As Catholics, we are journeying through a jubilee year focused on being “Pilgrims of Hope.” In many ways, it presents an opportunity to reflect upon the “hope” we carry as people of faith. I am drawn back to my first impression when someone read William Butler Yeats’s poem, “The Second Coming.” He writes, “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.” Everything in life falls apart because nothing ultimately holds everything together; nothing underwrites us. Good things may well occur within history and our lives, but they are, in the end, accidental constellations, random happenings that are vulnerable to dissolution when the chance forces that produced them die because “the center” of life cannot hold. To believe in the cause of Christianity is to believe that in the midst of what seems to be eternal pain, selfishness, immorality, and the evilness of humankind’s actions against all things created, a loving God is present. This foundation of belief is found in the incarnation of God through his human and divine Son, Jesus Christ. Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that we emphatically state our disagreement with the Yeats philosophy in the Creed, which we repeat at every Mass. We believe that at the center of all things is a gracious, personal God who is powerful and loving enough to underwrite everything. We believe that the resurrection of Christ is the truth that the center holds firm because “all things are possible with God.” To say the Creed is to live with the knowledge that, in the end, God is in charge because he is stronger than death and is the gracious and loving presence in life, even when we are sweating blood. This is the “Pilgrim Hope” that we rise each day to embrace until the transition from this earthly life to our eternal life with the ineffable and almighty Yahwee. Faith is a practical thing. It is to trust that God is in charge, nothing more and nothing less. To believe in the resurrection, the essence of our Christian faith is to look at everything, including death, and believe that the center will hold.