The Absence of Hope

The devil would like nothing more than to encourage you to place trust in yourself over God. His proposition to Adam and Eve was that each would be like God if they ate from the forbidden fruit (Gen 3:5). All temptation aside, when someone realizes their limitations and, thus, needs outside help, how will they react? Will you abandon all trust and hope in God and ignore His providence? At the moment of the Fall of Man (original sin), the door of doubt was introduced. God was no longer seen as good in the eyes of Adam and Eve because they chose to hide from God when they heard Him within the garden. Hope in God is now in doubt.

 The introduction of the absence of hope is amplified in the duel between Jesus and the devil in the temptation narrative. With the backdrop of the desert, the devil hoped it could dissuade Jesus from offering himself in death for the salvation of man. A liar from the beginning, as described by Christ in St. John’s Gospel (Jn 8:44), the devil did not want Jesus to undo what Adam and Eve had done, reject God’s love, and attempt to be like God. The devil’s ultimate goal was to convince man to abandon any thought of salvation.  

The entire spiritual duel between the devil and Jesus represents our daily struggle between the virtue of hope and the sin of despair. Despair is an act contrary to God’s salvific plan for man because to despair is to seek something greater than God’s love. Man lies to himself, thinking that God cannot possibly help him and thus chooses an alternate path based on vanity and selfish reasoning. St. Paul both encourages and warns the Gentiles about embracing a path with Christ and not one’s own,

. . . you must no longer walk as the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their minds; they are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart; they have become callous and have given themselves up to licentiousness, greedy to practice every kind of uncleanness. You did not so learn Christ! —assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus. Put off the old man that belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new man, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness (Eph 4:17-24).

Any absence of Hope is directly correlated with the first commandment because it is God who is the definition of Hope as our Father in Heaven. Our salvation cannot be separated from a visible and active faith in God. The Catechism reminds us that the first commandment is concerned with sins against hope, namely despair and presumption. By despair, man ceases to hope for his personal salvation from God, for help in attaining it or for the forgiveness of his sins. Despair is contrary to God’s goodness, to his justice—for the Lord is faithful to his promises—and to his mercy (CCC 2091)

The sin against hope-despair means that you and I believe there is no path to eternal life. What is the point in trying to reconcile ourselves with God through His Son Jesus Christ if we view our sins as insurmountable? The loss of hope can be equated to cutting off our supply of water, air, or food. From a spiritual perspective, it negates any sense of mercy or the thought of receiving mercy. Any affliction is associated with despair. However, all afflictions are directed toward the good of the soul, and our response in faith to the will of God is that these afflictions serve as a path toward heaven. Our afflictions do not crush us but allow us to understand the will of God and the desire He has for our salvation.

The author of the book of Hebrews reminds us that perseverance rests in having confidence in Christ as revealed through His death and resurrection. In hope we draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful (Heb 10:19-23). Hope declares that we have complete confidence in God and desire to dwell in His kingdom, which is eternal life.  The virtue of hope allows us to aspire to happiness even amongst afflictions. It keeps us from being discouraged and strengthens our resolve as children of God when we feel abandoned. Hope provides us with an external path to God rather than an internal path within ourselves. It allows us to see things from above rather than from below (Col 3:1-3).

The absence of hope proposes that the way of the Cross is riddled with afflictions that no man can bear. There must be another way. Hope destroys this myth because it proclaims and professes the love of God revealed through Jesus Christ, His Son, as the way, the truth, and the life (Jn 14:6). The book of Hebrews confirms Christ as the centrality of the virtue of hope as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner shrine behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever in the order of Melchizedek (Heb 619-20).

St. Theresa of Avila provides us with a loving conclusion on the spiritual healing and renewal found in the virtue of Hope.  
 

Hope, O my soul, hope. You know neither the day nor the hour. Watch carefully, for everything passes quickly, even though your impatience makes doubtful what is certain, and turns a very short time into a long one. Dream that the more you struggle, the more you prove the love that you bear your God, and the more you will rejoice one day with your Beloved, in a happiness and rapture that can never end.

St. Teresa of Avila, Excl. 15:3.