The next setting for learning hope that Pope Benedict proposes is action.  He explains how we strive endlessly (implying action) to realize our lesser and greater hopes in life.  We have something that we want to achieve, such as training for a race.  In order to realize our hope of participating in and completing that event, we put in the necessary practice to reach that goal.  Those who have the hope of becoming doctors one day need to put in a lot of work studying, which though daunting at times, is sustained by the hope of completing the requirements to become a doctor.

As good as those various hopes for this life are, we can never lose sight of the great hope of eternal life, which is ultimately the object of the Christian virtue of hope.  By keeping that hope always before us, we will not be discouraged when we encounter failures or setbacks in achieving our earthly hopes.  How sad it is when somebody puts all their hope in some earthly achievement or goal, and when they do not accomplish it, they say in despair: “My life is over!” But when we are rooted in that hope which does not disappoint, no earthly disappointment can stop our forward progress or rob us of meaning in our lives.

Beyond our own personal hopes, we can also get caught up in hope for better circumstances in which we live more broadly, such as those promised by political leaders or other voices which promise something better than what we currently have.  On this point, the Holy Father writes:

If we cannot hope for more than is effectively attainable at any given time, or more than is promised by political or economic authorities, our lives will soon be without hope. It is important to know that I can always continue to hope, even if in my own life, or the historical period in which I am living, there seems to be nothing left to hope for. Only the great certitude of hope that my own life and history in general, despite all failures, are held firm by the indestructible power of Love, and that this gives them their meaning and importance, only this kind of hope can then give the courage to act and to persevere. (SS 35)

He then notes that as we continue to persevere in our actions of doing good, we often fail to see any tangible difference being made in the world around us.  Nevertheless, hope helps us to believe that by opening ourselves to God through these actions, we are making a contribution to the salvation of the world that is not insignificant.  Such was the attitude of the saints, and such should be our attitude as well.

In this regard, I like to think about the story of the multiplication of loaves in John’s Gospel.  When confronted with the seemingly impossible task of feeding the large crowd, St. Andrew said the following to Jesus: “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what good are these for so many?” (John 6:9) Using normal calculations, he was correct.  But by adding God to the equation, what seemed so little and insufficient was multiplied so that the entire crowd was fed.  The next time we consider a small, good deed and wonder: “what good is this for such a big problem?”, present it to the Lord in faith that He will apply His multiplying grace to do far more than we ask or imagine, serving to strengthen our hope and that of those around us.

When you imagine Heaven – something nearly impossible to rightly imagine – I would wager that what trips you up most and possibly leads you to think that Heaven is boring is the fact that “forever” seems like way too long to do anything, even the best of things. I mean, at some point, won’t forever just get boring?

Well, if time works the same way in Heaven that it does on Earth, the answer to that question would be “Yes.” But God exists in eternity without getting bored and Heaven will not get boring, ever. The problem with our imagination of Heaven lies in our absolute inability to imagine time working in any different way than it does now. We have no context for “eternity” – God’s “eternity.”

In the scriptures, we hear the timelessness of God expressed in different ways – “eternal,” “years and years,” a “day,” etc. We have to use these human time categories to describe it, and that is ok. We don’t have words or concepts for anything else.

St. Augustine speaks about this in his commentary on Psalm 60. He reflects on the use of “day” to refer to God’s time in eternity – God’s “day.” 

St. Augustine explains, “The word today indicates a single day; but this is not the kind of day which is squeezed between yesterday and tomorrow; it does not begin where yesterday ended, nor does it end when tomorrow dawns. After all, God’s time is also referred to as “years” in another psalm…. So years, and days, and a single day, all mean the same thing. You can use whichever phrase you like about eternity. And the reason why you can choose freely which way to express it is that whatever you say will fall short of the reality. Yet you must say something, to give yourself a basis on which to think about what cannot be put into words” (Saint Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms 51–72, Translated by Maria Boulding, 199).

In other words, we have to use our human concepts of time to speak about eternity. At the same time, we have to recognize that our human words fall short, and the reality is and will be so much greater and better. We will never get bored because we will be in the eternal now of God’s day. “Long” and “short” may not even make sense in heaven, but we’ll have to wait until then to find out!

Until that day, we experience a small foretaste of that heavenly now in our prayer, at the Mass, and in beautiful experiences of love. These moments can feel timeless, peaceful, and heavenly. May the Lord teach us through our earthly experiences of eternity to never stop desiring the rest he has in store for us. As St. Augustine also would say, our hearts will be restless until they rest in God. Peace!

In our previous article, we reflected on the all-to-common experience of waiting in prayer, not receiving a clear answer from the Lord when we turn to Him, even waiting for long periods of time before we receive any sort of clarity, if we indeed receive any at all.  Drawing upon the wisdom of St. Augustine, Pope Benedict explained how this waiting can be used as a form of purification by which our desires are expanded and our hope sustained.

In the next paragraph, the Holy Father writes about how to make prayer become a purifying power in our lives.  He writes the following:

For prayer to develop this power of purification, it must on the one hand be something very personal, an encounter between my intimate self and God, the living God. On the other hand it must be constantly guided and enlightened by the great prayers of the Church and of the saints, by liturgical prayer, in which the Lord teaches us again and again how to pray properly. (SS 34)

Relational prayer is something that I have spent a fair amount of time reading and thinking about over the past few years.  It has been enlightening to encounter insights from many writers and speakers on this form of prayer, and having experienced it in my own prayer, it is something that has made a profound difference in my relationship with the Lord.  For that reason, I was happy to read the first line quoted above.  But perhaps more consoling to me was the pope’s reminder of the necessity of also using the great prayers from the tradition of the Church, as well as liturgical prayers.  As life-giving and intimate as personal prayer can be, there are times when it is hard to pray in this way, and it is easy to fall into discouragement, feeling like I have lost the ability to pray, or that I somehow need to rediscover the right formula.  In those moments when it can be hard to enter into intimate, relational prayer, those familiar prayers are always available, and when prayed in a spirit of faith, are never less effective than relational prayer.  To offer a powerful example of this, Pope Benedict offers the following:

Cardinal Nguyen Van Thuan, in his book of spiritual exercises, tells us that during his life there were long periods when he was unable to pray and that he would hold fast to the texts of the Church’s prayer: the Our Father, the Hail Mary and the prayers of the liturgy. (ibid.)

The Holy Father then explains how it is not either relational prayer or public, liturgical prayer.  Rather, it is both/and.  We need both forms, and by keeping both in our arsenal of prayer, the Lord will continue to effect that purification “by which we become open to God and are prepared for the service of our fellow human beings.” (ibid.)

Therefore if you find yourself like me sometimes really struggling to put words or thoughts together to speak with God in a personal and intimate way, take comfort in those prayers you have known since your youth, and with the confidence of a child, bring them to the Lord, trusting that He is listening and working for your good.

Over the course of his life of ministry, Saint Augustine of Hippo wrote and/or preached a sermon which served as a commentary on each of the 150 psalms. Some of these commentaries are very long, some short, some psalms have several homilies instead of just one, and most psalms are given a deeply spiritual interpretation in the light of Christ and the Church. These commentaries have been compiled into one great series of homilies called St. Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos – “Commentaries on the Psalms.” Over the next several weeks, I will be reflecting on various snippets of these writings.

In a passage of St. Augustine’s commentary on Psalm 73, he refers to the scriptures in a unique and meaningful way. He calls the scriptures “Letters of God.” I see this as a really heartfelt and personal way of looking at the bible – Augustine saw the scriptures as a communication from God to us in the form of “letters.” John Rotelle, O.S.A., the editor of this passage in the version I used to read this commentary, notes St. Augustine’s use of this phrase, probably because of its rarity. 

Rotelle also mentions that Pope Pius XII refers to the scriptures this way in his encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu. When Pope Pius XII writes about this, he explains, “it behooves us to be grateful to the God of all providence, Who from the throne of His majesty has sent these books as so many paternal letters to His own children” (DAS, 19, emphasis added). They are written out of the love of a fatherly heart. 

Because of this love that is at the source of all the scriptures, Pope Pius XII and St. Augustine, as well as the bishops in our own contemporary church, would highly encourage our reading of the scriptures. We often think it is hard to hear God’s voice, but if we only picked up the scriptures, we would read the letters God has written to us. 

Each of these letters is different. We have historical texts written to us today to remind us what God has done in our world and in history to save us. We have prayers he has written for us like the Psalms. We have love letters like the Song of Songs. We have ancient stories and writings that teach us the wisdom of God’s mind. God has spoken to us, and he has done so by inspiring these writings from the minds and pens of holy human authors from the ancient Israelites and the first Christians. 

These letters are “Paternal” because they teach us, they guide us, and they offer us a sense of protection in the Truth. God has given a great gift to his people by sending them his Word, both in the words of scripture and also in the flesh in Jesus Christ. We meet Him in prayer, in the Eucharist, in his Church, and also very deeply in and through the scriptures. The Letter to the Hebrews tells us that God’s word is living and effective. He truly speaks to us in these scriptures, just as deeply as he first spoke to the people who first read them. His word does not “expire.” It doesn’t “run out.” 

Thanks be to God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, for such a great gift!

Though I do not know exactly where I first heard it, one of the more helpful, simple lessons on prayer that I have heard goes like this: “When we pray, God always answers.  Sometimes He answers, ‘yes’, other times He answers, ‘no’, and still other times He answers, ‘not yet.”

In my homily two Sundays ago, I reflected on a four-letter word that most of us hate hearing (no, it is not one of THOSE four-letter words) – that word is “wait.”  We do not like to wait for things, including when it comes to prayer.  We often expect our experience with prayer to be like putting a request into ChatGPT, receiving an immediate response.  But there are so many times when we have prayed for something and not received any response, or any indication of a response.  In a sense, God is inviting us to wait for His response, and we do not particularly like that.  But the Lord knows what He is doing, He has a reason for His seeming silence and perceived delay.  This is what Pope Benedict reflects on in next paragraph of Spe salvi, and he does so by referencing some time-honored wisdom from St. Augustine:

Saint Augustine, in a homily on the First Letter of John, describes very beautifully the intimate relationship between prayer and hope. He defines prayer as an exercise of desire. Man was created for greatness—for God himself; he was created to be filled by God. But his heart is too small for the greatness to which it is destined. It must be stretched. “By delaying [his gift], God strengthens our desire; through desire he enlarges our soul and by expanding it he increases its capacity [for receiving him]” (SS 33)

The Holy Father then offers the following beautiful image from the same saint about this process of enlarging our hearts to prepare for what the Lord desires to give to us:

Suppose that God wishes to fill you with honey [a symbol of God’s tenderness and goodness]; but if you are full of vinegar, where will you put the honey?” The vessel, that is your heart, must first be enlarged and then cleansed, freed from the vinegar and its taste. This requires hard work and is painful, but in this way alone do we become suited to that for which we are destined (St. Augustine, Cf. In 1 Ioannis 4, 6: PL 35, 2008f)

The pope reflects on how this waiting that the Lord allows to experience has a way of purifying our desires as well, also helping us to see beyond just ourselves and our wants, but expands to include others as well.  He writes:

When we pray properly we undergo a process of inner purification which opens us up to God and thus to our fellow human beings as well. In prayer we must learn what we can truly ask of God—what is worthy of God. We must learn that we cannot pray against others. We must learn that we cannot ask for the superficial and comfortable things that we desire at this moment—that meagre, misplaced hope that leads us away from God. We must learn to purify our desires and our hopes. We must free ourselves from the hidden lies with which we deceive ourselves. God sees through them, and when we come before God, we too are forced to recognize them. (SS 33)

Perhaps as you read this column, you are struggling with the “not yet” answer the Lord has given to your prayer.  I am hopeful that these important lessons from the school of prayer give you hope to continue to trust in the Lord’s goodness, and His desire to give “good things to those who ask Him.” (Mt 7:11)

If you have been following the thread of the articles I’ve been writing, you may have noticed that last week’s article was the tenth and final article in the series on the Pentecost Sequence. Though I have been intently considering topics for a new series of articles, I have come to no definite conclusion as to what exactly to write about. 

The theme of the work of the Holy Spirit is still, however, hovering in my mind, as I look out at the natural beauty of these hot and humid late summer days. The Spirit helps us to listen to the Word of life and beauty God spoke into creation. The natural world truly proclaims God’s glory and is a place of contemplation in which we see clearly His desire that all things would have life and have it abundantly – that all things would grow to their full potential. 

We see great trees with gnarled roots that seem to want to last forever, small weeds that grow out of parking lots and cracks that I would never have believed could hold a living thing for long. Even the small tree or animal cut down and killed by man or nature becomes a happy home for a multitude of organisms that keep on living and consuming and bringing order to this changing world. Only a great and beautiful mind could have been the source of this relentless life. 

I conclude with a poem – one that may remind you of springtime (and hopefully cooler days!) – a poem that touches upon the scriptural and very Augustinian theme of nature praising its maker by simply existing as he wishes:

Upon the dappled walls of stackéd stone
a vine grows up and sprouts its verdant bud
A leaf springs forth and looks to meet the sun
that breaks aloft with yellow on the clouds
The stone reflects what light the vine lets through
as leaves of green and shadow rustle round
The moist spring breeze of blue-green-yellow runs
past leaves a-glinting in the post-rain light
This earthen majesty about me sighs
and clearly speaks of Him who made the sun,
the leaves, the wall, the stone, the vine, and bud
and sets them light with life upon the spring
O Spring of Life, O Beauty’s Source, you hear
the golden love flown from my heart of flesh,
that sees all things and knows their maker plain
Full life, my God, Sweet Love in whom I trust

As mentioned in the previous article, the final section of Pope Benedict’s Encyclical on Christian Hope, Spe salvi, is dedicated the various settings “in which we can learn in practice about hope and its exercise.” (SS 31) These next sixteen paragraphs will offer some practical suggestions for deepening our experience of this great virtue of hope.

The first setting in which to learn about hope is prayer.   In this first paragraph, which is very short, the Holy Father begins with a beautiful reflection on the consoling presence of God in prayer as an anchor of hope:

When no one listens to me any more, God still listens to me. When I can no longer talk to anyone or call upon anyone, I can always talk to God. When there is no longer anyone to help me deal with a need or expectation that goes beyond the human capacity for hope, he can help me. When I have been plunged into complete solitude …; if I pray I am never totally alone. (SS 32)

In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General declared loneliness to be an epidemic.  He warned that about half of the adults in the country were experiencing some form of loneliness, intensified no doubt by the recent pandemic.  This problem affects both young and old alike.  I am sure that anybody reading this can think of somebody they know in their lives who has struggled or is currently struggling with loneliness.

While the problem of loneliness is a complex one and there is no single solution, it is important for us as Christians to see prayer as an essential avenue in combatting loneliness.  When we turn to prayer in faith, we do not just hope that God hears us, using hope in that more generic, everyday sense.  Our hope, supported by faith, is rooted in the conviction that He is true, He is present, He is listening to us, and that He loves us.

The pope calls prayer a “school of hope”, and I like that image.  It is a school that we are enrolled in throughout our entire lives.  We should always be learning more about prayer.  If our prayer looks like it did when we were in grade school, focusing only on reciting memorized prayers, then we are missing out on so much that prayer offers to us.  Prayer is something very intimate and very personal.  Some helpful descriptions on prayer that I often use in defining prayer are:

For mental prayer in my opinion is nothing else than an intimate sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with Him who we know loves us. (St. Teresa of Avila)

Prayer is “a very personal inner conversation between yourself and God” (St. Josemaria Escriva)

Prayer is a personal response to God’s loving presence. (Armand M. Nigro, S.J.)

When we see prayer in this way, as personal, intimate, and relational, we can open ourselves to the Lord about anything, including the loneliness that we feel.  We can share with Him our hopes and desires, our sadness and frustrations.  We can share anything and everything, and in doing so, we receive from Him the gift of His loving presence as a reminder of what we heard Him tell His Apostles before ascending to Heaven: “Behold, I am with you always.” (Mt 28:20)  

Da virtutis meritum, Grant the reward of virtue,
da salutis exitum, grant the deliverance of salvation,
da perenne gaudium. grant eternal joy.
Amen. Alleluia. Amen. Alleluia.

At the Last Supper, Jesus tells his disciples, “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete” (John 15:11). These “things” Jesus has spoken of are the unity of Christians in the one body of Christ, the command to love one another, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and the promise of an eternal home in the Father’s house. These things bring us joy, almost automatically! And they are, in a very real way, a gift and consequence of the action of the Holy Spirit.

When the Holy Spirit comes to us, he brings with him the virtues of faith, hope, and charity to dwell in the soul and give it life. He infuses all of our other human virtues with supernatural life and power – virtues like our Justice, Fortitude, Prudence, and Temperance, among others. He makes us into children of God our heavenly Father, and heirs to the eternal kingdom of heaven. He binds us to Jesus as members – limbs – of his mystical body. He draws our souls in a generally invisible way into the love-life of the Holy Trinity, so that the Father loves us with the love he has for the Son. 

In other words, the Holy Spirit makes deliverance, salvation, and eternal joy possible for us. He not only makes it possible, but he makes it so much more beautiful, deep, and incredible than any eternity of simply “human life” could be. He grants us the gift of an eternal “divine life.” That is the gift of God. He wants us to share in HIS glory and HIS love for all eternity. Eternal divine life is inexhaustible, ever deepening, and forever joyful.

In the here and now, however, it doesn’t always feel so good. We don’t get a clear view of that eternal joy here on earth. So often, in this “valley of tears,” we suffer in pain, darkness, and fog, even when the Spirit is with us, filling our souls with his life. He acts in a generally unseen and unfelt way, yet gives us the guarantee of faith, hope, and charity through it all. In fact, the best measure for his work here and now in this life is not good feelings and a sense of power coursing through us. The best measure of his presence and work in us is our continual growth in actual charity lived out in faithful loving actions toward God and our human brothers and sisters. 

Therefore, in this time before eternity, we pray constantly. We pray for the Holy Spirit to come and fill us. We pray for his fire to light our way and melt our hard hearts. We pray for the refreshing dew of his presence to cool the earthly fire of our passions. We pray for his light to fill our intellects and wills so that we see clearly what is good, true, and holy, and do it. We pray for his presence, his comfort, his rest, his love, and the peace that only he can give. 

The Father and the Son are pleased to pour out the Holy Spirit upon us in abundance (see Luke 11:13). They want us to be on fire and in love. May we all be filled with that heavenly fire and so set the world on fire. Jesus wants that! Come Holy Spirit, set us on fire with your love!

The next two paragraphs in Spe Salvi serve as a brief summary of what Pope Benedict has written up to this point.  The final section of the document will look at some specific “settings” for learning and practicing hope.  We will make that transition next week, but there are a few points from this summary that I think are good for our review and reflection.

The Holy Father returns to the important theme of our daily experience of hope, especially as we understand it from our perspective while we are still here on our pilgrim journey.  He writes:

Day by day, man experiences many greater or lesser hopes, different in kind according to the different periods of his life. Sometimes one of these hopes may appear to be totally satisfying without any need for other hopes. Young people can have the hope of a great and fully satisfying love; the hope of a certain position in their profession, or of some success that will prove decisive for the rest of their lives. When these hopes are fulfilled, however, it becomes clear that they were not, in reality, the whole. It becomes evident that man has need of a hope that goes further. It becomes clear that only something infinite will suffice for him, something that will always be more than he can ever attain. (SS, 30)

That something infinite is of course someone, as he writes in the next paragraph: “This great hope can only be God, who encompasses the whole of reality and who can bestow upon us what we, by ourselves, cannot attain.” (SS, 31) The pope then concludes this section with the following words that I find especially encouraging to us as we sometimes experience the drudgery of facing life’s seemingly endless challenges:

His love alone gives us the possibility of soberly persevering day by day, without ceasing to be spurred on by hope, in a world which by its very nature is imperfect. His love is at the same time our guarantee of the existence of what we only vaguely sense and which nevertheless, in our deepest self, we await: a life that is “truly” life. (ibid.)

That idea of “sober perseverance” is one that resonates well, for it reminds us to not get too excited when we experience those daily, lesser hopes, nor should we be too overwhelmed when those hopes get dashed.  We do well to direct our gaze to God, whose love is being poured out upon us, and to be reminded of His great desire to sustain us throughout our journey.  It is comforting to know that God offers us, through His grace, a share in His life which enables us to have the strength to keep moving forward with His help.

In Matthew’s Gospel, as Jesus speaks to His disciples about the challenges that humanity will face before His return in glory, He offers us this important promise: “the one who perseveres to the end will be saved.” (Mt 24:13) Therefore, it is helpful for us to pray regularly, even daily, for the grace of sober perseverance.  In addition to the Lord’s Prayer, where we can ask for that grace a part of our “daily bread”, I love the following prayer from St. Teresa of Avila:

Let nothing disturb you, 
Let nothing frighten you, 
All things are passing away: 
God never changes. 
Patience obtains all things
Whoever has God lacks nothing; 
God alone suffices.