Interview with Mariana Pimiento

Part Three from our “Hope: More Than Christian Positivity” Series

Photo of Mariana

Mariana is currently serving her first year as a FOCUS missionary in Massachusetts after receiving her Bachelor’s in Business in New York City. Having moved to the US from Colombia when she was 8, she loves spending time with her loud Colombian family. She planned on staying in New York City forever and becoming a Catholic Carrie Bradshaw but after a profound encounter with Christ her junior year, knew there was more the Lord might be wanting for her. Besides living life on mission, Mariana enjoys spending time creating art and reflections over at @bigapplecatholic on Instagram! As of lately, sheep farms, linen clothing, seltzer water and star gazing in the countryside bring her much joy.

Mariana’s Interview

Tell us a little bit about yourself. What has cultivating the virtue of hope looked like in your life?

I always loved self-help books and inspired TED talks growing up. Anything that could inspire me or motivate me always had my undivided attention. I was always a dreamer and needed steam to continue pushing for my dreams, often mustering the strength to get through difficult moments growing up. “Someday it will get better.” “Keep pushing forward.” “The future holds something better.” It didn’t take much to see that there wasn’t something magical about the future, as the future I was optimistic about never quite came.

I’ve come to learn through the heartache of sick parents, losing jobs, and other sincere disappointments, that true Christian hope is not the hope that life will always be positive or favorable at first glance. If so, neither Saint Paul nor Saint Therese’s story would seem to fit the mold for this, both filled with tremendous suffering and heartache in their own way. Cultivating hope then has looked far less like saying “at least I still have this good thing” and more like “I have all I need in Love himself.”

How would you distinguish between optimism and Christian hope?

I have especially learned this year that true Christian hope can never be rooted in any promises of the world. While optimism has carried me through more menial tries, it mostly depends on a nebulous and material solution here on earth; hope roots itself in a person, hope is a person. It is hope which has inspired the greatest of saints to persevere through difficulties. Optimism often attaches itself to a better-looking future, which if we have learned anything from this year is a faulty basket to put our eggs in. Our church in her goodness knows that her children cannot bear these things on her own. And so, like a good mother, she leads us to that disposition sense of strength writing, “ Hope is placing our trust in Christ's promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit.” (CCC 1817) Hope is what gives us the courage to make tremendous acts of faith in difficult moments in order to grow even deeper in holiness.

Though optimism has often fueled my strength in overcoming challenges, it could have never carried me the way Hope did as I sat at my mom’s hospital bedside over all of Thanksgiving week. No amount of optimism could ever comfort me like hope would allow me to. By Wednesday morning, a number of infections and pneumonia had caught a grip on and her health was deteriorating; my sense of control was too and so began one of my first honest relationships with hope. With the fear of COVID-19 in the air and the tears she was choking back as I spoke with her, my mind immediately rushed to the worst possible scenario: losing my mama. The thought of losing my mom began to crush me. As I sat in the last pew of the chapel before mass, my stomach sunk deep now knowing I was utterly helpless. It was a ‘severe mercy’ as C.S. Lewis would say to be woken in that moment. There was no version of the future without her that could seem optimistic. And yet I had never been more hopeful in my life.

When my own optimism left me without light, hope unveiled the reality that my Father is never, has never, and will never be an arbitrary God. Hope opened my heart to the impossible, that even if the unthinkable were to happen, I could have faith that it was all to be done for my good. Hope in the person of Christ allowed me to keep going, to remain steady, at peace, and perhaps even joyful in the face of suffering. Optimism could never encourage me to make such an act of great faith amidst darkness. Through the worry and fear Christ opened my heart to love like I had never experienced before. Or in the words of Mr. Darcy to Elizabeth Bennett “It taught me to hope...as I had scarcely ever allowed myself to hope before."

What is an area in your life that you have been called to have greater hope?

Fresh into serving my first year as a FOCUS missionary and hopefully a few years wiser, I am learning to recognize that in order to truly cultivate the virtue of hope, I first must loosen my grip on the idea that joy and peace must come only through the way I think is best. As universities closed worldwide in March, my relief and peace of the moment came from knowing “at least we will still be here in New York City.”

Three days later, I moved to Alabama within 24 hours’ notice. And as I moved south, I often thought, “at least we still have graduation in May.” Four weeks later I would receive the email canceling in-person graduation. Then came the next thought, “At least there is still FOCUS training in June”, and when I didn’t have in-person training, “At least I will love my placement”, and when I at first didn’t love my placement I found myself stuck in continuing the Litany of At Least I Still Have. A beloved litany of mine this 2020. Naturally, I began to feel hopeless in that absolutely nothing was going the way I planned, even if the plans I had were good and holy like wanting to serve on a campus I think I would best thrive at. Yet, behind this litany is a reality that hurts to write even now. In many ways, I still don’t trust my Heavenly Dad to provide for me in fullness. My misplaced optimism truncated the goodness of the Father making me find my hope in things other than him, “at least I have this one thing that could also very well be taken from me.”

I am learning then not to put my hope in earthly things, no matter how good they might be. I can hope for beautiful things like less barriers in mission next semester, the health and wellbeing of my family, a good and holy spouse, a swift end to this pandemic, and all else. However, none of these are promised to me and therefore cannot be the things in which I hope for. One thing is promised to me though, that Christ will always be with me to the end of time and there is nothing and no one else I could possibly want or need more than Him for the rest of my life.

What practices have helped you come to know Jesus more in pursuit of hope?

Honesty is always the best policy in the pursuit of hope. Of the greatest diservices we can do to ourselves is to be afraid of heartache and therefore hide it from Christ in prayer. Christ himself was not afraid to show his pain to the Father. Afterall, Jesus wept at Lazarus’ tomb

and more notably sweat blood out of profuse stress and angst for his coming torture and death.

I have come to know Jesus more intimately in hope not in those areas where hope was most visible but in the most painful areas of my heart where there might seem to be no hope at all. For so long I hid these thoughts. He didn’t want to see this. They aren’t clean, pretty, or put together. And yet Jesus meets me in my honest and messy emotions. He does not rush me to get it together and never for once dismisses my pain. On the contrary, he holds that place with the utmost tenderness and reverence. In this honesty about suffering He has poured out great hope in the face of suffering. Little by little he shows me reasons to not fear suffering as much as I did before. It’s no surprise then that Saint Paul asks us to come to rejoice in suffering, “knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.”

What advice would you give to the Catholic woman who is struggling with hopelessness?

First, know our Lord loves you in it. He is not looking for you to have a more optimistic view of life. All he is asking is for confidence.

Second, call upon the promises Christ has made. As our dear friend Saint Therese tells you, “Let us not grow tired of prayer: confidence works miracles.” Come to him when you are weary, laden, burden, and to take him up on the offer for rest. We can trust that He holds good to his promises. You’ll be amazed at what happens with a little confidence.

Third, enduring hopelessness alone does not make it any holier. I’d be surprised to find the first woman to not have periods of hopelessness, let alone a faithful Catholic woman. Reach out for help even if it’s just to be honest of where you’re at! None of us are perfect at it but a little laughter and sisterly love always does good for the soul.

This interview was compiled and edited by Michelle Rash