In an individual’s life, it may be difficult to distinguish faith, hope and charity.
Even if we can distinguish them, I don’t believe we can separate them. The believing person also hopes and trusts in God and tries to love God and neighbor. Can a person who hopes and trusts in God not have the gift of faith? Can a person who loves God not have the gift of faith or the virtue of hope?
I cannot imagine how someone could have one of these theological virtues and not, at least in some minimal way, have the other two virtues. Still, there can be great benefit in trying to understand each of the theological virtues as deeply as we can.
Last Advent, I tried to explore just what the virtue of hope adds to our lives as followers of Christ. In doing so, I was struck by the large number of people about whom I heard had crosses in their lives. Perhaps this is due to my age and the advanced age of friends, but I found that some people had crosses that must be great tests of how much a person believes in God’s love and trusts in that love.
Our hope and trust in God ought to be unconditional. There should be no “if.” What I mean is that we are called to trust in God when everything in our lives is going beautifully, and we are equally called to trust in God when nothing in our lives seems to be going well.
When problems increase, and especially when we experience tragedy, we ought to trust in God’s love. It is easy to write these words but not so easy to live them. Probably every reader of this column knows of some person who has experienced tragedy in his or her life. When we meet someone who has experienced tragedy, for example, the death of a child, words fail us. No matter what we say, we know that the words are inadequate.
There are times when the temptation not to believe in God’s love and not to hope and trust in that love can be enormously strong.
One of the reasons that we may not appreciate what a great gift the virtue of hope is might be that we use the word to express everyday desires and wishes. For example, we might say: “I hope it does not rain today.”
The virtue of hope focuses on what is most important. We hope that when we die we will enter paradise. We hope that our salvation will be experienced by us in its fullness beyond the grave.
Hoping and trusting in God’s love for us should also change the way we experience ourselves prior to our death. Hope should free us. It should liberate us to reach out in love toward God and toward others. Hope can change the way we look at just about everything. It can color all of our experiences. It can increase our sense of the giftedness of our lives. What did we do to deserve being created, born or redeemed?
The answer, of course, is that our existence is a gift from God, as is our birth and redemption.
Thinking about God’s gifts, I am reminded of a film with Diane Keaton, Meryl Streep and Hume Cronyn titled “Marvin’s Room.” It was not a very good film, but it had a marvelous line about love.
Keaton, whose character is completely unselfish, and Streep, whose character is totally self-centered and selfish, are Marvin’s daughters. An invalid for 20 years, Marvin is played by Cronyn. Keaton has stayed home to take care of him, while Streep has hardly ever come home. She returns as Marvin nears death.
At one point, Streep says to Keaton: “How could you do it? You have been unselfish for 20 years. I can’t be unselfish for 20 minutes.”
Keaton says, “I can’t believe there has been so much love in my life.”
To that, Streep replies, “Of course Dad loves you after all you’ve done for him.”
Keaton says, “That’s not what I mean. I mean I can’t believe that I have been able to love so much.”
The capacity to love is a gift. So is the capacity to hope.
None of us can know in advance what crosses we might have to bear in life. God’s gift of the virtue of hope can enable us to place our trust in God no matter what happens.[hr] Father Robert Lauder, a priest of the Diocese of Brooklyn and philosophy professor at St. John’s University, Jamaica, writes a weekly column for the Catholic Press.