Here is a few words from Pope Benedict on the difference between optimism and hope
"The goal of optimism is the utopia of the finally and everlastingly liberated and fortunate world, the perfect society in which history reaches its goals and reveals its divinity. The immediate goal is our success to do things.
The goal of Christian hope is the kingdom of God, that is the union of world and man with God through an act of divine power and love. The immediate goal is the perpetual presence of this love and this power that accompanies us in what we do and takes us up at the point where the potential of our own ability to act comes to an end.
The aim of Christian hope, is a gift, the gift of love, which is given us beyond all our activity: to vouch for the fact that this thing that we cannot control or compel and that is yet the most important thing of all for human beings does exist, and that we are not clutching at thin air in waiting insatiably for it, we have the interventions of God's love in history, most powerfully in the figure of Jesus CHrist in whom God's love encounters us in person. "
Just a thought for today as the rain falls down here in south central Texas.
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