This week as we light the second Advent candle, we meditate on love, the love that God brought into the world in the stable in Bethlehem and desires to bring into our hearts.

Hope, in the way we mean it as a virtue, is not just optimism or positive thinking. Rather it is in the confident expectation that God’s promises of blessing are true and will come to be in our life.

A couple of weeks ago, Pope Francis published a new encyclical called Fratelli Tutti on the feast of St. Francis. Usually, encyclicals are addressed to those in the Catholic Church, since they often focus on clarification or promoting a certain aspect of faith. However, Pope Francis addresses Fratelli Tutti to the whole world because the subject pertains to every person, not just Catholics.