It’s important for Catholics today to see through the steady flow of cultural poison and to counteract it with hope.

Hope “is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit” (Catechism, 1817).

Our page-one story, looking back 10 years at Hurricane Katrina, focuses on how the Church in New Orleans helped Louisianans recover and find hope after the worst natural disaster on U.S. soil. On page three, the pastor of Holy Cross Church in Las Cruces, N.M., speaks with confidence in his belief that God saved his parishioners from being injured in a bomb blast that rocked his church earlier this month.

And on page two, our obituary of Cardinal William Baum reflects the hope modeled in one Catholic priest’s long life of service to Christ and his Church.

The Catechism says, “The virtue of hope responds to the aspiration to happiness, which God has placed in the heart of every man. It keeps man from discouragement; it sustains him during times of abandonment; it opens up his heart in expectation of eternal beatitude.”

I pray we all will embrace that hopeful clarity of vision that our Catholic faith inspires. For true hope is the antidote to the epidemic of despair in our society today.

God bless you!