Chapter 4. The Virtue of Hope

Tkc God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, thai you may abound in hope and in the power of the Holy Ghost. ROMANS xv. 13.

A3 reason is a gift of G-od in the order of nature, BO faith is a gift of God in the order of grace; and as the order of grace is higher and better than the order of nature, so faith is higher and better than any natural gift. Both reason and faith may be lost. But it were better far to lose even our natural life than to lose our supernatural faith. The Council of Trent, in its decree on faith, says that it is " Radix et fundainentum omnis justificationis"* — the root and the foundation of the whole of our justification; that is, of our union with God, or our sanctification in this world, and of our salvation in the next. The Council of Trent, in these words, distinguishes the root from the foundation, because a foundation contributes only support: it contributes no life to what rests on it; but a root is not only the foundation of the tree, it is also the productive principle from which it springs. It is as the acorn to the oak. It contains and produces the tree that springs from it. In like manner, faith produces hope and charity, from which, our justification springs. Faith is therefore the root of our whole salvation. * ConcL. Trid. sees. vi. cap. viii.

Now in these words to the Romans Saint Paul sa^s that God is the God of hope. Hope is so great a grace that he gives the name and title of Hope to God Himself, and that because He is the object of our hope. God is our hope, because He is our bliss. It is blisa that we hope for. Again, God is the giver of oui hope, because hope also is a gift of the Holy Ghost. Moreover, God is the support of our hope, because it is by His love, and His strength, and His grace that the hope which He inspires into us is nourished and sustained. God is also the motive of our hope, because of His infinite love. Therefore he says, "The God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in belie v ing" — for peace and joy are the fruits of hope, as hope is the fruit of faith — "that you may abound in hope," that you may be filled and pervaded and penetrated with hope, " and in the power of the Holy Ghost."

JSTow hope is the second of the three theological virtues or powers infused into the soul. It is a virtue which bestows on us a confidence of attaining, by the grace of God, to future bliss, and of receiving from God all the helps that are necessary to attain that future bliss. The object of hope, then, is the goodness and grace of God.

We will look a little more closely, first of all, into what hope is; next, consider what are its fruits; and then what are the contraries and opposites of hope.

I. Hope, then, is a gift of the Holy Ghost which produces in the soul two things. The one is a desire after God, and the other is a trust in God. And hope itself is produced in this manner. The light of faith illuminates the whole reason, and thence tho whole goal, with the knowledge of God, of His existence, of His perfections, of His glory, of His beauty, and of His sweetness. It reveals to the reason, and through the reason to the whole soul, that God created us for Himself, that He made us that we might know Him, love Him, serve Him, and worship Him in this world and in eternity, and that thereby we may become beatified or blessed in Him. Faith therefore illuminates us to know that God is the end for which we were made, and that if we live for anything below God or out of God we fail of the end of our creation. And faith shows us not this only, but that God alone is the adequate end of the human soul; that money, wealth, pleasure, friendship, the whole world, is too small to fill the capacity of the soul; that the soul of man, made in the image of God, has a likeness of the immensity of God Himself, and that nothing is adequate to fill it — to fill his intellect, and his heart, and his mind — but God only Who made him; and that unless he corresponds with the original to the likeness of which he was made, he can never be satisfied. There will be a hunger and thirst which nothing can satiate or slake in time or in eternity. And as God is the only adequate end of man, He is the only end for which man can live without being degraded. If a man lives for this world, or for pleasure, or for money, or for honor, or for the science of this world, whatsoever end below God he live for, the rfoul in that proportion is lowered and debased. It ifl changed into the likeness of creatures, and thereby deprived of the likeness of the Creator. But the sou) that is united with God, and lives for God, is elevated and conformed to the perfect original of which it is the image. And, further, God is the only end that can beatify or satisfy the soul with bliss. Everything below God is mutable, imperfect, full of change and of vicissitude. God, and God alone, is immutable in His bliss, and He beatifies immutably all those who are united with Him. All other things, sweet as they may be, precious as we count them, happy as we may be in them for a time, all must change and pass away. God alone is changeless, because God alone is eternal; and if we live for any end that is not changeless and eternal, we shall be disappointed of our hope. When the soul is once illuminated with these truths, there springs up a hunger and a thirst to which neither the hunger nor the thirst of the body is for its intensity to be compared. The body hungers and thirsts for its natural food; the soul after God, "Who is the breath of its life, its sole and only sustenance. Its desire becomes more and more intense as God is more and more known and appreciated. We hope, therefore, to attain our chief good, and we hope for all the means and helps whereby we may attain to the love, and the knowledge, and the worship, and the joy, and the peace of God hereafter. Both the end and the means, therefore, are the objects of hope.

The other motive of hope is a trust in God springing from experience. As we come to know Him, we come to appreciate His character. In the measure in which we know by experience that God is charity, and sanctity, and pity, and goodness, and fidelity, we grow to trust Him with a personal confidence, as of heart frith heart. Saint Augustine says that it is out of oui own heart that we Mieve in the heart of a friend, foi it is by faith that we love one another. It is not bf looking on the countenance of a friend, for the countenance may beam upon us, and we may trust it, but the heart may be false and far off. That which we trust, and on which we rest our hope, is the heart which we have never seen. We know it only by a sort of intuition of faith, by which we penetrate beyond that which we do. see. So it is with God. Though He is invisible, yet this hunger and thirst of the soul, illuminated by faith, reaches to the heart of God, and trusts in it. We rest upon the goodness and upon the love of God, not only as the great ruler of the universe, but upon His personal goodness to ourselves, one by one, as a friend and a father. And still more than this. From this trust in God springs up an experience of His goodness. Just as with a friend you may be thoroughly persuaded of his love for you before you have ever made trial of it by experience, nevertheless, as year after year goes on, you come to know by his unvarying conduct that what he says he is, and that what he does for you springs from his unchanging love > from this you gain an experience of his character higher and surer than all intellectual conviction. It is this that Saint Paul means when he says, speaking of our Divine Lord, " I know Whom I have believed/'* I know His character, His conduct, His heart; I have made trial of Him, " and I am sure that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him," that is, myself and my salvation, " unto that day"f — the day of Bis coming. All our lives, then, we are making trial by experience of the goodness of God. Ton • 2 Tim i. 12 f IU have known it from your childhood. You have known it by the manifold and multiplied indications of His love to you in every period of your life, by the care with which He has watched over you, by all the operations of grace whereby He has guided you, all the absolutions He has bestowed upon you, by the peace He has shed abroad in your heart, by the help He has given you in temptation, by the consolations that have come down upon you like showers in the time of your sorrow and desolation of heart. All this has taught you to know Him, and to say out of the depth of your own experience what the Psalmist said, " I believe that I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living;"* and again when he said, " Taste and see that the Lord is sweet. Blessed is the man that hopeth in Him;"f " How great is the multitude of Thy sweetness, which Thou hast hidden for them that fear Thee."J Such, then, is the nature of hope.

II. Now what are its fruits? Just as faith bears hope and charity like two fruitful branches, so both hope and charity bear again a multitude of fruits. The first fruit of hope is an appreciation of God. You know that we are all bound, if we would enter into life eternal, to love God above all things. But that love oi God does not mean the love of our emotions, or the sensible love which we feel towards human friends — it does not mean this, because this cannot be commanded. But the love of appreciation means the love of the reason, the conscience, and the will. We know by the light of faith, and we have made trial by the experience of hope, that God is good and sweet above alJ * Pa.xxvi 13. f Ib. raiii. 9. $ Ib xix. 20 things, and that it were better for us to lav down oui lives than to lose God. When Judas appraised our Lord at thirty pieces of silver, he was but an example oi what all men do who do not love God above all things. They sell God for the world, for a little gold or for baubles. They are continually showing that they set small price on the Eternal God. But those who leani by hope and by trust to know what God is, prize Him as they know Him and as they have found Him by experience, and therefore above all other tilings.

And, next, where there is this appreciation there is a great fear of losing God, a holy fear lest we should come short of our union with God in eternity. Just in proportion as we hope for the bliss of God, in that proportion also we have the fear of losing God, which, like a shadow following the substance, is inseparable from it. The more truly we prize anything, the more we fear to lose it; and the fear we have of losing anything may be taken as the measure of the price we set upon it. If we love a friend greatly, in that measure we fear t< lose him. We may take that fear as the measure of the love we bear him. And therefore the holy fear of losing God springs up straightway from our appreciation of God. What is the pain of loss, which is a pain more keen than the pain of sense even in souls that are lost eternally, but the appreciation of God which comes too late, when salvation is lost for ever, and when union with God can no more be attained? From this holy fear springs humility; that is, the consciousness of what we are. It shows us our entire dependence upon God. In ourselves we are nothing and can do nothing. Unless He sustain us we cannot stand, and unless we etand we can never persevere. We are as unstable as the perpetual shifting of the wind and the restless undulation of the water. We are never in one stay. Saint Paul says, u I know that in me," that is, in my flesh, " there dwelleth no good thing, for that which I would I do not, and that I would not, that I do."* Then, from humility comes strength, which can spring from nothing but hope. We never attempt things that we know to be impossible. If we came face to face with a perpendicular cliff, no man who has not lost his reason would try to scale it; but if we come to the foot of a mountain, howsoever high and steep it may be, we know that we can scale it, if only we will to put out our strength and persevere. Our salvation is not bar red by any cliff, because the Precious Blood of Jesu? has made our way plain; but it is like the mountain which is both precipitous and steep. To scale it needs patient effort and strong perseverance. And where there is hope, which springs from the consciousness that all things are possible, there will come strength at all hours to accomplish our task. In warfare, men will fight as long as there is hope of victory; in the instant in which they fail of hope their weapons drop from their hands; and even when in flight before the enemy, men have strength to fly as long as there is hope of escape, but, when the hope of escape is lost, they cast themselves upon the ground; and as a man swimming for life will strike out strongly so long as there is hope to reach the shore, but will cast up his arms and sink when that hope is gone — so it is in working out our * Bom. vii. 18, 19 salvation. When Saint Paul says, "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling,"* he adds also the motive of unfailing confidence and strength. The hope and the confidence that our salvation is possible is this, " for it is God that worketh in you to will and to do."

III. Lastly, let us see what are the opposites of hope.

1. The first is presumption. As I have said, hope is a sure confidence founded on the goodness and grace of God. Presumption is a confidence founded upon ourselves. When we trust in anything out of and below God, it is a presumptuous confidence. When our Divine Lord was carried to the pinnacle of the temple, and was bid to cast Himself down to prove His Godhead, Satan tempted Him to an act of presumption. He knew the will of His Heavenly Father, and He would not pass beyond the limits of that will. So is it with us. So long as we are in the ways of God, we are safe, because so long we are strong. When we pass over the bounds of that way, both safety and strength depart from us. And the signs of this presumption are many. First of all, if men venture into the occasions of sin, whether it be moral or intellectual danger, it is clear they are trusting to themselves, for they know that the help of God will keep them so long only as they avoid temptation; but if they run into temptation, having no warrant to believe that the help of God will follow them, they are guilty of presumption. When men say, " I can take care of myself; what matter where I go, or what I do, or what I rcr/i, or with whom I live?" — men that so speak and act zi e trusting in themselves, and are deliberately and f^r^ally pui * Phil. ii. 12. 13.

ting from them the help of God. Men who say, " I will repent one day, but not yet. I hope I shall be a better man before I die. I will go on for a while, but I always hope that the day of conversion and repentance will come to me " — such men are presumptuous. They have no warrant so to hope for salvation. And they also who neglect the means of salvation, prayer, and the holy sacraments, with the other helps that arc around us, have no warrant whatever to expect that God will work miracles of grace to save them. If they will not take the way which God has shown them, they can have no other hope to arrive at the end. Those who neglect the holy sacraments, who turn their backs upon confession and communion, and fchink that their salvation may be otherwise obtained, have no warrant whatever to expect that God will fulfill their confidence.

I will give another example, and it is an answer to a question often put to Catholics: " Why do you ask the prayers of the saints? May you not pray to God yourself? May you not go straight to Him?" Certainly we may. But the man who says, " I do not ask for the prayers of others, because I can confide in my own prayers," is self-convicted of presumption. No, let us ask the prayers of all the friends of God upon earth, and of all the saints of God in heaven. They intercede for us. Let us pray for oi\rselves indeed day by day, and that earnestly; but the more prayers that are oif ered up for me, the more I thank God for it; and if all the prayers of the servants of God on earth and in heaven can be obtained by asking them, I will ask them till I die. They who despise these helps are neither humble nor have they the grace of in hope. Such, then, is the first opposite.

2. The other opposite of hope is despair, which grows into desperation. We have already seen that the direct antagonist which destroys faith is infidelity: because infidelity is the proper opposite of faith. Charity and the sanctifying grace of God is lost by any mortal sin whatsoever, whether it be of the flesh or the spirit. But faith and hope can only be lost by their own proper opposites; and as the proper opposite of faith is infidelity, so the proper opposite of hope is desperation. What, then, is desperation? I said before that hope and fear always go together, and that as the one rises the other falls. Kow there are four kinds of fear. There is the holy filial fear of losing God, of which I have spoken before. This sanctifies the soul. It is called a filial fear of God, because it is the fear of sons. It was perfect in our Divine Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. But there is a fear which is called a servile fear, which is the fear of servants, and this, too, is compatible with the love of God and with salvation, because there is a just and legitimate fear of sons, and a just and legitimate fear of servants. But there is a third kind of fear, which is called the fear of slaves — a servile slavish fear of the terrors of hell, a fear of the judgment without hatred of sin, without love of God, without hunger and thirst after Him as our bliss and as our eternal end. It is the fear of which Saint Augustine speaks, when he says that those who fear hell more than they fear sin. show that they neither love God nor hate sin. And then, lastly, there is the fear of devils — the fear of those who believe and tremble — and that diabolical fear is the fear that g\ lerates despair. It is the fear that enters when hope is lost, a fear, accompanied by a sickness and a weariness of God, and this is akin to the seventh deadly sin, called Sloth. From this state of the heart and soul springs enmity against God. When the hope of seeing Him in eternity is lost, there comes a foretaste of the pain of loss, in which men turn against God with the enmity of despair. It is of such we read in the Apocalypse, where Saint John says that those on whom the wrath of God was poured knawed their tongues for pain, and blasphemed the God of heaven.* These, then, are the twc opposites of hope — presumption and despair.

Now let us turn back to the words of Saint Paul: " The God of hope fill you with all peace and joy in believing, that you may abound in hope and the powe/ of the Holy Ghost." The light of Heaven and th% waters that come down to moisten the earth are no? more abundant than is the grace of God in the hearts oi those who are ready to receive it. Open your hearts wide, and they shall be filled. Lift up the empty vessels, and they shall overflow with the presence of the Holy Ghost.

Therefore, dear brethren in Jesus Christ, let our first resolution be this: to hope for God's greatest gifts. Do not be deceived by the false humility of those who eay, " It is not for me to hope to be a saint." You are all called to be saints; you are therefore bound to be saints. Now or hereafter, if you are saved, saints you mufit be. If you are to be perfect in eternity before fche Throne, you must be saints in part and in some * Apoc. xvi. 10.

measure now on earth. Ask, then, for the grt atest gif to of grace. Ask that yonr hearts may be dilated with the love of God; that so you may love God above all things, that you may love Him with your whole heart, your whole mind, and your whole soul, and your whole strength. Be contented with nothing less. " Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His justice."* It is His command. Can you seek for more than this? There is neither humility nor obedience in seeking less. The kingdom of Gou is God Himself. He is His kingdom, and if you have the kingdom of God you have God Himself. In the Lord's Prayer every day we say, " Hallowed be Thy name," that is, may Thy name be sanctified throughout the whole world; " Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." As the angels and saints do Thy will, so may we. May sinful, corrupt, rebellions men, as we are, be converted by Thy grace, and do Thy will on earth as saints and angels do in heaven! They who have the mock humility of asking little thiugs of God, Who is the giver of all great and perfect gifts, show a want of faith in the greatness of His generosity. He has already given His only begotten Son, He has given the Holy Ghost. What greater gifts are there beyond these? Then let us ask for the greatest blessings. Let us ask for them in their perfect fullness. Let us ask for them because Jesus Christ has purchased them for us with His Precious Blood; and if He has paid the price of His Precious Blood to make them ours, will He refuse you when you ask Him for them? Ask for them because He has promised to give them. He has passed His word, He has pledged His »S. Matt, vi.83.

fidelity. " Ask, and you shall receive; seefc, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you."* " Whatsoever you shall ask in prayer believing, you shall receive."t Ask the greatest gifts of God, because in asking them you honor Him. If a son should come to his father and should ask him for some paltry trifling gift, the father would suspect that the heart of the son was mistrustful, and that he did not confide in his paternal love. If we treat friends in this niggardly and ungenerous manner, they resent at once the misconception that we show of their true character by the little things that we can trust them to do for us; but when we ask a friend to do great things for us, he takes it as a proof that we confide in the largeness of his heart. So it is with God. You will remember the servant who, being indolent, folded his talent in a napkin and buried his pound in the earth; and when his master came, what was his excuse? "I knew that thou wert an austere man; " % that is, he added insult to the wrong he had done — he had a mean, unworthy, ungenerous conception of his master's character. There was the real root of his sin. His lord would not have laid to heart the loss of his talent; but he deeply laid to heart this mean conception of his own generosity. Therefore we should hope for the noblest, highest, and largest gifts; hope to be saints; hope for every sort of good; hope that we may see God speedily after departing hence. You know that Purgatory and expiation are before us all. Nevertheless, hope that that expiation may be speedy, and that your entrance into the vision of God may be hastened. And while you hope for the « 8. Matt. vii. 7. f Ib. xri. 22. I S. Luke xix. 21.

greatest things, avoid the least occasions of sin. The man that goes into the occasions of sin shows at once that he does not appreciate God. He puts a mean price upon God; he values God less than a fleeting pleasure or a worthless profit. It shows, too, that he has n* hatred of sin; and a heart that does not hate sin is an unfilial and a servile heart. It is far on the way to an evil heart. Men do not willingly go into the infection of plague, or fever, or pestilence; yet they go boldly into the occasions of sin. " He that loves danger will perish in it." The heart that does not hate sin is a heart that does not hunger and thirst after God. The love of God is not in it. It is an ungenerous heart. If the sins we have committed caused our Divine Redeemer His mental sorrows, His agony in the garden, His passion upon Calvary; and if, after all these, we are willing to venture into the occasions of sin, if we are not willing to choose His life of the Cross in preference to the fair and bright life of the world, our hearts must be unlike to His. He chose these things for us, and we make Him ill returns.

Besides this, learn to know the worst of yourselves. Do not paint your face and attire your heads when you go before God. Learn to know yourselves as yon are in the sight of God. Learn to know that you are His creatures, and therefore that you are but a little dust. The breath of God, and the steadfast exercise of His benevolent will, keep you what you are. You are His creatures. Learn, then, your own unworthiness; your unprofitableness before Him. You are servants of God. The stars shine, for God made them to that end, and the trees drop their fruit, for to that they were created, and the seed that we sow in the field springs into its harvest. But man, created to the image of God, with a reason like the Eternal Son, and having in it the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost, wastes his great gifts, and perishes. The barren fig-tree is our type. But there is a deeper lesson still. Learn to know what we are as sinners in the sight of our Redeemer a rid our Sanctifier. Remember, dear brethren, the mortal sins which perhaps stained and blotted your life in boyhood, manhood, middle life, and even in the drawing on of old age. You know what they are. Remember the crowd and the multitude of venial sins which every day are committed, so numerous, so subtile, so stealthy, that when you kneel down at night to examine your conscience you cannot fix upon a tenth part of them. Remember the sins of omission you have committed all your life. How you have broken the first commandment, which commands you to have no other god but God alone; and yet you have made idols of the world, and of pleasures, and of vanities, and of friends, and of yourselves. You worship and serve yourselves more than God; and yet that commandment obliges you to know and to love God above all. What else shall I say? Take the sum of the graces that God has bestowed upon you on the one side, and the multitude of sins that you have committed against God on the other, multiply them together, and you will know your debt before God. And when you have come to know your state, so as to be perhaps almost tempted to despair, and to say that it must be impossible for you to be saved, cast yourselves with your whole weight upon the eternal and changeless goodness of God in Jes.is Christ. When your sins are upon you as black clouds, or glaring is crimson, s) that you are almost driven from your hope, cast yourself into the fountain of the most Precious Blood of Jesus Christ. When your temptations, and your miseries, and the remnants of your past sins, and of your spiritual maladies, cling to you with the tenacity of a shadow, so that you are never at rest, cast yourself into the furnace of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The fire of that Divine Heart will consume them as the dross. They will disappear before Him, and they will have no power to harm.

Hear the words of the Holy Ghost, and hope in Him: " Casting all your care upon Him, for He hath care of you."¹ " When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee, and the rivers shall not overflow. When thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not b<5 burnt, and the flames shall not burn in thee."f In thu midst of all temptations, remember the words of our Divine Master when the Apostle thrice besought him to deli ver him from the minister of Satan who buffeted him; the answer came, " My grace is sufficient for thee, for My strength is perfected in weakness." J Put, therefore, your trust in the Sacred Heart which was pierced for us, and say to our Divine Lord in your prayers every day, " Thou wilt keep peace, because we have hoped in Thee."§ Lord, I trust in Thee that Thou wilt keep me, that Thou wilt be round about me. "Like the mountains round about Jerusalem, so is the Lord round about His people." | Thou wilt keep me in perfect peace — not only in peace, but in perfect peace — peace

< Q TV^T v 7. + Isaias xliii. 2. \ 2 Cor. xii. 9.

with God, peace with men, peace with myself, peace in time, peace for eternity — perfect peace — in the peace that passeth all understanding."* But our minds must be ''stayed on Thee;" that is, our whole intellect by the light of faith, and our whole heart by the grace of hope, must rest on Thee. Our mind is stayed on Thee, because it trusteth in Thee; it trusts because it loves, and it loves because it knows. We stay ourselves on Thee because we have had experience and trial of Thy love.

Therefore, " be careful for nothing, but in all things, in supplication and thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God."f Say to Him, " Lord, I have hoped in Thee, and I know thit neither in life, nor in death, nor in eternity, shall I ever be confounded."

» Phil. iT. 7. f Ib. iT. ft.

Footnotes

1. Igaias xxvi <i j Ps. cxxiv. 2. ↩