The Virtue of Hope
THE VIRTUE OF HOPE
“Faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” (1 Cor 13:13)
In Christian circles, we talk a lot about the virtues of faith and love (i.e. charity)—protestants talk about faith; Catholics talk about love—but rarely do we spend much time talking about hope. It’s one of the three theological virtues, but it is often neglected or overlooked. Do we think that if we don’t know much about it we won’t be subject to it? Do we think that we will reap the rewards of the virtue without developing it? Do we think there is nothing that can meaningfully be said about hope in the first place? In any case, we’d be wrong. But let us inquire to the depths of this virtue and how a deeper understanding of it can benefit us in our Christian life.
Hope
Hope is always before us in this life. The soul is made up of intellect and will, but we have three theological virtues—all of which pertain to the soul. If, then, we have two dimensions of the soul, and three theological virtues, are they redundant?
The answer is no. The virtue of faith pertains to the intellect. It perfects the knowledge of man in regards to things unseen, as they are according to God. Where the intellect has one act—knowledge or understanding, however you wish to refer to it—the will has two acts: one of approach to a thing desired, and the other of conformity to the thing itself. (ST I-II:62:3ad3) The approach to a thing desired is the subject of hope; the conformity to the thing itself is the subject of love (i.e. charity).
Hope is painful. Hope is hard. Hope lives in the interim before a thing desired is gained. Not knowing whether you will attain that thing desired or not is painful. Not caving into despair or presumption is hard. Hope is indecisive… We tell ourselves that if we just give up on the hope it will be easier. If we give up on it though, that’s despair. “I don’t want you to get your hopes up” is the rallying cry of despair. If we just convince ourselves we’ll get the thing we want, we give in to presumption. “You’re good to go; you deserve this; I can feel it, it’s going to happen”—all of the above are the rallying cries of presumption.
Hope is Hard
If you’ve ever had someone you’ve had a crush on, or wanted to be with, romantically, you know exactly how painful hope is. You desire to have that person; you desire to begin conforming yourself, and your life, to partnership with them. Very few people are able to endure that period of trial without giving in to vice. If they’re young, they usually drink and go out; they seek the attention of other people to distract them from the difficulty of hoping for a thing that’s not theirs yet. If they’re older they distract themselves with work and other cares of life, or also dating other people, all in an attempt to ignore the pain of the interim unknown that is the context for hope.
Hope is Painful
You’ve interviewed for a job that you really want; you’re waiting to hear back from the company on whether they want to hire you or not / whether they want to grant you another round of interviews. What do you most want in that time? You want to know what their decision is. If they want you, you want to know; if they don’t want you, you want to know—you don’t want to be left in limbo for a second longer than you need to be. As in dating, so in work—you maybe start searching for other jobs: you don’t want the other jobs; you want the one you’re waiting to hear back from—but if they reject you, you want to try and avoid the pain of that rejection by being in pursuit of another position. The tragedy of hope is, in truth, however, that if you can’t hope well, you won’t be able to love well. If you can’t hope well, you can’t do well with the thing once you get it… If they give you the job, or the girl begins to fall in love with you, your inability to hope without despairing or presuming will translate into an inability to cultivate the principles and virtues of love/constancy that make for a good relationship or job. You’ll reach the next phase of desire (a promotion; an achievement; a disagreement; a challenge to your authority; a marriage; another child) and you won’t be able to endure the pain of that unfulfilled desire without again lapsing into vice to distract yourself from the pain of hope.
The Theological Virtue of Hope
The theological virtue of hope pertains specifically to our hope for eternal happiness (i.e. union/conformity with God). In a preliminary sense, hope inspires us to desire union with God’s Church and the partaking of His sacraments. In its proper sense, however, the inescapability of hope stays with us throughout this life as we can’t but wait on the prospect of heaven in the next life. We can’t have heaven in this life—so as long as we are alive here on earth, we are subject to the pain and difficulty of hope.
Will we be found ready for heaven at our death? Will the light of grace be alive in us when this life ends? Will we persevere in our faith until the end?
We have the assurance of God that He desires to bring us to this end, but then is the theological virtue of hope not painful? Is it not subject to despair or presumption as well? Is it not perfected just like faith and love are perfected?
Of course it is, to all of those things. But God’s assurance……
So what’s difficult about it?
The Difficulty of Theological Hope
Imagine living in a time where it’s very hard to hold on to your faith. Imagine living in a time where there is a persistent subcurrent of fear with you at all times that you could be expelled from society; that you could lose your job; that you could be brandished with an irredeemable reputation. Imagine living in a time where pressure against the faith was so hostile that holding to the faith endangered your family, your job, your reputation, potentially even your life.
Now realize that we live in that time today—and also that this time, in one form or another, sometimes worse than others, undoubtedly, has been with us from the beginning of Christianity.
Is it so hard to imagine that you might defect from the faith? That you might re-crucify Christ? That you might offer incense up to false idols to protect your name/job/family/life?
Is it so hard to imagine that you might find yourself too weak to not give in to despair or presumption?
Despair: that in truth, persistence in the faith is impossible for us.
Presumption: that we don’t have to worry, no matter what we’re good to go as long as we say Jesus is Lord.
“Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” (Mt. 7:21)
Faith places a demand on us. Anyone who has understood the requirements for a valid confession and given themselves over to the habit of confession knows this. You cannot validly confess a sin that you do not resolve to stop doing. That means that confession comes with a burden: you must change. When you face a crossroad in your life, you can’t just offer up incense to idols, escape persecution from the secular/atheist world we live in, and be good to go. Even if you confess to having given in to such idolatry, to selling out your faith or your fellow Christian, you have to reform your life and make restitution for your wrong if you are to be restored to grace.
That terrifies me.
How easy it would be for me to defect from the faith—at first, ever so subtly, and then over time, totally—having convinced myself that I have the right and true opinion of what the life of faith entails?
Without the grace of God I have no chance.
The Necessity of Grace
Grace is often referred to as “the divine assistance” in shorthand by the saints. This is precisely what we need to make it through this life with our faith intact—we need the express help of God. We need to call on His help continually. We need to be brought to perfection by him.
If we are going to develop our Theological Virtue of Hope, we must first understand that neither despair, nor presumption, will permit us to do so. We must understand exactly why hope is what it is—a desire for a difficult good—namely, because the thing we are striving after is difficult (no, impossible without divine assistance) to achieve. We have to conform our whole lives over to God—and we have to do it at every crossroad throughout our lives.
Even the prospect of perfecting the virtue of Hope is terrifying to deeply consider.
The Gate is Narrow & the Way is Hard
How many of us can’t even cultivate the natural virtue of hope around things like a desire for a romantic partner, or a good job we want? But eternal blessedness is infinitely greater and infinitely more impossible to achieve on our own… And yet we think we’ll just be good to go?
When you learn about any aspect of the life of faith and it doesn’t encourage you to pray more, to worship God more fervently, to study the truths of God more, to turn to God more, etc., then you have not learned about that aspect of the life of faith in truth. A right understanding of hope should do just that: it should make you see with greater clarity how truly difficult hope is because it’s so painful; that on our own we are hopeless, and as a result it should make you more desperate (i.e. fervent) for the grace of God to come to your assistance and be with you always.
I want the sacraments more; I want the help of God more; I realize more how insufficient I am to grow in the life of grace on my own… “But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace.” (Rom 11:6)
Don’t give in to presumption—as most Christians do.
Don’t give in to despair—as Atheists do.
May the God of all good things bless you and keep you always, until the end. +
“Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” (Mt. 7:13-14)