The Virtue of Hope
We have all heard the expression “hope springs eternal.” But what does this really mean? Of the three great Christian virtues, faith, hope, and charity, hope seems the least clearly defined, or at least the virtue on which we focus less. We have a pretty good idea what faith means to us, and we have a pretty good idea what charity, that is love in its various forms, means to us. But hope is a little more elusive in its meaning.
At the outset, we need to clarify what Christian hope is. It is not about winning the lottery, or hoping our favorite sports team will do well. That is faint hope. Christian hope is a confident hope because it is hope for eternal communion with an all-merciful, all-loving, and all-powerful God. Jesus told us that He would be with us always, even to the end of time, and He sent the Holy Spirit to give us the hope that springs eternally in our hearts for an intimate communion with God.
Christian hope is also a desire for attaining something that has not yet been attained, but which is possible to attain. We have a faithful and loving God who keeps his promises, so we have reason to hope that with God’s grace we can grow in holiness, in the perfection of which human beings are capable, and be successful in our journey to salvation.
But sometimes, Christian hope can get sidetracked. Jesus, the greatest human being of all time, suffered, and so Christian hope is not hope that we will go through life and never suffer. We will. Many are suffering now, particularly in this time of serious economic downturn. So hope is not avoidance of bad things happening. While we all work for economic and social justice for people of all ages, Christian hope is not the expectation that life will necessarily be fair. Nor is hope is the anticipation of life without bad things happening to us. The presence of sin in the world prevents that from being possible.
Misplaced hope is the mistake of the hero of the Book of Job, from which we read this (evening) morning. Job was a very successful man, innocent and just. He thinks he is a really good guy, and by all accounts, he was. But Job becomes plagued by unexplained misfortune. He loses his children, his property, and his health. All of this leaves him puzzled and disheartened, and he soon becomes angry with God for punishing him unfairly. He becomes increasingly hopeless.
There is a mystery to suffering. Why do bad things happen to good people? We don’t always have good answers to this. Life can create great obstacles to hope. These are despair, pride, doubt, fear, and impatience. These emotions all feed on each other, and they can be ruinously sinful in the destruction of Christian hope. We see so much injustice and violence and we wonder where God is. There is pride that also misdirects hope. We think we need to fix the world all by ourselves, or decide what needs to be done all by ourselves, and that we don’t need God.
We then fail and then it becomes easy to despair. We can wallow in sin or see only evil in ourselves and others in a way that makes us think that a perfect union with God is impossible. Our failure then turns to fear. Fear that violence and injustice will overtake us if we try to stop it, so just don’t get involved. Fear that what God asks of us is just too much. Fear in relationships when people have hurt us so we don’t want to love again in love’s many meanings. Fear of economic downturn impacting directly in our lives.
In the face of all this is the reality of Christian hope. We do know that God himself endured the most unfair suffering for us through the death of Jesus Christ. But Christ conquered sin and death through the Resurrection. And in the process he enabled us to do the same. God is always with us, and He gives us the tools to grow in holiness, and move closer and closer to His enduring love.
In the Book of Job, God restores Job’s life when Job accepts the fact that to live in hope is also to trust. For God is loving and merciful. God is also all-powerful. We do not control much of what happens to us. But whatever our suffering, and the greatness of it, God gives us the tools to overcome that suffering by joining it to the redemptive power of God. A living hope involves a living trust, a surrender to God by choosing to live our lives in a certain way that is ultimately invincible to suffering just as Jesus was invincible to suffering.
And in that invincibility comes spiritual, sometimes even physical healing. We see Jesus in our Gospel from Mark (tonight)today bringing that healing to Peter’s mother-in-law. The story provides evidence of an all-loving and merciful God.
But every day, we encounter people who are like Jesus. I call them snapshots of heaven. They are the people to whom we are naturally drawn. They endure their suffering, bear wrongs patiently. Even in the face of their own suffering, they always have a kind word and an invincible generosity and love for God and others. I sincerely believe these people carry the hope, the trust of heaven, proof that we can build a better world in anticipation of the next world, and hope that we can get there.
With God’s grace, we can even be one of those snapshots. Our hope is not only individual, it is communal. The great Catholic concept of the communion of saints reminds us that our hope is joined to those both past and present who lived and live Christian hope effectively. The grace they received we can receive as well. Such people build us up and remind us of the confident Christian hope even as we feel the world is trying to tear us down. The saints of yesterday and today follow the example of St. Paul in our second reading (tonight) this morning. They offer the Gospel life to others free of charge.
So how do we live in hope? A formula is available to us. We have all heard of ESP. But there is also 3SP (sacraments, service, Scripture, and prayer). These are the means for a living Christian hope. They keep hope alive in ourselves and others by a life of love and service. Living a life of love and service is how Jesus lived his life, and He invites us to do the same. He gives us through 3SP, the fruits, gifts, and charisms of the Holy Spirit to guide us, inspire us, give us direction, and show us the benefits of hope for own lives and the lives of others.
It is in loving action, the use of 3SP that we come to see the promise of the virtue of Christian hope. For in the final analysis, we not only live in confident hope. With God’s help we live that confident hope.