When you consider the number of people out of work, when you consider the high cost of living today, when you consider that most families have mother and father working, then you have to realize there is one quality we all need, it is the quality of hope. Hope is that quality that reminds each one of us that God never permits a tragedy to take place unless something good comes from it. If you go back into your own life on this earth, you might recall that so many of us have benefited from the tragedies of others. Just go back to the last seventy years. From out of a family that experienced blindness in the person of Thomas Braille, came the Braille method of sight reading. From out of the deafness of a Thomas Edison came the new concepts of stereo that all of us enjoy. From out of the deafness of a Beethoven came many beautiful pieces of music that we all enjoy. From out of a family that experienced polio came the Salk vaccination.

No one wants to experience tragedy, but if you have a Christian belief, you know that tragedy did not pass by Jesus Christ and it is not going to pass by each one of us. That is why the virtue of hope is so important in our daily lives. Hope does not give us a total explanation as to why an event took place. Hope does not remove tragic experiences from our lives. Hope enables us to live with that which cannot be explained. Hope enables us to go on the way Christ went unto Calvary carrying his Cross. Hope is a reminder that something good is going to come from the tragedies we experience. You and I might not experience that good, but someone else will.

Our life will never have total happiness unless we live by the virtue of hope - hope that connects us to God, hope that anchors us to Christ. St. Paul gave us a reminder centuries ago when he said, if anyone should ask you to give an account of the hope you cherish, be ready at all times to answer for it with courtesy and with due reverence.