Hope

1
Hope

• Confident Expectation
• Faith and Hope
• Desire
• Sins Against Hope

2
Virtue of Hope

• Hope
• The virtue that strives after God and Heaven.
• One cannot strive after something unless one
  desires it.
• One cannot desire what one does not know.
• CCC 1817
• Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire
  the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our
  happiness
• Placing our trust in Christs promises and
  relying not on our own strength, but on the help
  of the grace of the Holy Spirit.

3
Center of our Hope

• Christ is the reason for our hope
• Our confident expectation is in the life and work
  of Jesus Christ that He has already done for us
  on the cross.
• We are not hopeful because we are stupid.
• We are not hopeful to escape from reality.
• Our hope is in Christ
• The Mass
• we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our
  Lord Jesus Christ.

4
Characteristics

• Confident Expectation
• It keeps us from discouragement
• it sustains us during times of abandonment
• It opens up our heart in expectation of eternal
  beatitude.

• Foretaste of Heaven
• Hope is the sure and steadfast anchor of the soul
  that enters where Jesus has gone as a forerunner
  on our behalf.

5
Faith and Hope

• Faith
• Fides Quae what we know about our faith.
• Fides Qua how we live that faith from day to
  day.
• Transformative nature of Faith
• To know about God.
• To live differently - a gift that changes every
  aspect of our life.
• Pope Benedict XVI - Spe Salvi
• The Christian message is not only informative
  but performative. That means the Gospel is
  not merely a communication of things that can be
  known - it is one that makes things happen and is
  life-changingthe one who has hope lives
  differently the one who hopes has been granted
  the gift of a new life.
• Example of the Saints
• St. Josephine Bakhita

6
Faith and Hope

• Hope is based on Faith
• Hebrews 111
• Our faith deepens when we place our hope in God.
• Our hope is strengthened and fulfilled when we
  see the world around us with the eyes of faith.
• Question
• If we do not think something is possible we would
  not pursue it would we? Why try?
• Faith
• Trials and difficulties?
• Christ is the sure and steadfast anchor of the
  soul.
• St. Thomas Aquinas
• What does it take to be a saint? To desire it!

7
Desire

• Two reasons why we lack desire
• We have been given a poor understanding of
  heaven.
• We think that we have to give up all the good
  things on earth to get there.
• Not I can either be happy in this life or happy
  in the next but I cannot have both.
• Is Do not pursue goods in a disordered way.
  Pursue and possess the goods in a balanced way.
• Goal in life
• Do you have a plan for your life?
• World
• Financial success, great job, power above others,
  the acceptance of others.
• Heaven
• We were created for greatness! For eternal
  glory! For everlasting life!

8
In medio stat virtu

• Despair
• One ceases to hope for personal salvation from
  God and for divine mercy, forgiveness, and love.
• Despair contradicts Gods infinite goodness and
  the divine promises to which the Lord is always
  faithful.
• Why do we despair?
• Over-focus on ourselves
• Attachment to sin

• Presumption
• Undermines hope in two ways
• To presume upon our own human and limited
  capacities we hope to be saved without the help
  of God.
• To presume upon Gods almighty power and mercy
  hoping to obtain happiness with God without the
  effort of ongoing conversion.

9
(No Transcript)