Hope is God's free gift to us

Hope thrives when darkness threatens

For St Thomas Aquinas Hope is born from the desire for something good that is difficult but possible to attain. He points out that there is no need for Hope if we can easily get what we want, but neither is there any reason to Hope when what we desire is completely beyond our grasp.

 Aquinas also understands that there are far more reasons to be Hopeful when we have friends to rely on, when we are a part of a community of Hope filled believers.   But if the object of our Hope is something we can obtain on our own, then it is not biblical Hope. It will be limited in its power to endure beyond the present moment of need.  According to Aquinas, we do not Hope alone, we Hope together. Hope requires companions, people who earnestly desire to have God’s goodness to flow into our lives, who help us along our way. We are impacted in positive ways when we can experience the way Hope transforms the way they live in the world.

Christian Hope should never be timid, because when Aquinas spoke of help from others and friends we can rely on, he was including the foundational place God has as the one gifting Hope to us. As it is with any of our genuine friends, what God desires for us is our happiness.  He seeks what is best for us.  What God wants for us is the richest and most fulfilling gift of all:  everlasting life in His divine presence.  The best news of all is that in his friendship with us, God walks by our side on this sacred pilgrimage, blessing us, guiding, and encouraging us so that all we could ever hope for will be ours.

Hope drives us towards God

Despite how hard we might try, Hope is not something we achieve through hard work and determination. Hope is above all else, a gift. Hope is the gift God bestows on us so that we can reorient our lives towards Him. Hope drives us to the seeking out of God, and so to grow in divine goodness and love.  Best of all, our hope enables us to live in perfect communion with God. That is the End towards which Hope is directing us.

Christianity expands our horizons because, as the story of God’s saving love and power, as revealed to us in the scripture, all that God offers us is way beyond our capacity to achieve under our own steam. A further aspect of the scope of Christian hope, one that should encourage us, is the way hope is not determined by our own power, the resources we can apply to our lives, our talents, ingenuity, or anything else.  This point cannot be over stressed. Faith in this is something the Evil One would like to erode, encouraging us to believe that salvation is something we can achieve through our own input.  Hope permeates our thoughts, our actions, all we might ponder or strive to achieve when we enfold our lives more fully into God.   God’s love is inexhaustible.  God’s love floods our very souls, transforming us in ways we might not even notice. That reality is what enables us to dare to Hope.

Pope Benedict XVI wrote, The one who has hope lives differently; the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life. These words remind us that hope is not a fleeting emotion.  Nor is it an attitude that fades when life grows hard, complicated.   Hope makes us resilient in the darkest of moments by filling us with trust, confidence and perseverance. Hope empowers us to live differently because a Christian understanding of hope is rooted in the unshakable conviction that God loves us and God desires what is good for us. 

Paul understood this as he highlights in Romans…If God is for us, who can be against us? (8:31). To live with hope is to take those words to heart and to allow that knowledge to change our lives.  And God does surprise us. What God does is prove himself to be trustworthy in terms of the promises he has made.     

What God wants for us is our good

Here is something God has revealed to us: to live in hope is to want nothing less for ourselves other than what God wants for us. If we know that and strive to live according to what God wants for us, then how would our lives change?  At the very least, it would liberate us from the fruitless pastime of always comparing our status and achievements with others. This is the key: because God is for us and wants our good, we do not have to be anxious and fearful, calculating, and cautious. Hope means we leave those things in the safe and reliable hands of God.  He will deal with them in his way, in his time.

Because Hope frees us from the burden of those earthly pastimes, we then have time to love our neighbours. We have time to be merciful and compassionate, patient and generous. We have time to listen and to encourage and support others, because we know, thanks to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, that what God’s loves has in mind for us will be fulfilled.

Bishop Michael Hough                                   No.3                                                  January 2025