“La petite espérance
Est celle qui toujours commence”—
the persistent element in all effort and all change. She deceives us twenty times running; yet she is the only one of our leaders who never deceives us in the end. She gives significance to human toil, beauty and meaning to human suffering, reality to human joy. In one of his most beautiful verses, he describes the crowning of humanity with this living, budding diadem of hope.
“Comme une mère fait un diadème de ses doigts allongés, des doigts conjoints et affrontés de ses deux mains fraîches
Autour du front brûlant de son enfant
Pour apaiser ce front brûlant, cette fièvre,
Ainsi une couronne éternelle a été tressée pour apaiser le front brûlant.
Et c’était une couronne de verdure.
Une couronne de feuillage.”
Moreover, “cette curieuse enfant Espérance” is the motive-power of the spiritual order too. God Himself hopes for and in man: has placed His eternal hope in man’s hands, and given to him, along with the gift of liberty, the terrible power of frustrating or achieving the purposes of Divine Love.