4 December 2013
Wednesday of the First Week of Advent
Hope is the forgotten virtue, at least compared to its siblings Faith and Love. In this season of advent, now is a good time to ponder what this virtue means and how we can grow in it.
Call to mind the idea of someone’s center of gravity. If an athlete wants to stay balanced, he must always be attentive to keeping his center of gravity above his feet – it’s just basic coordination. The last thing you would do is to deliberately move your center of gravity so far in front of you that you lose your balance. This is so natural that we don’t even think about it. Yet to live in hope is precisely to thrust your spiritual center of gravity far, far in front of you, until you lose balance.
So often we live entirely in the world of sin, darkness, and limitation – trapped in weakness, oppressed by the faults of others, and consequently we stagnate. To live in hope is to remember that salvation is at hand, that light will overcome darkness, that all will be well for me, for us, in the end. To take this posture is to lose our balance, but we will fall into the loving arms of God. As St. Paul said, “by hope we were saved.”