Hope

Hope. A word that many of us, including myself, brush past all too easily. 

On religion tests in middle school and high school, it was not abnormal to be asked to list the theological virtues. I would robotically recall “faith, hope, and love” without thinking any more deeply about what those virtues entailed, implicated, or required. 

The midwestern homes in which I spent time throughout my childhood were often plastered with signage displaying “hope” in curly cursive lettering. You know exactly what I’m talking about… In the kitchen, bathroom, entryway. Take a look around! 

“Hope.” A word that, while well intended, is sometimes used as a scapegoat in life’s most gruesome and antagonizing moments. “We just have to hope!” “Don’t give up on hope!”

Hope in what? In whom? From where?

I personally have been reflecting on hope quite a bit over the past year. In my theological studies I am, rightfully so, exposed to both a great deal of gladness and much needed progress, and an incomprehensible and piercing amount of pain, suffering, oppression, degradation, and debilitating sadness taking place in nations, communities, and individuals around the world. Naturally, this takes a toll on someone! Nothing is seemingly more invalidating than sharing the weight of this with a friend, colleague, or mentor and hearing the whole “just cling to hope!” jargon. Their intentions are never malicious, of course, and that is significant to recognize and explicitly note. I do not in any way mean to accuse. Upon further reflection, though, I can’t help but feel as if the idea of “hope” is generally just used as a bandage to cover up the hurt and make everything look “OK” for a short while. Like I hinted at earlier, hope has become cheapened, in some cases reduced to a slogan used for consolation that we spew around liberally and thoughtlessly, veiling ourselves from the wrestling these realities require, demand. 

But this cannot be the hope we are talking about when we name the theological virtues… can it? Surely throughout scripture when we come across this word, this concept, it means something more… right? 

What is the deeper truth here?

What the hell is hope?

My prayer since my undergraduate graduation in May has been plagued by this very question. And, let me tell you, it is an interesting one with which to grapple. No amount of Google searching has satisfied my understanding, my desire to know—to really internalize—what it is that we are referring to when we say “hope.” Every time I come across it in a reading for class or personal leisure, I just laugh. Being able to deeply grasp things is very important to me (which is ironic given the whole theology thing…We’re talking about God here, people). And when I cannot wrap my mind around something (except for God, apparently), I go stir crazy. 

So, when discerning what I was going to plaster on the internet for us to reflect on together, I decided to take my best shot at unpacking the whole “hope” thing. A daunting task indeed. Here’s what I’ve been wrestling with:

In the summer of 2023 when I was living in Los Angeles with the Catholic Worker, I thrifted The New Man written by Thomas Merton in 1961. While praying recently, a few pages out of this book appeared so clearly in my mind that I could almost read them word-for-word. I sifted through my stacks and flipped through the pages of this work. What I found were several paragraphs I had blocked off related to hope. Here is a short excerpt:

The roots of life remain immortal and invulnerable in us if we will continue to keep morally alive by hope. Yet hope in its full supernatural dimension is beyond our power. And when we try to keep ourselves in hope by sheer violent persistence in willing to live, we end if not in despair in what is worse—delusion … Hope then is a gift. Like life, it is a gift from God, total, unexpected, incomprehensible, undeserved. It springs out of nothingness, completely free. But to meet it, we have to descend into nothingness. And there we meet hope most perfectly, when we are stripped of our own confidence, our own strength, when we almost no longer exist. “A hope that is seen,” says St. Paul, “is no hope.” No hope. Therefore despair. To see your hope is to abandon hope (Merton, 1961, p. 4-5, emphasis added). 

I know exactly what you’re thinking. “That was a lot.” Me, too, friend. 

In the following paragraph, though, we find Merton clarifying his thinking a bit more. Hope, Merton says, is choosing intentionally to see goodness and life when we are in the loneliest, most tormenting moments of our existence. This is absolutely not the result of some effort of our own, but rather “because by some miracle the God of Life Himself accepts to live, in us, at the very moment when we descend into death” (Merton, 1961, p. 5). Put simply (if possible), hope is communion with the One in Whom “we live and move and have our being,” Who most perfectly understands both the gravity of pain and death, as well as resurrection and the fullness of life (Acts 17: 28, NABRE).

It’s a lot to make sense of and grasp. Even more so to let sink into our hearts and minds. What does make a whole lot of sense to me, though, is that we are not expected to grasp or understand it on our own. In fact, we are expected to NOT do it on our own. By virtue of such, we find ourselves liberated from the expectation to know what to do in our most dire hour of need. We recognize the way in which we are radically accompanied by the One Who promises to never, ever let go. All we are asked in order to participate in hope is to open our hearts the tiniest bit to relationship with Loveself. The rest is sheer miracle—something we will never understand on this side of eternity. 

What we can understand is that hope is not a bandage. Hope is not something that we can use as a numbing agent to postpone the ache. Hope is not something that we can will ourselves to do. 

Hope is divine activity. 

Gift.

Relationship.

We just have to be sacramentally vigilant and willing to receive. 

I hope the next time you come across this word you stop for a moment. 

I hope that you courageously whisper in the silence of your heart a real and raw prayer that humbly confronts the difficulties you are currently facing. 

And I hope that you allow yourself to experience the transformation of death into life by the One Who continually defeats death and constitutes life. 

I think I’m content with this way of understanding hope. And I sure hope you are, too.

Written By: Graceann Beckett