XXIII — HOPING WITHOUT MEASURE

Presence of God. — Sustain, O Lord, my hope, so that I may hope in You without measure.

Meditation

1 — “Man,” teaches St. Thomas, “can never love God as much as He ought to be loved; likewise, we cannot believe in Him and hope in Him as much as He deserves” (I-II, q. 64, a. 4). Therefore one can say that the measure of hoping in God is to hope without measure. Your hope, your trust in God, will never be excessive, never exaggerated, because it rests on God’s mercy, which has no limits. If you humbly seek to do on your part all that you can to please God, you must not fear hoping too much in Him. His helping power, his desire for your good and for your sanctification, infinitely surpass your hopes, however daring they may be. God is so pleased by this blind, unlimited hope in Him that, the more He sees us hope, the more He fills us with his goods: “the more the soul hopes, the more it obtains,” said St. John of the Cross (S. III, 7, 3), and St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus, making this thought her own, exclaims: “One can never have too much confidence in God, who is so powerful and merciful. One obtains from Him as much as one hopes from Him” (St. 12).

The more miserable, weak, and powerless you find yourself, the more cast yourself into hoping in God. If you cannot and must not expect to arrive at holiness by your own strength, you must hope to arrive there by the strength of God, who is omnipotent. You must hope to arrive there by his infinite mercy, which loves to stoop over souls aware of their own weakness, which loves, as Our Lady said, “to exalt the humble and fill the hungry with good things” (cf. Lk. 1:52-53). The experience of your misery will make you understand this, and your soul will expand in hope, in trust in God, and will open itself ever more to his sanctifying action. God’s mercy is ready to descend upon you to purify and sanctify you, but to do so it waits for you to open the doors of your heart by an act of immense confidence.

2 — When a soul strives to apply itself with all good will to the exercise of virtues and to the fulfillment of every duty, when it is resolved to refuse nothing to the Lord, it must maintain itself in an attitude of total trust in Him despite inevitable falls. Yes, you must have an extreme confidence that the Lord will come to sanctify you despite the faults of the past, the miseries of the present, aridities of spirit, repugnances of nature, weariness, and loss of strength.

God loves us not because we are without sin, but because we are his children, because He has infused his grace into us. And you must never do God the wrong of not believing in his pardon, nor become discouraged because of falls that escape you despite your good will. If you become discouraged, it is because you seek perfection not only for God’s glory but also a little for your own satisfaction; it is because you would like to be sure of yourself rather than willing to be sure of God alone. And all this, at bottom, is the fruit of subtle pride. Instead of being dismayed, irritated at your imperfections, acknowledge them humbly; present them to God as the sick man presents his wounds to the physician; ask pardon, and then begin again at once with great confidence. You must learn to make use of your miseries and faults to plead your case, to show God how much you need his help, and to increase your trust in Him. Hope in God is the great anchor of salvation for your poor soul battered by the waves of human frailty. In this sense St. Paul urges you to go forward “sustained by God’s power, who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and the grace granted to us in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 1:8-9). Far from concluding that good works are useless, Christian hope demands from you every possible effort to do good and flee evil; but then it launches you far beyond your poor works, it launches you into God, into his infinite mercy.

Colloquy

“O Jesus, how can a soul so imperfect as mine aspire to holiness, to the fullness of love? What mystery is this? And why, my only Friend, do You not reserve these immense desires for great souls, for the eagles that soar to the highest heights? You know it: I am only a little bird, scarcely covered with light down. I am not an eagle, and of the eagle I have only the eye and the heart because, despite my extreme weakness, I dare to fix my gaze on the divine Sun of love. I would like to fly toward this shining Sun, I would like to rise up there to the divine hearth of the Most Holy Trinity. But the only thing I can do is raise my little wings; it is not in my power to lift myself to those heights. What will become of me? Shall I perhaps die of sorrow at the sight of my impotence? Oh no, I will not be distressed at all! With bold abandonment I want to remain here, fixing my gaze until death on my divine Sun. Nothing will frighten me, neither wind nor rain. If thick clouds come to hide the Star of love from me, if it seems to me that I can believe in nothing but the night of this life, then it will be the moment of perfect joy, the moment to push my confidence to its utmost limits, taking care not to change place, knowing that beyond these sad clouds my sweet Sun continues to shine. And if You remain deaf to the lamenting cry of your weak creature, if You remain veiled, well then, I consent to remain drenched, I accept remaining numb with cold, and I still rejoice in this suffering that I have deserved. Yes, O my beloved Star, I am happy to feel myself little and weak in your presence!... One day, O Jesus, I hope, You will swoop down upon me, carrying me to the hearth of love, and at last immerse me in that burning abyss” (cf. T.B.G. St. 11).