Hope in the Time of Corona

“Faith is the beginning. . .love is the end. . .and the union of the two together is God.” In between faith and love is God. God is our hope. I’d never before heard or at least noticed this particular quotation from the writings of St. Ignatius of Antioch.

Those words got me thinking. Where do we need hope, where do we need God in a special way in these post-Covid times? We hope for many blessings through God’s mercy. The two areas that first came to mind for me were education and health care. In the field of education, will the children readjust to more traditional forms of schooling than they experienced during the pandemic, or will they even need to do so? And how can they be kept safe from disease and from violence? In love we hope for the best for our world’s children and youth.

In health care we hope, we pray that the changing forms of Covid will come to an end and no other new illnesses will appear. We hope that medical personnel will experience some relief. We hope for imagination to find solutions.

In every area of life touched by this pandemic, we hope for action—action in which all people of good will can participate to make the changes needed for a better post-Covid world. As the poet Charles Peguy says, “Hope is to be praised for healing the winding paths of history.”