Over two months ago, amidst the suffocating heat of the dog days of August, Dominicana featured an excellent article by a fellow baseball fan. His understandable sorrow at his team’s performance led him to this conclusion: his team, along with the eventual 28 other losers, suffered from “long defeat.”
Yet for fans of the World Series Champion New York Yankees Los Angeles Dodgers, this season was not one of long defeat. It was one of persevering in the hope of glory.
For a grueling 162-game season, the eventual champions battled game after game, aiming for the goal of a World Series Championship. And complete their course they did—defeating their postseason opponents and hoisting the Commissioner’s Trophy in triumph. From the beginning of time, God knew that the 2024 World Series Champions would be the Yankees Dodgers and that their names would be enshrined in baseball’s immortal record books. For them, this season was marked by long suffering, yes, yet not a long defeat. This season is forever marked by a glorious victory.
The Christian soul is called to hope for a similar kind of victory: living in communion with the Trinity forever in heaven. This is the goal of every Christian life.
I for my part do not consider myself to have taken possession [of glory]…. Forgetting what lies behind but straining forward to what lies ahead, I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus. (Phil 3:13)
Like Saint Paul, our upward calling is to be with God in heaven, sharing in the glory of his Son, Jesus Christ. This should move us to rejoice and to hope with a hope that does not disappoint us (see Rom 5:1–5 and Spes Non Confundit). This hope is not a naive optimism. “The way of perfection passes by the way of the Cross. There is no holiness without renunciation and spiritual battle” (CCC 2015). Our cause for hope is in Christ and his Cross: “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Rom 6:5). Hope, having assured us that Christ’s cross has made possible our victory, carries us through our long suffering.
We celebrated our hope in this very victory on the Solemnity of All Saints. We rightly extolled the souls of the Church Triumphant, gloriously bathed in the light of heavenly glory. These souls lived and died on the same earth as us. They had the same hopes, fears, dreams, and worries. They prayed, suffered, laughed, wept, mourned, and loved. Perhaps they struggled with their faith. Yet in the end, they found their names written in the Book of Life and attained their ultimate goal: salvation. All Christians are called to hope for this salvation made possible through Jesus Christ. While we cannot have scientific certainty about our salvation, we can have supernatural hope. And hope does not disappoint.
Therefore, as we struggle through the various seasons of life, we can be confident in our hope of glory. Since our hope is based on God and not on us, we have every reason to be confident. We can be like faithful fans rooting throughout the entire season, undeterred by losing streaks or tough stretches. Throughout all of life—and especially in difficulties—we need only to cling to Christ, our hope. It is he who transforms our fears of a long defeat into the strength to persevere in long suffering. Because of him, we can hope to find our names in the Book of Life and partake of predestined glory. Then we can say with all the elect, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Tim 4:7).
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Photo (Botticini Assumption of the Virgin, detail) by Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P. (used with permission)
