Last month, the lecturers report covered “the woosh of blind faith”. With FAITH being the first of the three beads, near the beginning of the Rosary, I like to encourage everyone to always have an image or visual for every rote prayer recited in the Rosary for maximum effect. Too often we zip past these three beads to get to the main part of the meditation and miss the opportunity to revisit our images of what represents our rendition of faith, hope and charity. Next month’s article will be a stretch for some as CHARITY can sometimes be complicated and often conditional.
As we continue with our Rosary journey, the second bead in the string of three is HOPE. I ask you to go back to a Christmas from your past and think of a childhood gift that you hoped, beyond measure for that something special you wanted more than anything else in the world. Was it a B-B gun, a fishing rod, a bike, the latest electronic gadget? You ached for it, but you also may have doubted it possible that you would receive that special gift. It was a real long-shot that your parents would ever get it for you. Thoughts of, too big, too expensive, too unlikely for whatever reason, all crept into the common sense portion of your brain. Maybe you even allowed yourself to think you might not deserve it, yet you laid awake wondering if would be wrapped under the tree on Christmas morning. You probably day-dreamed about it at school and during the Homily on the Sunday’s preceding Christmas Mass.
Mine was the “Hop-a-Long Cassidy, full cowboy arm-fringed outfit, black with red piping, black hat, black boots, guns, black holsters, black tooled belt with silver buckle, red neck kerchief – 
pictured here. “HIGH HO SILVER….AWAY!”, he would shout, every Saturday morning, taunting me with the William Tell Overture theme song. Lucky for me, I had an aunt who was a buyer for Donaldson’s Department Store, so I did get it and wore it until it was thread bare, even for our kindergarten class pictures. If you hope like a child it will be a greater pine than as an adult. Adult common sense will not be your friend for this exercise.
The HOPE bead is the promise of Christ’s second coming. Jesus didn’t have hope, He was hope. Hope is a lot more than a wish, although it has a somewhat “maybe” tone to the word. I try to keep the “maybe” part of it to not knowing the actual time and place of His return, rather than the “if” He returns. I know He’s coming and I HOPE it’s soon. I HOPE I’m ready. I HOPE I’m worthy. What’s your HOPE? Long for HOPE, like a child at Christmas.