Hope That Nobody Can Take Away

Monday of 3rd Week in Course

Spe Salvi

We may suppose that little David could have lived his whole life out under the stars, playing his stringed instrument to his flock, chucking rocks at an occasional predator and enduring the taunts of his multiple older siblings. But he heard the call of God through Samuel, made his bones as a warrior on the head of Goliath of Gath, and became a king so great that all his successors were measured against him. Even so, he sinned grievously and had to endure great suffering in his repentance. His hope was to be not in this life, but in the forgiveness of the Father and the life of the world to come. His most famous prayer is “have mercy on me, O God, in your goodness; in your compassion blot out my offense.” That's a prayer we all ought to memorize and use frequently.

St. Thomas Aquinas, (who is, by the way, patron of Catholic schools), teaches that “insofar as we hope for anything as being possible for us by means of the Divine assistance, our hope attains God Himself, on Whose help it leans.” (ST II-II Q 17 Art 1) Every Christian ought to be able to say "Amen" to that. The proper object of hope is our eternal happiness in heaven in complete unity with the Blessed Trinity. The Holy Father further reflects on the witnesses to Christ, as envisioned in the Letter to the Hebrews. He tells his listeners that they joyfully accepted the plundering of their possessions, since they knew that they had themselves a better possession, one that was abiding. Our material property is of little account. The martyrs, yesterday’s and today’s can abandon their possessions here because they have found a better “basis” for their existence. . .that no one can take away.

Our faith gives life a new basis, a new foundation on which we can stand, one that relativizes the habitual foundation of people’s security, the reliability of material income. When religious men and women take vows of poverty, leaving everything for love of Christ to bring the faith and love of Christ to men and women hungry for life’s meaning, they exchange a passing substance for a real, genuine substance. Through faith they witness to us that there is only one enduring reality, one eternal possession, and that is the Love of God. In this Catholic Schools Week, then, we need to pray for vocations to the teaching orders of men and women, not so much because they can live on less and reduce tuition, but because they can witness to the substantial reality of the Love of God, a reality that our boys and girls and young men and women need to see lived out, so that they may embrace in one way or another the poverty of Christ in their own lives.