Joyful Perseverance | Christmas Voices of Hope

Dr. Josephine Lombardi

Thursday, December 18, 2025

Photo by Carolina BR on Cathopic.

Welcome to Advent, and to our series, "Christmas Voices of Hope: Stories and Reflections for the Season." This time of preparation to celebrate the birth of Christ is full of stories, experiences, and traditions that come to define what the season means for each of us.

To inspire you with hope during this month of waiting and anticipation, we have invited friends and members of the Salt + Light Media family to share how their Advent and Christmas traditions have marked their own journey, and that of their communities.

Today's reflection was written by Dr. Josephine Lombardi, Academic Dean and Professor of Systematic and Moral Theology at St. Augustine's Seminary, Toronto.

“Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer,” (Romans 12:12).

This verse from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans keeps me anchored in the liturgical season of Advent.

During the Advent season we are called to ponder the Second Coming of Jesus and to pray in anticipation as we prepare to celebrate the day of our Lord’s birth. We wait with expectant hope. Hope, together with faith and charity, is one of the three theological virtues. The theme of waiting is very much connected to the virtue of hope and the season of Advent. In Spe Salvi, Pope Benedict XVI writes that the “one who hopes lives differently” (#2). What is it that a person of hope does that makes them live differently?

Hope is a certain type of disposition, infused by God, that helps us to wait for fulfillment in Christ and for eternal life. But how do we wait? What helps us to wait? What prepares us to wait? Inspired by Paul’s Letter to the Romans, especially 12:12 quoted above, I like to think of hope as the habit or disposition of waiting with joy, patience, and perseverance. This, I believe, is how a person with hope lives differently. They wait with joy, patience, and perseverance. They do this because they have faith, another virtue that prepares our spirits with the disposition to believe, know, and trust God. “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” (Hebrews 11:1). Faith provides the foundation for hope, even when we do not know the outcome. As we long for the return of our Lord Jesus Christ, we ponder all the future outcomes and unmet desires for which we wait. Apart from your desire for eternal life and salvation, what are you waiting for? A new relationship? A pregnancy or new birth? Employment? Healing from illness? Healing of relationships? Human fulfilment and freedom?

Waiting is hard, but we have been infused with the gifts of faith, hope, and charity to give us the stamina and endurance we need to wait with joy, patience, and perseverance. Charity – love – helps us to wait because love sustains us and, as St. Paul teaches, “love is patient” (1 Corinthians 13:4).

Love, a gift of the Holy Spirit, also produces joy. This makes sense because we can think of the Holy Spirit as the power of God’s love. The power of love, the Holy Spirit, is so powerful that it brought about the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus and will make us “a new creation” (Romans 8:11). Joy is a fruit of this power at work in our lives (Galatians 5:22). We cannot persevere while we wait if we lack patience, and we cannot be patient if we lack joy in our lives. In other words, we cannot have hope without faith and love that bring joy, patience, and perseverance.

What might it look like in practice for the power of God's love to create joy, patience, and perseverance in us? Victor Frankl, in Man’s Search for Meaning, explains that meaningful work, love for another, and the capacity to suffer help us to endure while we are waiting for delivery, for healing, or for a desired outcome. This requires heroic trust, a deep faith in our God who is a God of restoration. Jesus, our model, shows us how to be heroic while we wait, with long-suffering. He died for us, our sins, and our salvation, never using his divine powers for personal gain. Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas understood this manner of loving as to “will the good of the other for the sake of the other” (see Summa Theologiae I.II Q. 26 art. 4). Similarly, Dr. Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist, shares his research on the topic of altruism and how service to others helps our mental health. Love for another and patient endurance help us to persevere.

Often, we are focused on what we see before us: an unfinished project, a house in need of renovation, a workplace in need of greater communication and unity. This focus on the problem can keep us from having hope in a good outcome. St. Paul encourages us to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians. 5:17). Prayer helps us to persevere and to trust God with the plan he has for us, even if we don't understand that plan or know what it is. C. S. Lewis captured this mystery in his book, Mere Christianity:

Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.

God has blessed us with this infused grace, the capacity to have faith, hope, and to love, willing the good of the other for the sake of the other. Let us draw on this grace, knowing we are not limited by our doubts and fears, for “perfect love casts out fear,” (1 John 4:8). And if love casts out fear, then faith casts out doubt, and hope casts out despair, so that we can wait with expectant hope for everlasting life with God and greater fulfillment, with joy, patience, and perseverance.