Giving the gift of hope this Advent (Podcasts)
This is a dark time of year in New Jersey. The sun seems to disappear earlier and earlier each day, which feels closer to after lunch than after school. News dwells on the wars, disease, and disputes around our globe, and in our neighborhoods. There seems to be an overwhelming feeling of time ticking down to something. But is it the end of the year? The holiday obligations? What is nagging at our hearts and stealing our peace? Despite sales ads screaming at us from inboxes, in all forms of media and algorithms, our longing hearts are pretty sure that what we really want and need, and the one thing our families desperately need is not on sale in the next bulk mail or text… How can I give hope to the world?
Our most recent episodes of Heart of the Ark podcast focused on the question of how we can give the gift of hope to ourselves, and the world around us this holiday season.
In episode 30, Paul Jarzembowski, Associate Director of the Laity at the US. Catholic Conference of Bishops, joined me. Paul just wrote a new book that leans into the Christmas Carol narrative by Charles Dickens, and also looks at many of our more recent holiday stories, films, and songs to find kernels of the story of hope in modern idioms. For instance, Paul’s book gives you a thorough line to justify watching Bruce Willis to your friends and family. When you sit down to watch Die Hard, the conversation following can naturally be centered on the idea of sacrificial love.
Interview with Paul Jarzembowski
In Heart of the Ark episode 31, Father John Gordon, Secretary for Evangelization, Archdiocese of Newark, offered a brief meditation from Fred Bunsa, a fellow member of the People of Hope Community, on how to prepare your heart to go through the holidays with gratitude. Focusing on the grateful heart for Thanksgiving, we can work to deepen our relationships with friends and family, despite differences. In offering hope first, and withholding judgment, we can work slowly to bring our relationships to greater communion. Since conversion is done through relationship and in community, we need to build up our relationships to bring our loved ones to know Jesus through us.
Father Gordon’s meditation
And in a Heart of the Ark first, I was pleased to have a conversation this week with two guests on episode 32. Recorded on location at Immaculate Conception Seminary at Seton Hall University, I spoke with Father Gino de la Rama and Father Patrick Seo, from the vocation’s office about ways we can lead lives of hope, and help our families and those we speak to approach the call for vocations. Catholic vocations are really how God calls us to live out our holiness in the world. This can include a calling from God to marriage, clergy, or religious life. The foundation for vocation begins in the ways our conversations lead the young people around us to view their own path to holiness. Father Gino and Father Patrick shared ways in which their vocations were influenced for the better, and otherwise by their families and environments.
Interview Father Gino de la Rama and Father Patrick Seo
During this Advent season, I hope these episodes help you find practical ways to draw the people you encounter into opportunities for dialogue with open hearts and to experience God in moments of awe and wonder. Conversations that are rooted in hope allow us to be truly present and experience and offer the gift of Christ’s presence to us. Presence is such a powerful concept. The hope that allowance for the Holy Spirit to act and move through our conversations is only possible when we give ourselves over to be fully and intentionally present to one another. If you don’t believe me, I’ll give Pope Francis the last word on Hope.
“Faith begins when we realize we are in need of salvation. We are not self-sufficient; by ourselves we founder: we need the Lord, like ancient navigators needed the stars. Let us invite Jesus into the boats of our lives. Let us hand over our fears to him so that he can conquer them. Like the disciples, we will experience that with him on board there will be no shipwreck. Because this is God’s strength: turning to the good everything that happens to us, even the bad things. He brings serenity into our storms, because with God life never dies. The Lord asks us and, in the midst of our tempest, invites us to reawaken and put into practice that solidarity and hope capable of giving strength, support, and meaning to these hours when everything seems to be floundering.(…) We have a hope: by his cross we have been healed and embraced so that nothing and no one can separate us from his redeeming love.” (Pope Francis, Urbi et Orbi 2020)
Jennifer D. Behnke is the Associate Director of Evangelization, Archdiocese of Newark.
