Hope
17. The Virtue of Hope
1. Hope is the theological virtue by which we aspire with confidence to grace and heaven, trusting God, and being resolved to use his help.
2. Hope looks directly to our eternal happiness. It is the reaching after good, and, in last analysis, after the supreme good, that is, God. Now, in reaching after God, we also reach for what the possession of God will give us, that is, eternal happiness.
3. Hope, in the strict sense of the word, is in a person and for himself. Hope is for a good not to come automatically, and indeed not easy to attain, which the person hoping seeks, if possible, to achieve for himself. Hence, properly speaking, we cannot hope for another; we can only wish others well. But, since love unites those who have it, a person may be said to hope for his beloved as for himself; in this sense it is possible for one person to hope on behalf of another.
4. We pin our hope on God, not man. We may indeed have hope in a creature as the instrument of divine providence in our behalf. In this way, for example, we hope in the saints.
5. Hope directs the efforts of man to God and eternal happiness in God. Hence, hope is a theological virtue. (The Greek word theos means God; from theos we have the word theological for whatever directly pertains or has reference to God.)
6. Faith makes us adhere to God as the source of truth; hope makes us adhere to God as the source of good; charity makes us adhere to God for his own sake. Hence, it appears that hope is a virtue distinct from the other two theological virtues.
7. Hope comes after faith inasmuch as faith gives knowledge of what is to be hoped for.
8. Hope precedes charity inasmuch as the hope of good engenders love of it. Yet when love is stirred for what was hoped for-perhaps, up to that point, out of fear or self-interest-it gives hope a perfection; hope from then on is newly perfect; in this sense charity precedes perfected hope.
18. The Subject of Hope
1. Hope belongs to the order of appetency, not merely to the order of knowing. It is a striving for something. Now, it cannot be in the sense appetites, for hope as a theological virtue strives for the divine good, and the senses know nothing of this. Hence, hope belongs to the order of intellectual appetency, that is, it belongs to the will. Therefore, the proper subject of hope is the will. We recall, as we have done many times, that the subject of anything is that in which the thing is properly said to reside, or by which the thing is possessed.
2. As we noticed elsewhere in our study, the virtue of hope is fulfilled in heaven. It is supplanted by the vision of God. When that which is hoped for is attained, the hope for it no longer exists. Hence, in heaven, hope does not exist.
3. The angels and the blessed souls in heaven have nothing further to hope for. But what of the damned? Do they hope for pardon and release? By no means. The damned know perfectly that they have actually and willfully rejected happiness, and they continue to reject it; hence, they do not hope for it. Hope exists only on earth and in purgatory. Man on earth hopes for heaven and the means to get there; souls in purgatory are sure of heaven, but they hope for their moment of being ready to enter it.
4. Our hope for God and heaven gives us assurance-nay, it gives us certainty-that we shall attain what we hope for if we do our part. The certainty of this hope rests on the unfailing goodness and mercy of God, and on his absolute fidelity to his promises.
19. Fear
1. Fear is a shrinking back from evil. Hence, we cannot fear God in himself, for God is infinite goodness. But one is said to fear God in the sense of fearing the evil of being separated from God by sin, and in the sense of fearing to incur his punishments for sin.
2. Fear is called servile fear when it is the dread of punishment alone. It is called filial fear or chaste fear when it is primarily the dread of offending God, our loving father. Between these two types of fear is initial fear, which is properly the beginning of filial fear, and differs from it only as imperfect differs from perfect. There is another type of fear called worldly fear which is the dread of losing temporal things to which the heart clings as to the ultimate good.
3. Worldly fear is always evil, for it discounts God and eternity, and dreads only the loss of creatural goods.
4. Servile fear is not good in point of its servility, but it is good inasmuch as it recognizes and dreads the evil that attends upon sin. From such a dread a person may readily rise to the higher and noble type of fear, and through this, to charity and repentance.
5. However, servile fear is essentially different from filial fear. Servile fear dreads punishment; filial fear dreads offending God. These two types of fear differ in their specific objects, and therefore differ essentially from each other.
6. Yet servile fear, as we have seen, has a good aspect, and, in this respect it comes from the Holy Ghost; but it is not the gift of the Holy Ghost that we call fear. Hence, servile fear, in so far as it is good, can remain in the soul which has charity, that is, which is in the state of sanctifying or habitual grace, and therefore in the friendship and love of God.
7. Wisdom is knowledge of God together with the will to serve him and possess him. Now, the beginning of wisdom itself is faith, for by faith we know God and are directed to him. But the beginning of wisdom, in the sense of what arouses one and stirs one to be wise, is fear. This beginning of wisdom is both servile fear and filial fear; such fear puts spurs to a man, so to speak, and makes him cultivate wisdom. In this sense, "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (Psalm 110).
8. Initial fear is, as we have said, beginning fear. Both servile fear and filial fear may be, in some way, the start of fearing the Lord. Yet initial fear is closer to filial fear than to servile fear; indeed, it is, properly speaking, an imperfect form of filial fear.
9. Filial or chaste fear of the Lord is one of the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost. By it we revere God and avoid what separates us from him.
10. Filial fear increases with charity, for the more one loves God, the more one fears to offend him. Servile fear loses its servility as charity increases, and then, as the nonservile dread of deserved punishments, it decreases in the glow of charity. For charity fixes the soul more and more on God, and thus the thought of self, and even of deserved punishment of oneself, becomes less and less. Besides, the greater one's charity is, the more confident is one's soul of escape from punishment. And thus, finally, the only fear in the charity-filled soul is filial fear.
11. Filial fear will exist in a perfected state in heaven. It cannot be the same as it is during earthly life, for in heaven all possibility of losing or offending God will be taken away. Servile fear will not exist at all in heaven.
12. The first beatitude, "Blessed are the poor in spirit," corresponds to the gift of fear. For if a man fears God perfectly, as he may do by the gift, he does not pridefully seek to be rich or honored, but is humble and poor in spirit.
20. Despair
1. Despair, which is the loss or abandonment of hope, is a sin, and it leads to other sins. St. Paul says (Eph. 4:19): "Who, despairing, have given themselves up to lasciviousness, unto the working of all uncleanness, and unto covetousness."
2. Not everyone who despairs has lost or rejected the faith. A person may know by faith that all sin is pardonable, and yet, by a corrupted judgment on his own particular case, may abandon all hope of pardon for himself.
3. Despair is a most grievous sin. It turns a person completely away from God. In itself, despair is not so grievous as unbelief or hatred of God. Yet for man it is more dangerous than these sins. For despair leads a person to fling himself headlong into all manner of sins.
4. Despair arises from disorders in the soul, such as lust. But in a special way, it comes from the sin of sloth, from spiritual laziness which will not let the soul grapple with difficulties, and overcome them in the strength and grace of supernatural hope.
21. Presumption
1. Presumption as a sin against hope is the wholly unreasonable expectation that God will save us despite the bad will in us which makes that saving impossible. Under the name and guise of reliance on God, presumption insults God and dishonors our own intelligence. It is presumption, for example, to expect forgiveness for sins without repentance. It is presumption to expect heaven without working to get there by merit.
2. Presumption is a sin, and can be a very grave sin, but it is not so grave a sin as despair. For, though it is inordinate and unreasonable in its expectation, presumption does recognize (however insultingly and distortedly) the divine mercy and goodness which despair utterly rejects and denies.
3. Presumption seems, at first glance, to be contrary to fear rather than to hope. For the presumptuous man seems to fear nothing, whether by servile fear or by filial fear. But this is mere seeming. The virtue to which presumption stands directly opposed is hope. Hope and presumption deal with the same object; hope, in an orderly manner; presumption, inordinately.
4. Presumption arises from vainglory, that is, from a prideful trust that a person has in himself as powerful enough to cope with anything, and as a being so excellent that God could not allow him to be punished.
22. Precepts Regarding Hope and Fear
1. Every scriptural promise of reward is an implied precept of hope. Besides, Holy Writ has warnings and commands which tell us to have hope. For instance, in Psalm 61 we read: "Hope in Him, all ye congregation of the people."
2. The precept of fear is found in every scriptural promise; for promised reward is not only something to stir hope of attainment, but to stir fear of failure to attain. And fear is directly inculcated by both the Old Law and the New; for instance, in Deuteronomy (10:12) we read: "And now, Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but that thou fear the Lord thy God?"