To look at her picture on the cover of Hope: An Invitation, you would not think that Sr. Josephine Garrett — a member of the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth—hails from what she described as a hopeless childhood. “I am a woman full of hope,” she states frankly at the start. We all know her type: The nun who is so full of the joy of the Lord that she can’t not smile. That joy is only possible because—over and over again—she accepts a constant invitation from God to hope, and she is inviting the rest of us to do the same.

“My hope did not come cheap,” Sister Garrett writes. Her father committed suicide when she was eight, only a year after her mother left her life. She never knew the possibility of hope as she was growing up, let alone felt it. Yet she remained open to God’s will. For, even though her childhood was marked with tragedy and brokenness, it was also firmly rooted in faith, thanks to the Baptist aunt and uncle who raised her. The foundation they provided proved vital in her search for fulfillment.

Little by little, through small promptings and “coincidences,” she became Catholic and eventually abandoned a successful business career to pursue religious life and mental health counseling. Sister Garrett’s was a meandering path, and she brings us along as she weaves in scriptural and theological reflections with all the events of her life.

Among the more poignant lessons from her journey is the realization that the “veil” between heaven and earth is really quite thin. You simply need “Kingdom vision” to perceive it, Sister tells us. This is foundational to discovering (or rediscovering) hope. She writes:

I think we need to talk less about discerning our vocations and talk more about discerning the enduring presence of God in every aspect of our lives—the abiding and living providence of the Lord that gives us confidence to face whatever may be before us, because He is with us always, even until the end of the age. He is our sure hope.

To find hope amid all the trials of life, we must first discern his presence and then yield to his offer of love. As her story indicates, this is not a one-and-done kind of thing. God is constantly extending invitations to enter into his love, and He sends the saints to help us. They often choose us before we choose them. “They join God in his pursuit of us,” Sr. Garrett explains. And even greater, He gives us Himself in the Eucharist. To receive the Eucharist is to pursue Hope.

God’s work on us is slow, she says, because He is constant, enduring and invested. He doesn’t promise to be a wizard that will fix everything wrong or broken in this life. What He does promise is his presence, Emmanuel.

Reading her story, God’s work in Sister Josephine Garrett’s life seems so obvious now. Thank God she was paying attention.

Anna Mitchell is the host of the Son Rise Morning Show on Sacred Heart Radio.

Sister Josephine Garrett, CSFN; Hope: An Invitation; Our Sunday Visitor; 112 pages; $18.95

This article appeared in the February 2024 edition of The Catholic Telegraph Magazine. For your complimentary subscription, click here.