What is it that we must hope for if we are to derive from our hope comfort and peace amid all troubles and temptations? It will never do to fix our glance on any earthly good, for such may at any moment disappoint us; nor even on the consolations of religion, for it may be God's will that we should lack consolation all our life through. It is above and beyond this world and our time of sojourn here that we must fix our hope. We must look to the land in which we shall see the King in His beauty, and shall repose for ever in the bosom of God.
Yet if we are not to rest on any consolations of earth, yet we know that if we conform our will to God's, and accept with patience and willingness all that He sends us, however painful, we shall gradually attain even here a solid peace which is one of God's best gifts to His children on earth. "Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you," said our Lord to His Apostles before leaving them. This peace is within the reach of all; we ought to strive for it and hope soon to reach it. Do I do so?
We are also to hope and firmly believe that God will give us all the graces necessary for over coming our faults and attaining such a degree of virtue and holiness as He designs for us. One of the chief causes of our failures is that we lose hope. We think it is no use trying to overcome some inveterate fault. This is a great mistake: God may be on the very point of giving us the grace, and that when we least expect it. We must go on hoping. To hope is half the battle. It will give us courage, and enable us to persevere amid difficulties, and will give us the victory in the end.
- text from Beautiful Pearls of Catholic Truth; it has the Imprimatur of Archbishop Michael Augustine Corrigan, Diocese of New York, 6 October 1897