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It seems to
me that Hope is one of the most underrated virtues out there. Possibly because,
for a vast majority of us, it seems like hope is something that is an either-or
situation. Either we have hope, or we don’t. This often-times gives the impression
that Hope isn’t much of a virtue at all. Partially, this is because of the
intangible nature of Hope, its end, after all, is not immediately present to us.
With Faith and Love (or Charity) there is always something tangible before us
to strive towards.
With faith, we know it to be “the
substance of things to be hoped for, the argument for things unseen”; it is the
virtue by which we are able to take as a given the truthfulness of claims—in
virtue of the one who has told us they are true, or in virtue of the
reasonableness of the claim—that have not
been proven to us to be true. With Faith, there is the real and tangible taste
of truth that is involved, somewhat of a growth of a type of knowledge (not in
the sense that Faith is some sort of knowledge, rather that Faith allows us to
operate as if we had knowledge). With Faith, the end—something oftentimes
impossible to grasp—is made manifest to us. Faith literally makes things
tangible to us that otherwise would be intangible, and Love has a similar
effect.
The palpable nature of Love is also
immediately apparent. Love is “to will the good of another”. It has as its end,
always, a tangible and real person—even if that Person is God who often feels
intangible to us at times. Love literally draws us nearer to its end. We seek
to submit our will to the good of the other person, we take on their will
insofar as they will their own good. In this sense, we seek to be like them,
seek to know them, to make the intangible things about them concrete so that we
can more truly will their good. So, Faith and Love both serve to bring us more
readily into the realm of tangibility. However, the fruits of Hope aren’t so
clear.
Hope is “a stretching forth of the
appetite towards an arduous good” (Summa II-II 17.3). It has as its end “a
future good, difficult but possible to obtain” (Summa II-II 17.1). By understanding
this, it is plain to see that Hope does not actually, in and of itself, draw us
towards the end. It simply stretches our appetite towards it. It amplifies our
yearning for the rightly desired end. Contrary to Faith and Love, Hope actually
dissipates as we move towards the end, for as one draws nearer to a difficult end,
he is more aware of the reality that he will achieve it, and the end becomes
less difficult to obtain. When we finally arrive at the end, Hope is no longer
present, for we do not Hope in something that we already have. In other words,
the “hope” is that one day hope will no longer be needed. Hope has a taste of self-defeat
in it, and that is probably why it’s hard for us to cultivate it. So, what can
we learn from all of this?
First off, Faith, Hope, and Love,
all work together. Faith is the “substance of things to be hoped for”, it is
the foundation through which we are able to rightly pursue those things that we
do not have before us. In our pursuit of heaven, we do not start with hope, we
start with Faith. Faith that heaven is meant for us, Faith that Heaven exists,
and faith that the creator of the universe Loves us. This faith allows us to
Hope. It allows our hearts to be stretched, it allows us to yearn for the good
that we have faith in, and when faith is in danger of failing, it helps us to stretch
the limits of what we thought we could go through to keep it. This Hope
inevitably leads to Love. Our hearts are ever stretched, more and more, towards
that future good, difficult but possible to obtain, and we begin to wish not only
that we had the good, but that the good itself would also be made better. We
will it’s good. So, Hope is like the middle ground, it is the steppingstone between
Faith and Love, but it is also the virtue that allows us to experience a foretaste
of the end to be hoped for.
In the past few months, I’ve gone through a
lot of difficulties. It’s my senior year of college, I’ve got a lot of things
on my plate and a lot of unknowns in my future. On my hardest days, I’ve
repeatedly had a particular phrase come to mind: “You were not meant to be fulfilled
here”
”You…were not…meant….to be…fulfilled…here”.
I have Faith that this is true. I
have Faith that I was made for a far greater purpose than this world offers me.
I have Faith that I was made to spend forever with the ineffable creator who has
desired from all eternity to spend forever with me. I have Faith that I was not
made for this world, I was made for Him, I was made to be with Him, and I was
made to be so very deeply Loved by him that no other Love will suffice; and
that truth is hard. It is so, so, so, very hard. That truth means that I must
live this life always yearning for the next, never quite satisfied with what
this world has to offer but yearning nevertheless to be made fully satisfied by
Him who created me; and this is Hope.
In those darkest days, when our
faith is shaken to its core, its heart, and we find it impossible to Love, it
is Hope that sustains us. It is Hope that allows our hearts to be stretched
past the limits of our fickle and human Faith to desire what, at times, seems
almost impossible. It is Hope that makes Faith meaningful and Love possible. For
when we Hope, we are able to experience a foretaste of the joy that we will
experience when we finally are satisfied, and this is how Hope makes the end tangible.
For, unlike Faith and Love, Hope stretches us in our current state of life, it
doesn’t make us wait, it makes the waiting that we already have a joy to
experience.
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