September 29, 2025 // Bishop

Hope Requires Us to Be ‘Deeply Rooted’ in Christ

Clare Hildebrandt

Reporter

Bishop Cozzens Speaks on Virtue of Hope at Notre Dame

“How do we face evil and still have hope?” Bishop Andrew Cozzens asked students and faculty at the University of Notre Dame. The wide-eyed crowd filling the auditorium stared back at the bishop of the Diocese of Crookston, Minnesota, who also led the bishops’ efforts on the National Eucharistic Revival.

“Hope has to be a radical virtue,” he said. “To understand, we should look at the Latin root of the word ‘radical,’ which means ‘root’ or ‘rooted.’ Hope requires us to be deeply rooted to be able to grow strong and tall. Remember this.”

On Wednesday, September 24, Bishop Cozzens visited Notre Dame, where he joined Bishop Rhoades in celebrating the Jubilee Mass at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart. After Mass, to continue the celebration of the ongoing Jubilee Year of Hope, Bishop Cozzens delivered a lecture on hope as a virtue.

Bishop Cozzens began his talk by presenting a sobering reality: There is evil in the world.

“I would argue that the worst things in society are the greatest challenge to hope and living a life of hope,” Bishop Cozzens said. “Almost 50 percent of high school students today display at least one symptom of depression. Suicide rates have increased 37 percent in the last 20 years. In our society, studies show 20 percent of teens have seriously considered suicide, and it’s even higher amongst women, which is 30 percent,” he explained.

The world searches for a way to cope with this gruesome reality, according to Bishop Cozzens, but will often recognize the deep need for hope. However, the supernatural gift of hope is often confused for simple optimism.

“Optimism is a psychological outlook, right?” Bishop Cozzens asked. “People say, ‘It’s going to be OK. It will get better.’ This outlook looks at the facts, but sometimes the facts don’t point to optimism,” he said.

Bishop Cozzens referenced the recent shooting at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis as a situation where optimism fails: “I know Annunciation parish very well. I said Mass in that parish more than once. … I knew the priest and the young women who was reading the responsorial psalm,” he said.

The room fell silent as Bishop Cozzens once again asked, “How do we have hope in the midst of stunning, shocking evil?”

The answer, Bishop Cozzens stated, is ‘’the power of the cross.”

“It is the power of the cross, which is the source of our hope, and this is the simple truth. There’s nothing so bad that it cannot be taken up by God and turned into a good. This is a very important thing to learn how this happens in our life, because it doesn’t happen automatically,” Bishop Cozzens explained.

“Let me start with this definition of hope, which comes from Father Luigi Giussani [a 20th-century Italian priest and theologian]. … He says, ‘Hope is a certainty about the future based on a presence.’ Hope is a certainty about the future based on presence, not the present,” he said.

“The source of hope is His presence. It’s being with Him. It’s experiencing Him. And when I experience that, He’s real, He’s powerful, He’s acting for my good in every circumstance. … Hope is rooted in the encounter with God.”

Bishop Cozzens continued: “Hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. When we encounter Him as a real living person, it automatically brings hope, because He’s here with me now, and He promises to be here with me in the future.”

He added: “It precisely hope which allows me to believe that God knows my holiness in the midst of my weakness. … There’s always a tension as Christians between who we are and who we should be as baptized sons and daughters. I’ve been given all the grace that I need to become saved, but do I live at this level?”

Bishop Cozzens imparted to the audience that the Church’s Sacrament of Confession is a sacrament of hope.

“If you want to become a person of hope, go to confession,” he said. “Confession combines two virtues – humility and magnanimity. It forces me to face my sin. It’s the beauty and power of confession. Through my confession, I am forced to acknowledge my sin in concrete terms, and then I am open to receive the grace of God.”

Thus, in even the most dire circumstances, Christians can hope because Christ’s eternal presence remains with us.

“I can have hope even when the circumstance is a difficult one,” Bishop Cozzens said, “where I speak more weakness or failure, and yet, He is there with me.”

Clare Hildebrandt is a staff writer for Today’s Catholic.