Three Sisterly Virtues! Three Virtuous Sisters?

         I think most of us have no problem using words to describe what Faith and Love are. Perhaps our descriptions aren’t as complete as they should be, but at least we are able to say what we think about these two virtues. Hope, however, is more difficult for us to talk about, or capture in words. Why? To answer that question, first let’s picture three daughters in a family. I think we will discover that Hope is the middle child, the sister who gets lost between the other two and ends up treated like an orphan.

      The firstborn of the sisters is Faith. Faith never felt neglected, because she was the first (and only) child for a couple of years. Next the second daughter, Hope, arrived. Of course mom and dad loved Hope too, but Hope didn’t get all the attention she needed because a third daughter followed her very soon. Hope’s problem was the third born, Love, (or Charity as her Birth Certificate officially designated her). She got the most care because she was the newest on the scene, the smallest, cutest and the weakest.  Everyone wanted to pick up and cuddle Charity. She was everyone’s focus. Love also was smart enough to see that she had to cover a lot of ground to catch up with her two sisters, so she quickly became aggressive and competitive. Faith was developed enough to stand up to her, but Hope, unfortunately, was not.

      I think this is a good example of the way we believers act towards the virtue of Hope in relation to Faith and Love. Hope becomes “what’s-her-name”, the neglected little girl in comparison to her two sisters. We are apt to express our faith by saying “Yes, I have faith in Jesus Christ. I believe in him; he is true God and true Man. He is my Savior and Redeemer”.  We might also express our love for him by saying “He died for us to pay for our sins, and I am grateful for what he did, so I try to love him, and express my love by serving him.” While not bad, these two declarations sound better than they are.  What’s wrong with them? They lack the depth of a Christ-centered, life commitment. Both declarations are quite feeble; as feeble any newborn whose needs are so great that receiving is its only capability. Our situation would not be bad if our Faith in Christ, and our Love for him, were based on an accurate understanding of our neediness. Since our need is absolute, so should our Faith in Christ and our Love for him be. But we operate under some erroneous assumptions: 1) that we are mature adults, 2) that maturity means self-sufficiency, and 3) therefore  total neediness is not the wellspring of Faith and Love, much less as the source of Hope as well. We could not be more mistaken. Self sufficiency is not the basis for the theological virtues in mature adults. Our total need for Christ is.

       Unless Hope is very alive in our minds and hearts, it is impossible for us to be firmly grounded in Faith and Charity. Hope is not an accidental link between the other two, but is their connection, expression, and continuation. Hope is part of the dance the Spirit is doing in us with all three virtues.  A Faith that doesn’t reach out Hoping for what it believes is dead. Hope that isn’t eagerly seeking, Loving and desiring what it hopes for doesn’t really love it. A Love that doesn’t rejoice in possessing and being possessed by its beloved isn’t worthy of its name. Individually each of the three virtues is a snapshot that catches the Spirit’s movement in us at a different moment. Faith’s outreach, Faith’s spark of self expression, is Hope. Hope’s eager longing fuels Love’s eager longing.  Love possessing and enjoying of what it has believed in and hoped for is the fruition of Faith and Hope.

      Perhaps a more helpful image than the three sisters would be a single child, one little girl, whose natural faith, hope, and love towards her father express the overflow of all she feels in her heart for daddy. Picture, if you will, just one girl in three poses. Imagine the little girl looking at the daddy. Make this, her childlike faith in daddy, snapshot number one. He is the man she believes in. He is no less than godlike in her eyes. He can do everything! He is the strongest, smartest, the most handsome, and the best father there is. She really believes that! (Any father who receives such adulation knows 1) it is unrealistic, 2) he doesn’t deserve it, and 3) that it certainly will not last long, but 4) he cannot help enjoy it while it is there.)

      Next, picture the little girl extending both arms to daddy and saying “Daddy, pick me up, pick me up.” The child’s trusting, demanding, hope in him is snapshot number two. She has no doubt that he will respond to her eager reaching out, because he is so good and she is so irresistible! 

     Snapshot number three is easy to figure out: the love the child enjoys snuggling in his arms.  It is the only place in the whole world she wants to be! Of course, in five minutes she will get restless, start squirming and want to get down, but the contentment she feels in his embrace is real even if short lived.

      On a natural level, the example works. But on a supernatural level, matters are not so simple. Imagine daddy and the girl 1,000 miles apart, for example. She can no longer see him, or stretch out her arm and speak to him, but she still believes in him, trusts him, and longs for him to pick her up and hold her. Her faith and hope and love are real, but they are not easily satisfied as before. Scype and the Internet enable her to speak and see him just as if she was standing next to him, but he cannot bend over and lift her into his arms. Her hope of being picked up goes unsatisfied. Now make the distance not only a matter of time and space, add eternity as well, and have Creator-God replace the created father.  Complexities multiply themselves.  Finally, replace the child with a Christian adult trying to enter into a relationship with God. How does a creature have faith, hope, and love in the Creator?  How does a finite being relate to the Infinite More Than?

       Faith is the door to the Kingdom. Hope is reaching out to open the door and step across the threshold; Love means to step across the threshold and live inside the kingdom. In the Kingdom, Love is Faith and Hope fully satisfied.

      If Faith is the branch on the Tree, then Hope is a nubby bud of wood that starts to grow on that branch.  And Love produces another full grown branch which the budding twig itself becomes.In Spanish, hope has the double meaning of waiting and desiring. Esperar, the verb, and esperanza, the noun, both have that sense, although sometimes one is emphasized at the cost of the other. But one without the other does not seem like hope to me.  When I ask the auto mechanic if he can repair my engine, and he says “I hope so. But wait and see,” well, I go look for another mechanic because this one does not seem up to the task at hand. On the other hand, if he tells me, “This looks complicated because of the wiring, but I’m looking forward to the challenge of tackling the job,” I am inclined to believe he has high hopes of accomplishing the task. Of course, I have to wait and see, but at least I have some reason to hope in him. With the first mechanic, waiting would be a waste of time.

      The point of this example, is that a human hope, a hope in humans, needs a solid basis, a reasonable confidence of being realized, otherwise it has no grounding. On a supernatural level, this is also true; our hope has to have a solid grounding. And it does, the most solid, because it is grounded in God. But for that very reason, it feels ungrounded to us, floundering, and free-floating. This is because hope in God has no immediate realization, no fulfillment in the next few minutes. This does not take away from hope’s solidity and strength, however, but is a testimony to it. Our hope is in the new creation that God is making us into, the new creation we are moving towards in faith and love, the new creation that is anchored and prefigured in Christ Event, the unity of our human flesh with the Risen One who sits at the Father’s right hand.