HOPE: A JOURNEY THROUGH THE SCRIPTURES AND HOLY WRITINGS

What is Hope?

What does hope mean? In our common lingo, hope means “I wish, I want, and maybe I will get lucky.” In our common way of speaking,  there is not much assurance it will happen. In fact, in our daily conversations, the word hope is tinged with wishing. But in religious terms, hope is the confident expectation of and longing for the promised blessings of righteousness. The scriptures often speak of hope as anticipation of eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ. 

In the Bible, hope is the assurance that God will fulfill his promises.  It is a certainty, not based on us, but on God.  According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Christian 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 (USCCB, Catechism, 1817).

In stark contrast, imagine utter emptiness and darkness without that hope.  Paul talks about the opposite of hope, before we knew Jesus: 

You were at that time without Christ…strangers to the covenant of promise, without hope and without God in the world. (Eph 2:12)

This helps us to be clear that the reason for our hope is Jesus Christ alone. We can hear the words of the song, “In Christ alone, my hope is found” (Getty and Townend)

Hope has a certainty

Christian hope It is not some wishing or even praying that something comes true.  It IS true.  Our hope is in a Person, and He is real.  Our hope is based on the certainty that it is God Who fulfills His promises. He sent us His Son to save us, and this will not be a wasted act of love.  He will fulfill His promise to save us and give eternal life to those who put their trust in Him.  St. Paul exhorts us in his first letter to Peter 1:3: 

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who in His great mercy gave us a new birth to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

Hope is tied with trust.  It is belief that God will be true to His promises. That depends on His faithfulness, not ours. 

Where do we learn about and restore our hope?

The foundational truths about hope are found in Scriptures and other holy writings. Romans 15:4 gives us a direction for learning about and rebuilding our hope: 

For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. 

In addition, we need to nurture our prayer life, giving ourselves proper time, quiet space, and food for thought. Prayer is how we find and restore our hope.  Through prayer, we make our needs known to God, but even moreso, we listen to Scripture and holy men and women who remind us of the promises of God. St. John of Kronstadt says: “Prayer breathes hope”  (St. John of Kronstadt).

Hope builds anticipation and involves waiting

Even in the definition, the core of Biblical hope is assurance, trust, and certainty. But life is anything but certain. As they say, the only thing in life that is certain is death and taxes. This is why we need hope in our daily life. Hope gives us strength for waiting. St. Paul in Romans 8:24-25 says,

For in this hope we were saved.  But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have?  But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

St. Tertullian says it so beautifully, “Patience is hope with the lamp lit” 

What does hope mean to our daily life?

Hope in Christ is a certainty that Pope Benedict XVI tells us in this exhortation: “Only when the future is certain as a positive reality does it become possible to live the present as well” (Pope Benedict XVI).

The trials of life serve to strengthen us.  St. Paul reminds us in Romans 5:3-5:

Affliction produces endurance, and endurance, proven character, and proven character, hope, and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

Further, St. Basil Cesarea tells us:

Expect tribulation after tribulation, hope upon hope; yet a little while; yet a little while. Thus the Holy Ghost knows how to comfort His nurslings by a promise of the future. After tribulations comes hope, and what we are hoping for is not far off, for let a man name the whole of human life, it is but a tiny interval compared with the endless age which is laid up in our hopes. (St. Basil of Cesarea, 

Paul again exhorts us that we hope for what goes beyond space and time:  “As we look not to what is seen but to what is unseen; for what is seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Cor 4:18).

In conclusion, we have Paul’s prayer for us from Romans 15:13:

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.

References:

Keith Getty and Stuart Townend, In Christ Alone, composed in 2001

Pope Benedict XVI in Spe Salvi, accessed 8-24-2023, https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20071130_spe-salvi.html

St. Basil of Cesarea, in New Advent, accessed 8-24-2023, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3202140.html)

St. John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ, accessed 8-24-2023, https://full-of-grace-and-truth.blogspot.com/2010/03/selected-quotes-of-fathers-on-hope-and.html, accessed 8-24-2023

St. Tertullian, accessed 8-24-2023, https://aleteia.org/2019/11/18/the-churchs-own-wisdom-from-grandpa-is-worth-memorizing/