"Charity hopeth all things."
How common and how fatal an evil is discouragement! Half of our enterprises fail simply because we get discouraged. More than half of our faults are owing to discouragement. We lose heart, and therefore fail in the necessary perseverance. We become despondent, and seek to console ourselves by some earthly pleasure or perhaps sinful indulgence. No general who was discouraged ever won a victory and no sinner who lost heart ever became a saint or even turned to God as long as the despondency remained.
Yet it is no easy thing to keep up our courage and our hope. We so often fail, and failures are discouraging. We commit so many faults; yet, nothing saps our courage like the consciousness of having done wrong. Then too, there are continual impediments and obstacles in our way, the neglect and indifference shown by others to our work, the opposition we meet, and a thousand things more. Too often, these are causes of discouragement to all who are working for God. We ought not to be discouraged by them, for often difficulties and opposition are the best signs of coming success.
How are we to keep up courage and to be always hopeful? The only chance for us lies in our keeping God always before us and forgetting ourselves as far as possible, which depends on the degree of our charity. When self prevails, eventually hope disappears; when God is predominant, hope springs up in our heart, for "Charity hopeth all things." I shall have strong confidence and a certainty of final success if I have a fervent charity.
- text from Charity, Meditations for a Month by Father Richard Frederick Clarke, SJ