HOPE.
THE First Commandment bids us hope as well as believe in God. Our trust
and confidence in His mercy to give us eternal life and the means to
obtain it,--this is our hope, founded on our belief that God is what He
reveals Himself to us, able and willing to do by us as we would have
Him do. Hope is the flower of our faith; faith is the substance of the
things we hope for.
To desire and to hope are not one and the same thing. We may long for
what is impossible of obtaining, while hope always supposes this
possibility, better, a probability, nay, even a moral certitude. This
expectation remains hope until it comes to the fruition of the things
hoped for.
The desire of general happiness is anchored in the human heart, deep
down in the very essence of our being. We all desire to be happy, We
may be free in many things; in this we are not free. We must have
happiness, greater than the present, happiness of one kind or another,
real or apparent. We may have different notions of this happiness; we
desire it according to our notions. Life itself is one, long, painful,
unsatisfied desire.
When that desire is centered in God and the soul's salvation, it
incontinently becomes hope, for then we have real beatitude before us,
and all may obtain it. It can be true hope only when founded on faith.
Not only is hope easy, natural, necessary, but it is essential to life.
It is the mainspring of all activity. It keeps all things moving, and
without it life would not be worth living. If men did not think they
could get what they are striving after, they would sit down, fold their
arms, let the world move, but they wouldn't.
Especially is Christian hope absolutely necessary for the leading of a
Christian life, and no man would take upon himself that burden, if he
did not confidently expect a crown of glory beyond, sufficient to repay
him for all the things endured here below for conscience's sake. Hope
is a star that beckons us on to renewed effort, a vision of the goal
that animates and invigorates us; it is also a soothing balm to the
wounds we receive in the struggle.
To be without this hope is the lowest level to which man may descend.
St. Paul uses the term "men without hope" as the most stinging reproach
he could inflict upon the dissolute pagans.
To have abandoned hope is a terrible misfortune--despair. This must not
be confounded with an involuntary perturbation, a mere instinctive
dread, a phantasmagoric illusion that involves no part of the will. It
is not even an excessive fear that goes by the name of pusillanimity.
It is a cool judgment like that of Cain: "My sin is too great that I
should expect forgiveness."
He who despairs, loses sight of God's mercy and sees only His stern,
rigorous justice. After hatred of God, this is perhaps the greatest
injury man can do to his Master, who is Love. There has always been
more of mercy than of justice in His dealings with men. We might say of
Him that He is all mercy in this world, to be all justice in the next.
Therefore while there is life, there is hope.
The next abomination is to hope, but to place our supreme happiness in
that which should not be the object of our hope. Men live for
pleasures, riches, and honors, as though these things were worthy of
our highest aspirations, as though they could satisfy the unappeasable
appetite of man for happiness. Greater folly than this can no man be
guilty of. He takes the dross for the pure gold, the phantom for the
reality. Few men theoretically belong to this class; practically it has
the vast majority.
The presumptuous are those who hope to obtain the prize and do nothing
to deserve it. He who would hope to fly without wings, to walk without
feet, to live without air or food would be less a fool than he who
hopes to save his soul without fulfiling the conditions laid down by
Him who made us. There is no wages without service, no reward without
merit, no crown without a cross.
This fellow's mistake is to bank too much on God's mercy, leaving His
justice out of the bargain altogether. Yet God is one as well as the
other, and both equally. The offense to God consists in making Him a
being without any backbone, so to speak, a soft, incapable judge, whose
pity degenerates into weakness. And certainly it is a serious offense.
No, hope should be sensible and reasonable. It must keep the middle
between two extremes. The measure of our hope should reasonably be the
measure of our efforts, for he who wishes the end wishes the means. Of
course God will make due allowances for our frailties, but that is His
business, not ours; and we have no right to say just how far that mercy
will go. Even though we lead the lives of saints, we shall stand in
need of much mercy. Prudence tells us to do all things as though it all
depended upon us alone; then God will make up for the deficiencies.