About a week ago, I attended a fundraising gala for my elementary school alma mater, St. Theresa’s in Trumbull. The guest of honor was Fr. Mike Schmitz, who is the chaplain of the Catholic Center at the University of Minnesota in Duluth and a popular speaker whose talks and homilies have many millions of online views. At the gala, he spoke about how his work with college students over the past decade has made him acutely aware of young people’s struggles with anxiety. He believes that one of the things that has contributed to this problem is the phenomenon of what he called “Zamboni parenting.” A Zamboni is a contraption used in ice skating rinks that is driven over the ice to smooth out its surface. Zamboni parenting views parents as problem solvers for their children, who seek to eliminate or minimize all obstacles or difficulties their children might face. It is a well-meaning attempt to help one’s children achieve success. But what it actually does, Schmitz argued, is make children more anxious, since they don’t have the important experiences of personally learning to deal with adversity, disappointment, and how to overcome challenges. It also impedes their development in the virtue of Christian hope, which Schmitz defined as “faith in God extended into the future.” Hope is different from optimism, which is a belief that the future is going to be better than the present. Hope, being rooted in faith, is confident trust that the Lord who knows me and loves me and who is with me right now will never abandon me. This virtue of hope is what makes it possible to have joy even in the experience of hardship and suffering.
In the talk, Schmitz held up St. Paul as an exemplar of hope. St. Paul had experienced every kind of affliction for the sake of his work of sharing the gospel. He was beaten, betrayed, thrown into prison, shipwrecked, and persecuted over the course of his missionary journeys. Yet, he never saw these experiences as cause to doubt his faith in Christ. Instead, he wrote in his letter to the Christian community in Rome, “we boast of our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance, proven character, and proven character, hope. And hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Romans 5:3-5). St. Paul was a man of tremendous hope who was explaining to the Romans what the proper posture of Christian disciples must be toward life in the world, with its ups and downs and its uncertainties. Uncertainty about what might happen in the future can cause feelings of significant unease or dread in the human heart. But St. Paul teaches us that this is not the proper response of a Christian to the vicissitudes of life. A follower of Christ is a person of hope, one who knows by faith that the Lord is with him in the present moment and trusts that He will continue to be with him no matter what lies ahead. Confidence in His presence through current trials strengthens us to remain steadfast through future trials, with the assurance that the love of God that has been poured out into our hearts will never be withheld from us. The remedy for pervasive anxiety is Christian hope, which does not promise a life free of trials, but promises that the Lord will never abandon us in them.
posted 4/25/26
The Parish of St. Cecilia-St. Gabriel 