showing the root of divisions and bringing hope in the possibility of overcoming tensions and conflict and reaching brotherhood, concord and peace at all levels and in all sections of human society.” And “though threatened by fear and despair, the people of today can feel uplifted by the divine promise which opens to them the hope of full reconciliation” (RP, 22). Pope Francis does not want us to be “Disillusioned with reality, with the Church and with ourselves” or to “experience a constant temptation to cling to a faint melancholy, lacking in hope, which seizes the heart like “the most precious of the devil’s potions” but to be generous and spiritually diligent with Our Lady’s help (cf. Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, 83, 125). In the Salve Regina (Hail Holy Queen) prayer Saint Mary is called “our hope.” Hope is a theological virtue, longing for Heaven and the God of Heaven, infused in Baptism (together with Faith and Charity). Saint Thomas Aquinas, OP (+1274) treats hope in six questions of the Summa Theologiae II-II.Q. 17-22. Hope allows us to trust in God’s help on our way to the eternal happiness which is Heaven.
Our hope is in the Lord and Our Lady who tells us to do whatever He tells us (cf. Psalm31:24; 40:3; 112:7; 131:3; Sirach 24:45; Isaiah 40:31; John 2:5; Philippians 2:19).
Father John Arthur Orr