HOPE. - The original meaning of the term Ἀπίς is desire; to hope is to tend toward an object that appears to us as a good. Hope, considered on the natural plane, is the desire of a future good, arduous, but possible (Sum. Theol., 1ª-2ª, q. 40, a. 2). Its essential elements are desire and confidence. It is the tension of one who is not yet all that he must be, but is conscious at once of his imperfection and of his perfectibility.
Christian hope presents the same structure: but the tension surpasses man's native capacity, reaching as far as the eternal possession of God. For this reason it is essentially a gift of his. Infused into the soul of the baptized as a permanent quality, together with the virtue of faith, hope is, under the breath of actual Grace, the principle of that holy restlessness which spurs man, beyond his weakness and his faults, to surpass himself continually until he reaches the supreme end.
I. OBJECT AND MOTIVE OF CHRISTIAN HOPE
The principal object of Christian hope is the treasures of the incorruptible inheritance, the supreme beatitude in the eternal possession of God. Consequently Christian hope extends to all the means necessary for each person to attain that same beatitude (Rom. 5:2; 1 John 3:2). Even earthly goods can fall within the orbit of its ray, but only to the extent and in the manner in which God ordains them for our salvation. Therefore it is always God who stimulates our desires and nourishes our expectation. To raise ourselves so far above ourselves and stretch out toward him, we cannot count on our own strength and on the help of creatures, but must rely on him, on his goodness, on his helping omnipotence and on his divine promises: these are the motives of our hope taken all together, rather than one or another taken in isolation, such as goodness toward us (Scotus, Suárez), God's helping omnipotence, that is, omnipotence and mercy (Prümmer), or faithfulness to the promises, considered in themselves as the sole motives.
For this reason faith lies at the foundation of hope, in God's omnipotence, in his salvific will and in his unfailing goodness. And just as faith meets us in Christ, so hope culminates in him: he is our hope (1 Tim. 1:1; Col. 1:26-27). In him God has summed up and maintained all his promises, unveiling and carrying out his salvific design. If for all of us he did not spare his Son, how will he not give us all things with him? (Rom. 8:32). In Christ we have been saved (Rom. 5:10; cf. also Eph. 2:12 ff.; 2 Cor. 5:18 ff.). His Resurrection is a sure guarantee of ours (1 Cor. 6:14; cf. also Eph. 1:18-20). United to him as members to the head, we are already in a certain sense in glory, since there is
"no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Whoever believes in him already has eternal life" (John 3:18, 36; Rom. 9:33; 10:11).
II. VALUE AND NECESSITY OF HOPE
1. The value of h
It is immense for what it gives and for what it promises. Christian h. gives man a new degree of life, maximizing his nature and his worth. The soul, stretching out toward the future, in God, already breathes, foretasting it, the blessed air of God. Not only that. The divine promises confer on man the greatest security, they give him almost the sense of omnipotence: "I can do all things in him who strengthens me" (Phil. 4:13). Only on this ground can the victorious conviction flourish that resists and triumphs in the face of the most arduous tasks. Hence the unshakable firmness in trial, the sure confidence that divine help will never be inferior to its violence. Hence the certainty that nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God (Rom. 8:38). Hence finally the transformation of sorrow into Christian joy, which draws nourishment from suffering itself and is renewed every day in the expectation of the Lord who is near.
This does not, however, prevent him from having to attend to his salvation "in fear and trembling" (Eph. 6:5), conscious of his own frailty and fallibility. Indeed this fear completes the security, preserving confidence in God immune from the impairments that levity and an imperfect evaluation of things could bring to it.
2. Necessity of h
Without h. our supernatural life would have no meaning. Grace is the seed of glory, and the seed is, by definition, promise, expectation, principle. On the other hand, our expectation would be unjustified and absurd if it did not rest on the promises of God and on the help of Christ. For this reason Christian h., made of desire and trust, is indispensable for attaining salvation: in it we have been saved (Council of Trent, sess. VI, chaps. 6-7, de iustif.; Denz-U, 798, 800) and the Apostle admonishes us to put on as a helmet the h. of salvation (I Thess. 5:8), to be joyful in h. (Rom. 12:12) and to live piously in this world in expectation of the blessed h. (Tit. 2:13). For this same reason there exists no condition of life and degree of holiness from which h. must or can be excluded. Nor can h. be understood, as it has appeared to some, as a disinterested expectation of an eternity in which love will triumph, as though the desire and the expectation of one's own happiness constituted a calculation incompatible with the state of the perfect. Among the schismatics Kant (v.) is one of the apostles of pure love.
The ordered love of self is not incompatible with the most perfect love of God; indeed the former conditions in a certain sense the latter, since love of the object is not possible if the subject does not love himself. Moreover, this love finds its full justification in the perfect conformity of the human will with the divine will. God wills our happiness. The loving and solicitous appeal to the copious reward of heaven, to the recompense of the inheritance, to the incorruptible crown that awaits the athletes of the spirit, is continuous in the Gospel and in the preaching of the Apostles (cf. Mt. 5:12; Lk. 12:5; I Cor. 9:24; Col. 3:24). Therefore so-called disinterested love, understood as a habitual and exclusive attitude of the spirit, besides being psychologically absurd, is theologically erroneous. For this reason the Church has condemned it. The first condemnation on the matter is that of Master Eckhart (v. ECCARDO), who was among the first masters of pure love (Denz-U, 508). The Council of Trent, against the Protestants, confirmed the honesty of human actions that are performed under the prospect of eternal reward (sess. VI, chap. 16, can. 31: Denz-U, 841; sess. VI, chap. 11: Denz-U, 804). Alexander VIII, with the condemnation of a proposition, rejected the Jansenist doctrine, renewed by some theologians of Louvain, who claimed to derive h. solely from the love of benevolence (D. Viva, Damnatae theses, ad prop. 10 Alexandri VIII, III, Naples 1708, n. 17). There followed on the part of Innocent XI the condemnation of the quietism (v.) of Miguel Molinos (Denz-U, 1227-32), partially renewed by Fénelon ([v.]; Denz-U, 1327, 1332).
3. Subject of h
The subject of theological h. is the will: its subject, in fact, is supernatural goods, which cannot be attained except through the will (Sum. Theol., 2a-2ae, q. 18, a. 1). From this it follows that the act of h. is free; for although man necessarily wills beatitude considered in the abstract, he then freely places it in one object or another. The proximate subject capable of the act and the habit of h. is all wayfarers and the souls in purgatory. The damned and the blessed are incapable of h., at least with respect to the help of Grace and the indispensable conditions. In the formal heretic, for example, the virtue of h. cannot remain, since the coexistence of h. without faith is not possible. Sinners, on the other hand, in themselves (unless the sin is opposed to h.) are capable of h. (Council of Trent, sess. VI, chap. 6: Denz-U, 798). In the souls of purgatory h. remains, because although for them beatitude is certain, it is nevertheless future and of arduous attainment, since it must be reached through punishments (Sum. Theol., 2a-2ae, q. 18, a. 3).
III. SINS AGAINST HOPE
One can sin directly against hope: by defect and by excess. 1) He sins by defect both who no longer aspires to eternal life and who despairs of attaining it. The first attitude can be determined either by unbelief or by excessive attachment to the goods of this earth. Despair, on the other hand, is most often determined by distrust. From despair properly so called, discouragement must be distinguished, not only when it weighs involuntarily on the soul as a temptation or as an illness, but also when it is accepted in the will: for it is not the renunciation, but the slowing down of hope. It can depend either on the cooling of faith or on the pusillanimity of the spirit. Nevertheless, discouragement, if not mastered, can gradually degenerate into despair.
2) Opposed to hope, by excess, is presumption (v.).