Hope as a virtue is very particular to Christianity. In fact, without Christ, hope wouldn’t even make sense as a virtue. Because without Christ, hopes are mere optimistic ideals. And with Christ, our hope is firmly founded on faith and reason. Hope is necessary for our salvation.
The one who has hope lives differently – Benedict XVI, SPE SALVI
The Shape of Hope
When I completed RCIA, the facilitator of the program gave a religious gift to each of the participants. Sometimes a rosary, sometimes a saint’s medal… you get the idea. My gift was a necklace with a cross, anchor, and heart, symbolizing the three theological virtues. The facilitator said to me “guess which one symbol represents faith.” I guessed the cross. I was wrong. Actually, the cross is the symbol of hope. Because Christ on the cross is the reason for our hope. Without Christ, and without the cross, we would have no reason to have hope.
What is Hope
Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, 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)
Basically, hope is our longing for heaven and our trust that through Christ we may reach our goal of getting there. It is the virtue that lies between despair (believing we have no chance of making it to heaven) and presumption (just assuming that we will make it to heaven). Despair and presumption are sins against hope.
Finding the Balance
As a virtue, hope is also inseparably linked to the virtues of humility and magnanimity. Humility, the foundation of all virtues, reminds us of what we are. Dust, a mere worm compared to the great goodness and love that is God. This is properly balanced by another virtue – magnanimity. Magnanimity is the virtue by which we desire greatness – to glorify God by great deeds and to spend eternity with God. Magnanimity is often called “greatness of the soul.” It is through this virtue that we are able to choose the right and noble action even in difficult moments. When we have the virtues of magnanimity and humility in balance, we are able to live the virtue of hope.
We Hope Together
Our hope is ecclesiastical. It is not individualistic. We are saved as the body of Christ. In paragraph nineteen of SPE SALVI, Benedict XVI discusses Kant, who envisioned a perverted end of the world based upon fear and self interest rather than Christianity. This perverted end comes because of a switch from ecclesiastical faith to and individualistic faith. This is a reminder of why we need the Church and each other. When faith and hope becomes individualistic, we make the same mistake as Karl Marx who “forgot man is only man” (SPE SALVI, Benedict XVI).
Because our free will will not be taken away from us, there remains a tendency in us towards evils. Nothing we can do will ever change this. So instead, we have hope for us now, and for our future. “[Hope is the virtue by which we can face our present]; the present, even if it is arduous, can be lived and accepted if it leads towards a goal, if we can be sure of this goal, and if this goal is great enough to justify the effort of the journey.” (SPE SALVI)
Basically, hope is the virtue that allows us to live in the moment. It allows us to head the command “be not afraid,” and to leave our anxieties. It changes the way we feel about suffering and death.
Our Faith-Based Hope
The virtue of hope presupposes the virtue of faith. That is, our hope depends on our faith. Without faith, there is nothing to hope for! Only Christ had hope without faith. That is, He had hope for His body. But He didn’t have faith because He is God, and always already beheld the beatific vision. And He didn’t need hope for His soul for the same reasons.
Still, it is significant to think that even Christ had hope for His body. And through Him, we have reason to have hope for our souls and bodies. Faith gives us knowledge of our supernatural end (eternity in relationship with God in heaven). And hope is the virtue of the will, which directs us towards desiring that supernatural end, with the help of God. This also adds to why it is a great sin to lose our faith. Because if we lose our faith, we also lose our hope.
Foundation of Faith
Before we continue on in our exploration of hope, let’s build up on our firm foundation: faith. First, what faith isn’t. “Faith is not merely a personal reaching out towards things to come that are still totally absent” (SPE SALVI, Benedict XVI).
Faith is not about believing in uncertain things. And faith is not contrary to reality, and it is not contrary to reason. Rather, faith is founded upon certainty; faith is founded on the reliability of God, because God will not deceive us. And, indeed, without faith we become detached from reality. (And we can see just how detached from reality the world us right now, because it is without faith). When we make a profession of faith, what we say touches reality. “I believe in one God.” We say this, and it touches reality, because it corresponds with reality – that there is one God. When we are rooted in reality, we can touch this reality, participate in it, and possess it. However, on Earth we do not see this reality. And so hope is the reality that we do not see.
How to Have Hope
Now, hope is a theological virtue. The theological virtues are only possible as virtues inasmuch as we receive them by grace from God. We cannot gain these virtues by our own power. We have to be open to receiving them through grace. So then, how can we be sure to be open to grace. And being open to grace is an act of the will. That is, if we pray about something (example: I pray to have a good day wherein I grow in virtue) it does not feel altogether different from just thinking. (Example: I would like to have a good day today, and to grow in virtue). But there is a difference. Though our experience of these two scenarios are the same, when we pray, we involve the intention of our will.
So to be open to grace, we think about being open to grace, but add the resolve to be open to grace. This, of course, turns thoughts from being mere thoughts into a prayer. The next way to have hope is to act on it.
Acting on Hope
One problem we face in contemporary Catholicism is that we lack ongoing formation. Continual formation in the faith is an essential pursuit for our souls… and it is an act of hope. So when you think about it, we are performing an act of hope by studying it! Hope is an arduous good. Before the fall, it did not take hard work and effort to learn about things. But now it does, and this hard work and effort aids our growth in virtue. It takes suffering and discipline to study the faith. So when you study the faith, if your mind feels tired, you feel like what you are reading is difficult to understand, this isn’t a bad thing. You aren’t failing if you come across these struggles. Be hopeful, and keep working away at it!
What is life
In paragraph 27 of SPE SALVI, Benedict XVI includes the definition of life. What is life? – “that they know You’re the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Eternal life is relationship. It is something we experience.
Prayer is a School of Hope
We learn hope through prayer. But also, when we act on hope, and when we suffer, we internalize this learning. Also, hope means that the injustices we suffer will be addressed. Because God is perfectly merciful, and perfectly just, the injustices we suffer will all have to be atoned for. So we actually hope for the final judgement. Because at the final judgement, we will witness the justice of God for everyone.
Another way to grow in the virtue of hope is to integrate our little hopes into our great hope. This is the ordering of our little hopes. So we can think “how can I order reading this blog into the performative aspects of hope.”
We need to balance prayer, contemplation, and action. It is when these three are out of balance that we do not know what to do. And that is precisely what acedia is today. Where there is no hope, there is only frenzied labour
A Final Note: Hope and Suffering
“We suffer because of the sins of others” – Paragraph 36 of SPE SALVI In the Bible, Isaiah says “I am a man of unclean lips” and he says this is because the King is unpure. And this scenario so parallels what is going on for us in North America right now. In Canada, we have a “Catholic” prime minister, and our neighbour has a “Catholic” president. And yet, their sins cause so much suffering. If our hope is for this world, suffering does not make sense.
But in SPE SALVI, Benedict XVI says that suffering becomes a hymn of praise wherein we patiently wait on Our Lord. Only God has the power to take away the sins of the world. But we can have hope, precisely because God can. This virtue is necessary for the healing of the world. For just as we can be damaged, we can be healed. How many people think “if we just get rid of the Catholic church, everything will be better.” And so many people believe that. But the truth is, God has given us the church as the mode for the healing of our souls and bodies. When we receive the Eucharist, Christ’s body touches our body, Christ’s soul touches our soul, His blood touches us, and His divinity touches us. Christ can heal our soul and bodies.
And so we have hope. A real and true virtue, that can aid us in this life and lead us to the next.
The Byzantine Life
I hope you enjoyed this week’s article. It was a long one, so thank you for making it to end. Another act of Hope you could read about now is praying to the Theotokos, so check out this article next!
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