Living hope

“As it is, these remain: faith, hope and love, the three of them; and the greatest of them is love.”

1 Corinthians 13

This seems a strange beginning for a blog on “Living hope.” Paradoxically for me love depends on faith and hope. Hope is the transmission of faith, an interaction. Often people have to rely on hope to see them through difficult circumstances.

The Rule of St Benedict in Chapter 4 on Guidelines for Christian and Monastic Good Practice exhorts us

v 74 “And finally never despair of the mercy of God.”

In the Old Testament during the times of exile, Israelites had to depend on hope to see them through. On one occasion Cyrus, the Persian king who was not a faith believer, was an instrument of God's action, intervening in the world. Those without hope died, while some were able to survive because they found their way through hope to something greater, returning to Jerusalem.

I believe in hope. In the most difficult circumstances, faith helps me to persevere through any difficulties in the hope that God will overcome evil. He is the Resurrection, the way, the truth and the life. If we can persevere, keep faith, though we may experience hardship, suffering for what seems an eternal period of time, God will respond and come to our aid. Jesus prayed and Lazarus was raised from the dead. Jesus himself died on the Cross and was raised again. Could anyone really believe when they saw him dying on the Cross with such suffering that he would rise from the dead?

In my lifetime, critical things have happened. Not only on the personal level, but nationally. When I reflect on the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the lifting of the Iron Curtain, none of us really believed that it could come down so peacefully. I believe that that was very much through the hard work, and suffering of those concerned, through the prayers of the Church and the leadership of St John Paul II. At present. we are going through a period of transition, moving from a house we have lived in for 26 years to a new home which needed renovation, giving us the opportunity to use renewable energy. There have been many challenges, but we hope in faith that this is what we should be doing.

God answers prayers in many ways. We recently visited Lapland hoping to see the Northern Lights. It was a cloudy night with only a 25% estimated chance of seeing the Aurora Borealis. We prayed in faith and hope although the weather forecast had not been encouraging. Angela reminded me that God is generous why would he not answer this prayer? We stayed up until past midnight, then suddenly the skies cleared, and we were able to experience the heavenly spectacle.

Photo credit - Luke Stackpoole on Unsplash

The "most beautiful gift" the Catholic Church and its members can give the world is a reason to live with hope, Pope Francis said at his weekly general audience 11 Dec 2024. "The Christian cannot be satisfied with having hope; he or she must also radiate hope, be a sower of hope." He ended with a blessing:

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

Chris Walker