In the immanence of the celebration of our Lord’s nativity, we stand expectantly, “awaiting our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13; from the Epistle of Midnight Mass). Christ is both the object of our hope and its source, enkindling within our hearts the fire of love and affording our lives “a new horizon and a decisive direction.”[1] As believers in Christ we are, therefore, defined by hope. St Paul warns the Christian not to “grieve as others do who have no hope” (1 Thes 4:13). St Peter urges the believer to “be prepared to make a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15). In speaking of hope in these terms, we are within the realm of the theological virtue. But before hope was ever revealed to the mind of man as a virtue, it was recognised as a passion essential to human striving.
Hope as a Passion
As human persons we cannot live without hope. Hope is foundational for our aspirations: our striving for goods and perseverance in the face of difficulties. As a passion inherent to our human nature, hope keeps its eyes focused on the object of desire. This object, according to Aquinas, is “a future good, difficult but possible to obtain.”[2] From this simple definition we discern essential properties of hope as passion. (1) Hope is ordered towards a good. One does not hope for a perceived evil, but aspires to an object of desire that perfects us. (2) Hope is directed towards an object not yet enjoyed. One does not hope for a good already possessed but delights in it. (3) Hope seeks something that is difficult to obtain. There is no striving involved in pursuing an easily possessed good. It is the arduous nature of the desired good which defines hope as an irascible passion, (differing from the passion of desire, which, as a concupiscible passion, concerns the future good absolutely). (4) Though difficult, the object of hope is possible to obtain. Hope does not strive for the impossible. A future impossible good is the object of hope’s contrary: the passion of despair. [3] Accordingly, Bernard Schumacher writes that “the act of hope implies at least some degree of certainty, a real possibility, accompanied by a trust that one will obtain one’s object. We do not hope for something we know ahead of time we will not be able to possess. Nevertheless, hope also implies a certain leap into the void, insofar as the subject does not know for sure he will really attain the good in question.”[4]
As constitutive of human striving, there is something visceral about the passion of hope. We strain forward ‘with restless heart’ towards the apprehended good.[5] However, precisely as a human passion, hope is also and by necessity bound by reason. The strivings of a restless heart do not coincide with wishful thinking, nor is hope the stuff of dreams. As Robert Miner writes: “Deprived of rational governance, hope is bound to degenerate into illusion.”[6] Rather, it is based on reality, and is thus subject to rationality. Thus, as opposed to the Stoic solution, which, supposing passions to be irrational, advocates their total suppression, Aquinas proposes passions “moderated by reason” as more fitting to the human good.[7]
In this process of reason-guided striving, one can identify several points at which reason is required in discerning the object of hope: to recognize goods with the aid of prudence, to determine likelihoods and possibilities, and thus to differentiate between true and false hopes. The formation of hope will also reasonably take into account the means by which a hoped-for good is possible. Aquinas differentiates two ways: by one’s own power, or by relying on someone else.[8] In the second case, one hopes with an expectation of receiving help from another. This idea that one’s hope may exist in another has special relevance to the theological virtue of hope to which we can now turn.
The Theological Virtue of Hope
Josef Pieper famously writes: “It would never occur to a philosopher, unless he were also a Christian theologian, to describe hope as a virtue. For hope is either a theological virtue or not a virtue at all.”[9] Unlike the cardinal virtues, hope is not a virtue that is natural to the human person. Nor can it be obtained through practice and effort. The virtue of hope, as a theological virtue, can only be received as gift.
The supernatural origins of the theological virtue therefore breaks open the limitations of the aspirations of the passion of hope. However, similarities between the two remain. In explaining hope as virtue, Aquinas builds on the logic of the passion of hope. It is the same term, spes, that is used for both. Both are movements of appetite, the passion of hope belonging to the sensitive appetite, the theological virtue to the intellectual.[10] Both engage the intellect, requiring a cognitive discernment of the future good as attainable. Thus, in determining the intentional object of the theological virtue, Aquinas draws a parallel with the movement of the passion of hope towards a good in the future that is difficult, but possible, to obtain.[11] But here a chasm opens up between the two, for the good to which the theological virtue aims is not just any good, but the supreme Good, God Himself. “Such a good is eternal life,” writes Aquinas, “which consists in the enjoyment of God Himself. For we should hope from Him for nothing less than Himself, since His goodness, whereby He imparts good things to His creature, is no less than His Essence. Therefore the proper and principal object of hope is eternal happiness.”[12]
The theological virtue of hope also differs from its namesake in terms of the means of reaching their respective objects. While the effort and striving that is intrinsic to the passion moves human beings towards their desired end, they are powerless in their efforts to reach God. This is achieved only by “leaning on” God’s help. In this way, the end is proportionate to the means, the effect to its cause, for only an infinite power can lead us to an infinite good.[13] This leaning of God that is constitutive of the theological virtue is the domain of grace.
Hope is, therefore, rooted in faith. It springs forth from an encounter with God who is love (cf. 1 Jn 4:16), which contains within it the promise of a future. “[T]he hope which transcends all hopes,” writes Ratzinger, “is the assurance of being showered with the gift of a great love.”[14] Hope is, therefore, “the certainty that I shall receive that great love that is indestructible and that I am already loved with this love here and now.”[15] Or again, hope is “the certainty that I shall receive that great love that is indestructible and that I am already loved with this love here and now.”[16] In this sense, Ratzinger contends that the very idea of God includes within it human immortality: “For a creature who is looked upon and loved by him who is eternity has thereby a share in eternity.”[17]
Prayer as the School of Hope
If hope stems from communion with God in love, then we can comprehend why within the Christian tradition hope finds expression in prayer. Citing Aquinas, Ratzinger calls prayer the “interpretation” and the “language” of hope[18]; as “hope in execution”.[19] “Those who pray hope in a goodness and in a power that transcends their own capabilities.”[20] In his encyclical Spe salvi, Benedict then speaks of prayer as the school of hope. He draws on the wisdom of Augustine who “defines prayer as an exercise of desire.”[21] Since the end of desire is Love itself, and the human heart left to itself is insufficient to that end, it must be expanded of ‘stretched’ by ‘straining forward’ (cf. Phil 3:13) under the influence of the grace of the theological virtue. “By delaying [his gift], God strengthens our desire; through desire he enlarges our soul and by expanding it he increases its capacity [for receiving him].”[22]
As expressive of hope, prayer is both personal – “an encounter between my intimate self and God, the living God” – and ecclesial – “constantly guided and enlightened by the great prayers of the Church and of the saints, by liturgical prayer, in which the Lord teaches us again and again how to pray properly.”[23] We might identify two ways in which ecclesial prayer fosters or teaches hope: (1) through the orientation of prayer, and (2) through communion with the saints. In the first place, the traditional orientation of liturgical prayer towards the East, in expectation of the risen Lord, is expressive of our hope that Christ will return to lead us to our end.[24] Turning towards the rising sun symbolizes the Risen Christ who comes to us with the gift of eternal life. This orientation of prayer in which all together face the Lord is also an expression of the communal nature of hope. Hope is never merely personal. It is a shared hope. “Hope in a Christian sense is always hope for others as well.” Through our active turning towards the Lord “we keep the world open to God” – and God to the world.[25]
The other dimension of ecclesial hope through prayer is fostered by communion with the saints. As Ratzinger writes, our communion with the saints in prayer is a window through which we “look into God’s eternity”.[26]
“In the world of the saints, with which we come in contact during the liturgical year, the simple, invisible light of God is refracted, as it were, through the prism of our human history so that we can encounter the eternal glory and light of God right here in our human world and in our human brothers and sisters. The saints are, so to speak, our older brothers and sisters in the family of God. They want to take us by the hand and lead us, and their lives tell us: ‘If this person or that could do it, why can’t I?’”[27]
The saints who already live within the beatific vision are, therefore, a concrete realisation of the object of our hope. They show us what is possible. In them, the fragility of our human nature has been transformed by the power of divine Love. Our communion with them in prayer is, therefore, a powerful expression of hope. It is the guarantee that life in Christ is more powerful and more real than death itself. As Ratzinger writes: “communication with God is reality. It is true reality, the really real, more real, even, than death itself.”[28]
According to Christian hope, death cannot separate us from communion with God, because the darkest moment in human history, the Good Friday of Christ’s death, becomes the source of light and life. His cross shatters the monotony of our finite lives, breaking open “the eternal, futile circling around what is always the same, the vain circular motion of endless repetition.”[29] It becomes “the fishhook of God, with which he reels up the entire world to his height.”[30] This irruption of God into human history thus gives new direction to our lives. While the “inescapable linearity of our path towards death”[31] remains, it is transformed, receiving a new destination, going forth “with Christ to the hands of God.”[32]
In the manifestation of God’s love in Christ, therefore, our hope has dawned. And in that hope, says the Apostle, “we were saved” (Rom 8:24). Through the grace of the theological virtue we keep our eyes fixed on the object of our hope. Let us not avert our gaze for nothing.
[1] Benedict XVI, Encyclical Deus caritas est (2005), n. 1.
[2] STh., I–II, q. 40, a. 5.
[3] STh., I–II, q. 40. a. 1.
[4] Bernard N. Schumacher, A Philosophy of Hope: Josef Pieper and the Contemporary Debate on Hope (New York: Fordham University Press, 2003), 75.
[5] Josef Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1997), 100.
[6] Robert Miner, Thomas Aquinas on the Passions: A Study of Summa Theologiae 1a2ae 22–48 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 230.
[7] STh., I–II, q. 24, a. 3.
[8] STh., I–II, q. 40. a. 2.
[9] Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love, 99.
[10] STh., II–II, q. 18, a. 1.
[11] STh., II–II, q. 17, a. 1.
[12] STh., II–II, q. 17, a. 2.
[13] STh., II–II, q. 17, a. 2.
[14] Joseph Ratzinger, “On Hope,” Communio 35 (2008), 303.
[15] Joseph Ratzinger, The Yes of Jesus Christ: Spiritual Exercises in Faith, Hope and Love (New York: Crossroad, 1991), 70.
[16] Ratzinger, The Yes of Jesus Christ, 70.
[17] Joseph Ratzinger, “Beyond Death” in Joseph Ratzinger in Communio, Volume 2: Anthropology and Culture, eds. David L. Schindler and Nicholas J. Healy, 1–16 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), 16.
[18] Ratzinger, The Yes of Jesus Christ, 66. Cf. STh.,II–II, q. 17, a. 4.
[19] Ratzinger, The Yes of Jesus Christ, 67.
[20] Ratzinger, The Yes of Jesus Christ, 67. Following this logic Ratzinger adds: “Those who despair do not pray any more because they no longer hope: those who are sure of themselves and their own power do not pray because they rely only on themselves.”
[21] Benedict XVI, Encyclical Spe salvi (2007), n. 33.
[22] Augustine, In 1 Ioannis 4, 6 (quoted in Spe salvi, n. 33).
[23] Benedict XVI, Spe salvi, n. 34.
[24] Joseph Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2000), 80.
[25] Benedict XVI, Spe salvi, n. 34.
[26] Joseph Ratzinger, Dogma and Preaching: Applying Christian Doctrine to Daily Life, ed. Michael J. Miller (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2011), 362.
[27] Ratzinger, Dogma and Preaching, 362.
[28] Joseph Ratzinger, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life (Washington DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1988), 89.
[29] Joseph Ratzinger, Images of Hope: Meditations on Major Feasts (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2006), 76.
[30] Ratzinger, Images of Hope, 76.
[31] Ratzinger, The Yes of Jesus Christ, 58.
[32] Ratzinger, Images of Hope, 76.