(Phoenix, Arizona)

It is election day here in the United States of America. It is a day of hope mixed with fear, or perhaps fear mixed with hope. My little girl is worried that "that lady who will kill more babies" will be elected. Maybe she will. Maybe she won't. But we will pray. We will vote. And we will hope.

I offer you a quote from 1924, when people in this country were recovering from one World War and dreading a second....

"Most are quick to perceive and conscientious to confess faults against the virtues of faith and charity; but few advert to the possibility of committing sin by perversity or sluggishness of will in the matter of HOPE. ...One may easily sin against hope. How? Why how else but by willfully dwelling on things which discourage us; by indulging the temptation to tolerate, if not actually to entertain, the devils of moodiness and depression and melancholy and sadness; by refusing to take such measures, physical, mental and religious, as will help us throw off sentiments like this that are favorable to sin and weakening to virtue....  

[Instead, remember that] to such as love God, all things work together unto good."

~ Fr. Joseph McSorley of the Paulist Fathers, 

Be of Good Heart: A Plea for Christian Optimism, imprimatur 1924.