The superpower from God that we all need right now

Q: Archbishop J, what is hope?

Hope is often confused with optimism. One is a divine gift and the other a human trait. Optimism is the belief that things will get better and better as we go along. Hope expresses the belief that even if things do not get better, we can still trust God as the source of our hope.

When people are optimistic and things get worse, they despair. Their picture of reality is challenged in a fundamental way when things do not get better and better.

The modern person has bought the myth of progress—that things will get better and better with time. During my life this has been more or less true in economics and many areas of human life.

In Trinidad and Tobago, we had an unprecedented run of good fortune with economic growth and development based on the oil and gas economy growing consistently till recently. Now we will see a different configuration of the economy as oil and gas wane. We will also see crime, corruption and indiscipline creating significant challenges to our beautiful twin-island Republic.

Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit. (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1817).

In its definition of hope, the Catechism outlines three main points.

Hope is: (1) a theological virtue (2) that reorients our desire towards Heaven and God (3) and moves our reliance from ourselves to God.

For spiritual life, these are three important and I dare say vital elements of healthy spirituality.

Theological virtue

Hope is a theological virtue. What does this mean? It means that it is not part of our human faculty that we can grow or build it like a muscle. It is from God and given by God to assist the Christian reach perfection.

Think of theological virtues as superpowers given by God to help us to salvation. The New Advent Catholic Encyclopaedia says these virtues are theological because:

• they have God for their immediate and proper object;
• they are Divinely infused;
• they are known only through Divine Revelation.

This is important. The theological virtues of faith, hope and love are superpowers given by God to the Christian because we need them. These are not optional extras; these are standard operating equipment that each Christian needs.

Without grace to infuse and revelation to understand, we cannot speak of the three theological virtues impacting the life of the human. There are human virtues that we all have.

Theological virtues are different. They point us to God, they are given by God, and they are revealed by God. The theological virtues of faith, hope and love are essential to our life in Christ.

Desire for God

Look at the definition of hope again. It states: “Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness.”

Be honest now with yourself. What are your real desires? What floats up in your mind and heart when you are unguarded or idle?

Now you understand why we pray for the virtue of hope. It does not come to us naturally; it is a gift from God that is infused in the soul of the disciple.

From the moment of the Fall, our desires changed (Gen 3:16). Our desires moved from God to each other, food, and self. The tradition names this as the triple concupiscence—the tendency of humans to sin.

The letter of St John said:  “For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever” (1 Jn 2:16-17).

The three ways we sin—lust of the flesh—all the sexual and bodily desires, lust of the eyes—the allurement of the world for wealth, power, and prestige. And pride of life—the subtle and not so subtle ways we put ourselves in the centre of all things above others and above God.

Without hope, we cannot cure this ancient disease that ravages us from inside our hearts. We cannot, by our own free will, move our desires from these three to God.

It is hope that reorients our desires to God.

Look at the way we have built a culture on every form of lust. We have glorified lust as the highest good in contemporary Trinidad and Tobago. The vulgarity, crime, corruption, lifestyle, the way we treat each other is largely built on a culture of sin and depravity. Our desires are for all the wrong things—wealth, power, pleasure, prestige. St Augustine said it well when he said, “Our hearts are restless oh God until they rest in thee.”

To move our nation from where we are now, to where God intends us to be, we need the virtue of hope. It is hope that reorients our desires to God. This is the single greatest need of the Christian in our nation today. We cannot do this on our own. Only if we become pilgrims of hope, can we become a better family, Church community, better nation, and a better self.

Hope is the superpower that we all need right now if we are to move our desires from what is wreaking havoc in our life, towards the person God is inviting us to become.

Reliance on God

The third aspect of hope is also critical for our age. Moving our reliance from ourselves to God is vital for the Christian life. There is an old heresy—Pelagianism—which teaches we can pull ourselves up by our efforts towards salvation. At the heart of the Christian mystery is that we need God. Without God, there is no possible way to salvation.

In modernity, we have learnt self-reliance so well that it sometimes hinders our pathway to salvation. Moving our reliance from our self to God is vital for the spiritual, moral, and psychological journey. This too is a grace from God.

Only when our gaze, our desires, and our reliance shift to God, can we find the pathway to authentic spirituality, deep inner transformation and ultimately holiness. For this we need the Holy Spirit to give us the grace we need to become people of Hope.

Key Message:

Hope does not disappoint. It is a theological virtue, which gives us the desire for God and moves our reliance towards the divine.

Action Step:

Pray for the theological virtue of hope. Look at the various parts of your life and ask the Holy Spirit for the virtue that only God can give.

Scripture Reading:

Romans 15:13