Most of us know we are supposed to hope. We find it harder to explain what that means - or why, in seasons of darkness and unanswered prayer, the hoping seems to have gone somewhere we cannot reach.

A Month of Virtue: Hope is a thirty-day formation book for souls who want to learn how the tradition actually hopes - not as a pleasant feeling that things will work out, but as the theological virtue the Church names alongside faith and charity: the soul's confident desire for eternal life, resting not on its own merits but on the omnipotence and fidelity of God who has promised it.

Each day offers a short reflection drawn from the Catholic tradition - from Charles P