Hope does not disappoint.

Apr 21

On April, 21st, 2025, Easter Monday, many of us were reminded that life is linked to death with the passing of our beloved Pope Francis.

In a divine irony of sorts, we celebrate the joy of the resurrection and grieve the loss of a compassionate shepherd who showed us through word, action and deed the gospel lived out in humble faith.

As Christians, we’re not new to this reality- the coexistence of life and death, joy and sorrow, light and darkness. This is what our Christian faith is born from and why our hope remains but when we face death, it can be hard to manage the feelings that come with it, leaving us disconnected from hope.

I had a session with a client a few weeks ago that reminds me of this internal struggle. The client had thoroughly shared her birth story, highlighting many of the sorrows, anxieties, disappointments, and traumas. Several old lies crept into her storytelling: Nothing ever good happens to me. My body failed. The Lord abandoned me.

I listened to her intently, acknowledging her feelings and inevitably the pain of her first birth experience not going to plan as sorrow entered into my own heart, and then I challenged the lies.

“I know it feels like nothing ever good happens to you and that your body failed, and the Lord abandoned, but I am afraid you’re missing a greater truth in the midst of this all and that’s you bore a healthy child. You co-created new life and now you get to experience this life as a mother. You are living the Paschal Mystery and in what feels like death, there was certainly a resurrection that took place.” I said.

She then looked at me with wide and watery eyes, as if she was seeing the truth again with me. “You’re right.” She exclaimed. “This is just what the Evil one wants me to believe.”

This is exactly right.

The more we listen to the lies, the darkness consumes us even more and we stop holding the tension of life and death. We fail to see that the Paschal Mystery doesn’t end when the Easter season begins, rather it continues in our daily rising and dying until we meet our Lord.

So I want to encourage you if you’re feeling sorrow, grief, anger, anxiety, somatic pain, or the effects of trauma, to remember new life always comes. Joy always returns. Hope is always ours and it never disappoints.

You can practice tending to this reality by:

Reminding yourself of this truth by simply recalling and declaring it several times throughout the day
Praying for the grace to believe it
Writing down the good things, the new life that was born from difficult experiences in the past and the present
Doing the next right thing with the hope Christ will bless you and be with you
Regulating your body through breathing, tapping, butterfly hugs, rocking, singing, chanting, writing, exercising, dancing, creating, etc, so you have more capacity to hold the tension
Talking to a safe person about your grief and pain so you can move through and with the distressing emotions
Honoring those whom you’ve lost through your daily living

In the words of Pope Francis when he declared the Jubilee Year of Hope,

The death and resurrection of Jesus is the heart of our faith and the basis of our hope… Christian hope consists precisely in this: that in facing death, which appears to be the end of everything, we have the certainty that, thanks to the grace of Christ imparted to us in Baptism, “life is changed, not ended”, [15]forever.” SPES NON CONFUNDIT

May our late Holy Father’s words live on in us and may we always discover anew the hope that does not disappoint.