Charting the Hope Beyond the Stars
by Bishop William Joensen | January 30, 2026
Long before the Skyview app was available to point one’s phone toward the stars to identify the constellations one is gazing upon, I took an astronomy elective in my final semester at Iowa State. We spent time in the campus planetarium observing some of the manmade phenomena that portrayed the cosmos, but we were also assigned to venture out into the frigid Iowa winter nights to behold the real thing. A few times, I was joined in my nighttime searches by my Dad, an ex-Air Force navigator who came from the old school of “shooting the stars” to chart his crew’s course toward their destination. His childlike wonder in pointing out constellations and luminous reference points was delightfully contagious.
Recently, our Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV, released a letter commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council’s document on the “importance and relevance of education in human life,” entitled “Charting New Maps of Hope.” His scope of reflection is much broader than Catholic or even formal public education; he is both visionary and poetic in laying out the formative adventure inherent in the Church’s mission to bring the Gospel to bear on every aspect and every age of human experience.
Pope Leo speaks of “ ‘educational constellations’: experiences that are both humble and powerful, capable of interpreting the times, of preserving the unity between faith and reason, between thought and life, between knowledge and justice.” All of these moments are graced opportunities to discover God’s creative intent, the “epiphany” of his saving will be manifested in his Son, Jesus. They become a beacon in the night to guide navigation along the trajectory of our lives (“Charting” 1.2), but only insofar as we imitate the farsightedness of the biblical Abraham, whose faith generated descendants more numerous than the stars in the sky (“Charting New Maps” 1.2, 5.1). Such faith is an intimate companion of the virtue of hope that we have cultivated in this recently concluded Jubilee Year.
There are too many stirring, aspirational phrases in the Holy Father’s relatively brief letter to recount here, but Pope Leo personally inspired and moved me to recall my own Dad’s voracious soul that never grew tired of learning and experiencing the world on God’s terms. The “choreography” of all education, including Catholic education, is a compact of trust among mutual partners who respect human dignity and God-given potentials, for whom access to education is both a privilege and a sacred right. “Constellations reflect their own light in an infinite universe,” creating variations of color, and among human persons, charisms meant to be enlisted and serve the larger society (6.2, 8.3, 9.1, 10.4).
All the while, the formative mission embraced by the Church and other persons who explore the horizons of human identity is to expand our familiarity with our own inner, spiritual life; it should awaken a sense of wonder, to be a laboratory of discernment helping individuals navigate their own life paths. Ideally, true education helps dispel forces of division as we listen to one another, cast aside labels, and bring our stories into harmonious appreciation.
Whew! That’s a vast, daunting charge for all of us. But on a local level, that’s my hope for our new version of The Catholic Mirror as we embark on a new, bimonthly magazine format. This change has been well-discerned by our diocesan communications director, Anne Marie Cox, her advisors and team. The glossy format, the enhanced graphics and concise content displaying human stories animated and linked within our ecosystem and orbit of Catholic faith should sparkle and appeal to persons of all ages. More than ever, as we chart a new phase of communicating the Gospel in our Diocese, The Catholic Mirror is to reflect the unique profile of Christ’s light shining upon every human face, and to intensify the sense that our Heavenly Father beholds us with great affection and delight. The Church is no planetarium mimicking what God has set before us; it is a laboratory of true life and love, where we form one another and navigate our way together toward the destiny God has ordained.