What is so great about hope that it should be called a ‘theological virtue’ by Catholics?
What is so great about hope that it should be called a ‘theological virtue’ by Catholics? Why raise the universal experience of hoping for good weather, for successful exam results, for a good diagnosis after medical testing, or for a parking spot to such lofty heights?
Well, first a distinction needs to be made between the universal kind of hope and the theological kind of hope, even though they are both closely linked.
The experience of hope common to all is always directed to something good to be obtained in the future. Yet its fulfilment is not guaranteed. There is always a risk that it may not come about. The object of hope is, as St Thomas Aquinas tells us, a good which is possible and yet difficult to obtain.
The theological kind of hope shares the same definition and yet does not replace the universal kind of hope. It moves us with the same desire for a future good, difficult but possible to obtain, but raises this desire to God himself, into divine reality. It is focused on God.
Three essential aspects of theological hope make it uniquely distinct from common hope, and these account for the fact that Catholics understand it to be a virtue. A power given to us and exercised by us to fulfil our Christian call to holiness and happiness in God. Theological hope is hope from God, hope for God, and hope in God.
Hope from God
By giving us his Son and his Holy Spirit, the Father opens human hope to new possibilities which were completely unknown and unattainable to us before. He gives us a hope rooted in the knowledge of his love and of his promise to us of life with Him, guaranteed by his gift of redemption in Christ. The capacity to hope in God for new and eternal life in him is itself his gift. It is not something we’re naturally born with. In fact, the only certainty we all experience is the certainty of death. The supernatural certainty infused in us by God at baptism is his promise of new life: this is theological hope. It is the capacity to desire and trust God against all odds, beyond the experience of sin, suffering, and death into the overarching reality of God’s life and love. It is the capacity to return to God after sin, and to keep walking perseveringly with him along the path of life. This supernatural capacity is received from God and strengthened in us every time we receive the sacraments worthily, and every time we turn to God in prayer.
Hope for God
Hope is always directed at something good that will give us happiness: good weather, good results, good food, good health, good friends… Theological hope is directed to God who is goodness itself, in whom we find the ultimate kind of happiness. In exercising theological hope, we hope for God as for our own good, as for our own happiness. He is the object of our desire, the one we long for above all other things. This desire carries us through life’s twists and turns until it is fulfilled in resurrection. We hope for God.
Hope in God
The happiness promised to us by God and set as the object of our theological hope is the enjoyment of God himself! This is impossible for us to obtain on our own strength. We have no claim on it, and we do not deserve it. It is beyond our reach. But God simultaneously creates us with the desire for him and provides the aids we need in the way that is Jesus and in the power that is the Spirit. The living God then enables us to reach our goal and fulfil our hope. Theological hope, then, is both a movement of desire for God and of trust in God: we desire him as our own happiness, and we trust him to grant us our desire. We can experience the help God gives us in attaining our hope through the grace he pours in our life in his word and sacraments, offered in the Church, through the friends he places on our way, through prayer, through life’s events which he directs in his providence, through the example of the saints in heaven and around us. These are some of the countless ways through which the grace of Christ touches us and enables us to continue of our pilgrimage of hope.
Sr. Hyacinthe Defos du Rau, OP is a member of the Dominican Sisters of St. Joseph in Lymington, UK.
