Between despair and presumption

That’s the virtue of hope, the virtue most needed these days as we face more trials and challenges in our life, personal, family, social and national. It’s a way of coping.

We have to cultivate it, understanding it first of all in its proper nature that needs to be surfaced, since our usual idea of it, derived mainly from social, cultural and historical factors, needs purification, even radical purification.

To be sure, the virtue of hope is the antithesis of despair, which is precisely the lack and even the absence of hope. It’s a terrible feeling of helplessness, with the mind and heart only able to see a dark world with no future, with no reason for living further. Its precursor is the constricting attitude of pessimism.

But less acknowledged as a mortal enemy of hope is the other extreme, what may be considered as an excess of hope, which is presumption. This is the thinking that everything will just be all right and that there’s no need for one to do anything.

This is naivete at its worst, since it is not the kind typical of a child. When an adult who ought to know better, falls into it, things get really worse. But still worse than naivete, presumption can be regarded as an attempt to tempt God who is often invoked to save and heal whatever needs to be saved and healed.

Presumption has to be distinguished from a healthy sense of abandonment that we should also cultivate. Presumption leaves everything to God or to fate without one doing anything. A healthy sense of abandonment leaves everything to God but also doing everything he can to resolve whatever issue is at hand.

We have to reiterate the truth—yes, it’s a truth, and not just a theory or an opinion—that there is always hope for everyone, no matter what happens. And that’s simply because God will always take care of everything, in spite of our mistakes and failures.

God is the core of hope. It’s not just luck or chance or good fortune. The living God is the firm, indestructible and ever-reliable basis for hope. He never fails. And no matter how much we mess up with his plans and providence, he knows how to derive good from evil, and to turn our mistakes into ways to bring us back to him. As it has been said quite often, God writes straight in crooked lines.

That’s why we have to learn to be tough and strong, patient and sporty in the game of life that can see us going up or down, twisting and turning to the music of the changing times.

The story of St. Paul gives us precious lessons on hope. From a rabid persecutor of the early Christians, he became the most fervent apostle, open to anything, good or bad, that he encountered in his ministry. He was simply game to whatever.

In his own words, we get an idea of what he went through and what attitude he had toward the events. “Thrice was I beaten with rods, once I was stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I was in the depth of the sea. In journeying often in perils of water, in perils of robbers...in perils of the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils from false brethren...” (2 Cor 11,25-26) Then after all these, he concluded: “If I must need glory, I will glory of the things that concern my infirmity.” Later on, he would say: “I please myself in my infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ. For when I am weak, then am I powerful.” (2 Cor 12,10)

We need to ground our hope on Christ, and not on an ideology or some magic or material concoctions. It’s with Christ that we can manage to face, tackle and do anything.

Describing the attitude of St. Paul, the Church Father, St. John Chrysostom, had this to say: “Paul set no store by the things that fill our visible world, any more than a man sets value on the withered grass of the field.

“As for tyrannical rulers or the people enraged against him, he paid them no more heed than gnats. Death itself and pain and whatever torments might come were by child’s play to him, provided that thereby he might bear some burden for the sake of Christ.”

I believe it’s worthwhile to meditate on the life of St. Paul to get a clear idea of how to grow in hope.

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