Whiskey, Oreos, and the Absurdity of Hope

Well, 2021 has started out as roughly as 2020 ended. The rain that poured down around my little house on Christmas day seemed to promise such a shaky start to the new year. The old traditions are full of ways to know what will come in the new year. Weather, calling birds, restless animals, clean houses – everything means something if you know where to look. In the past few weeks, I’ve talked to so many older friends and family who are starting this longed-for year in a continuation of uncertainty and fear. Some of them are fearful because of the Christmas storms, others because of the recent protests. Still others are devastatingly lonely and worry that 2021 will just continue with more of the same.

Tonight, after a long day of listening to people talk about protests, impeachments, masks, and vaccines, I’m dunking a few Oreos into my little glass of whiskey and turning my mind toward Christ. I’ve been praying the rosary often, and the Hope bead always catches my attention. If you don’t know, the three Hail Marys at the beginning of the rosary are prayed specifically for the Theological virtues: Faith, Hope, and Charity. Whenever I pray those beads, I think of those uncertain friends and wrap the prayers around them.

The Hope bead has been standing out to me more and more. I seek it out, I go back to it occasionally in the middle of my rosary, turn it over in my fingers, and pray to the Mother of All Hope for support and consistency during this uncertain time.

I’m hoping for so many things, of course; but Hope itself is a virtue that isn’t wasted on Oreos and whiskey. I don’t Hope the store will have a box of organic, sustainably-made chocolate sandwich cookies to dip in my cheap, unsustainable whiskey tonight as I de-stress after a long day of homeschooling and Too Much News. I don’t Hope that the fox who’s been pestering my ducks will come into shooting range this evening. Hope – the true virtue – belongs to higher things.

The Virtue of Hope

So, if my little “h” hopes: for all-natural Oreos and safe, happy ducks aren’t a part of the beauty of true Hope, what is? Eternity and the Kingdom of Heaven.

Hope is the virtue that inspires us to long for the Kingdom of Heaven. It’s one of the three Theological virtues that we pray for on those first three Ave beads of the rosary. These virtues are “the foundation of Christian moral activity” and are “infused by God into the souls of the faithful to make them capable of acting as his children and of meriting eternal life” according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1813).

The theological virtue of Hope therefore, goes much deeper than our basic dreams, desires, and ambitions. Hope teaches us to trust God utterly, “relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit” (CCC 1817). That Hope, unlike the more mundane varieties, “keeps man from discouragement; it sustains him during times of abandonment; it opens up his heart in expectation of eternal beatitude” (CCC 1818).

Even though we might consistently say “I hope you get the job” or “I hope you find that great, cheap whiskey,” those small, temporal hopes are far from the Hope that inspires “men’s activities and purifies them so as to order them to the Kingdom of heaven” (CCC 1818).

New Year, New Hope

So, when I’m praying for Hope on the second Ave bead of my rosary, I’m praying for something bigger than even the hope that 2021 will be a better year than the last. I’m not just praying that mask mandates, violent protests, and unemployment will pass away. I’m praying in expectation of Heaven. Those prayers remind me that, no matter what is happening here, eternity is waiting. In so many ways, those prayers turn my mind to the martyrs of Hope in the English persecution: Eustace White, Edmund Campion, Thomas More, and so many others. The English martyrs who went sneaking off to say or hear Mass weren’t doing so in hope that their devotions would become easier. They were Hoping for something deeper, something more lasting and real: Eternity.

Eustace White, who prayed “Lord, more pain if Thou pleases, and more patience” as he was being tortured didn’t hope for earthly consolations. He Hoped to make his suffering more like Christ’s. That’s all any of us can hope for, no matter what the suffering.

Life isn’t all suffering though, and sometimes it’s the suffering-free times that make it hard to Hope for heaven. When the world around us is beautiful; when our gardens are in bloom; when there are few worldly hardships – that’s when we forget to Hope and fall into presumption. We start to think that God must be happy with us, because we are so very happy with ourselves.

One of the blessings offered to us this past year is the opportunity to see and choose a path that is not based around public approval and self-contentedness, but instead rooted in Hope. That choice is hard, and often painful. But it isn’t yet painful in the way Eustace White’s choice was painful. We are still novices “concerning pain” as the poet Rainer Maria Rilke writes; but we are learning. The best way to learn is through practice, and through Hope.

Oreos in Whiskey

A month ago, a friend of mine asked me how I was holding up at the end of 2020. I laughed, we all have our ways of coping. For me, it’s often lots of quiet time, bread baking, good books, and early bedtimes. For her, it’s Oreos dunked in Irish coffee or straight whiskey and cigarettes on the porch.

For both of us, it’s Hope that Christ is near. That always and forever He is close to us, sharing His Presence with us in the Eucharist, and teaching us to Hope for things beyond this world. Tonight, I’ve passed my favorite books on to my friend and she’s shared her sustainably-made, sandwich cookies and whiskey with me. We’re both welcoming Christ in this new year. We’re both hoping for a time, soon, when He will make all things new.