The Theological Virtue of Hope

Mystical hope offers us an experience of trust that God’s presence, love, and mercy is in and all around us, regardless of circumstances or future outcome. Father Richard Rohr writes of such hope through our anticipation of Jesus’ coming during Advent:

“Come, Lord Jesus,” the Advent mantra, means that all of Christian history has to live out of a kind of deliberate emptiness, a kind of chosen non-fulfillment. Perfect fullness is always to come, and we do not need to demand it now. The theological virtue of hope keeps the field of life wide open and especially open to grace and to a future created by God rather than ourselves. This is exactly what it means to be “awake,” as the Gospel urges us! We can also use other a words for Advent: aware, alive, attentive, alert are all appropriate. Advent is, above all else, a call to full consciousness and also a forewarning about the high price of consciousness.

When we demand—or “hope for”—satisfaction from one another, when we demand any completion to history on our terms, when we demand that our anxiety or dissatisfaction be taken away, saying as it were, “Why weren’t you this for me? Why didn’t life do that for me?” we are refusing to say, “Come, Lord Jesus.” We are refusing to hold out for the full picture that is always still being given by God.

“Why weren’t you this for me? Why didn’t life do that for me?” we are refusing to say, “Come, Lord Jesus.” We are refusing to hold out for the full picture that is always still being given by God.

Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann views hope as trust in what God has done and will do, in spite of evidence to the contrary: 

Hope in gospel faith is not just a vague feeling that things will work out, for it is evident that things will not just work out. Rather, hope is the conviction, against a great deal of data, that God is tenacious and persistent in overcoming the deathliness of the world, that God intends joy and peace. Christians find compelling evidence, in the story of Jesus, that Jesus, with great persistence and great vulnerability, everywhere he went, turned the enmity of society toward a new possibility, turned the sadness of the world toward joy, introduced a new regime where the dead are raised, the lost are found, and the displaced are brought home again. [1]

Richard continues: 

“Come, Lord Jesus” is a leap into the kind of freedom and surrender that is rightly called the virtue of hope. Hope is the patient and trustful willingness to live without full closure, without resolution, and still be content and even happy because our satisfaction is now at another level, and our Source is beyond ourselves. We are able to trust that Christ will come again, just as Christ has come into our past, into our private dilemmas, and into our suffering world. Our Christian past then becomes our Christian prologue, and “Come, Lord Jesus” is not a cry of desperation but an assured shout of cosmic hope.

The Gift of Confidence

Father Richard describes the gift of confidence, which arises not from our ego or efforts, but from the foundational goodness of God. 

When we are confident, we believe in a deep way that life is good, God is good, and humanity is good. We become safe and salutary people for others. We do exciting and imaginative things because we are confident that we are part of a story line that is going somewhere, and we want to be connected to something good. This is what modern secularism cannot offer us.

Theologically speaking, we identify the virtues of faith, hope, and love as participation in the very life of God. We don’t achieve this by will power; we already participate in it by our deepest nature. It is not occasioned by perfect circumstances. In fact, most of the people I know who have great faith or hope live in difficult circumstances.

True confidence is really a blending of both faith and hope. I don’t understand the alchemy of that union, but I know when it is present and when it isn’t. It often feels like something which I have accidentally discovered, something given from nowhere, something that participates in Someone Else’s life. It is of an entirely different nature than natural virtues like temperance or patience, which we gain through practice. I think that is why we pray for hope, wait for it, and believe in it, leaving the ground fallow until it comes. Those who do such things know that it does come and is always given—and all they can do is thank Someone.

The good news is that there is a guide, a kind of inner compass—and it resides within each of us. As the Scriptures put it, “the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Romans 5:5). This Holy Spirit, described in John’s Gospel as an “advocate” (John 14:16), guides all of us from home and toward home. The Holy Spirit is entirely for us, more than we are for ourselves, it seems. She speaks in our favor against the negative voices that judge and condemn us. This gives us all such hope—now we do not have to do life all by ourselves, or even do life perfectly “right.” Our life will be “done unto us,” just as happened with Mary (see Luke 1:38).

Optimism is a natural virtue and a wonderful gift of temperament when things are going well, when we think tomorrow will be better than today. Yet Christian hope has nothing to do with the belief that tomorrow is necessarily going to be better. Jesus seems to be saying that if even one mustard seed is sprouting, or one coin found, or one sheep recovered (see Luke 15)—that is reason enough for a big party! Even a small indicator of God is still an indicator of God—and therefore an indicator of final reason, meaning, and joy. A little bit of God goes a long way. 

Day 6

They said to him, ‘Rabbi, where are you staying?’ He said to them, ‘Come and see.’ John 1.38−39

Jesus of Nazareth,

You met unlikely people in unlikely places

and joined yourself to them in friendship.

May we be like you in this way,

finding friends at crossroads and bus-stops,

in queues and crises, in kindness and curiosity.

Because we, like you,

need the company of others. Amen.

Tuama, Padraig O. Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community . Hymns Ancient & Modern. Kindle Edition.

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