A Reflection from Fr. Bill Muller, S.J.
Vice President for Mission and Identity

“The world belongs to those who offer it the greater hope.” Pierre Teilhard de Chardin is quoted in Bernard Haring’s book, “Hope is the Remedy,” written in 1971 after reflecting on his role as a theologian at the Second Vatican Council. Haring, a Redemptorist priest, wrote a number of books about Christian life, stressing that the hope Christians have and offer to the world is Christ. “Hope has become incarnate — it means a definite personal relationship.”

Given the pain in our world today — wars and civil unrest in many places, millions of refugees without a homeland, unhoused people in our own country, debilitating polarization not just in our own country, not to mention personal and family anxieties that can be overwhelming — we need a real hope, nothing pie-in-the-sky. Christ is that hope, who, as the hymn reads, humbled himself becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.

Jesus, a real person, taking on human life in all its joys and sorrows, tells us he came so that we might have life and have life abundantly. He calls us friends and says he wants our joy to be complete. And he says, “Love one another as I have loved you.” The “one another” is everybody. That’s the catch.

The hope is that as we discover how much God loves us, how much Christ promises us his abundant life, how much the Spirit delights in groaning in prayer with us and for us, we will have the gumption to fulfill Jesus’ command to love one another as he loves — to love selflessly and beyond our immediate family and circumstance, beyond how we are comfortable loving.

“Start small,” the poet says. As we begin this new academic year, if we each chose someone or something to love that would stretch us to be more Christ-like, we would come closer to fulfilling Christ’s command and we might mirror what Saint Paul wrote to the Christians at Ephesus: We are called to the one hope, to attain the full stature of Christ.

Against the brutal urge
By Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Against the brutal urge,
only a mass of gentle people
will be effective.

Against the deep night,
which is not bottomless after all,
only light will bring release.

Against the lie that nothing can be done,
only people doing it anyway
will prevail.

Against our own despair,
only one who comes in love
can defend us.

Against the monstrous powers,
only the invitation to love the poor child
will save us.

Some Dates in August to Note

National Civility Month
4 – Friendship Day
6 – Transfiguration of the Lord
Bombing of Hiroshima (1945)
Voting Rights Act (1965)
8 – Feast of St. Dominic
9 – Bombing of Nagasaki (1945)
International Day of World’s Indigenous Peoples
Book Lovers Day
10 – Feast of St. Lawrence
11 – Feast of St. Clare of Assisi
14 – Feast of St. Maximilian Kolbe
15 – The Assumption of Mary into Heaven
Birthday of Saint Oscar Romero (1917-1980)
18 – 19th Amendment – Women’s Right to Vote (1920)
22 – Queenship of Mary
24 – Feast of St. Bartholomew
26 – Women’s Equity Day
Birthday of St. Mother Teresa (1910-1997)
27 – Feast of St. Monica
28 – Feast of St. Augustine
March on Washington – “I have a dream” (1963)
29 – The Passion of John the Baptist
Hurricane Katrina (2005)

Pope Francis’ Prayer Intention for August
for Political Leaders