HOPE IN HASTE – 4th Sunday of Advent, Year C
To move forth confidently in our lives of faith, we need Christian hope. Seminars are given all over the country to give people natural hope and confidence necessary to succeed in business, sales and communication. The work of giving people natural hope and confidence in themselves and their abilities to proceed “…in haste…” toward success in whatever they set out to do is in itself a huge industry. Many make their living helping others to have hope and confidence in themselves. Natural hope, like natural faith and love of people, is very important to the betterment of human persons.
Christian hope and divine hope differs from natural and human hope in that we are called to place our hope not just in ourselves but in the Lord and the action of the Lord in our lives. The sense of the Lord’s presence and action in our lives and in the lives of others stirs up Christian and spiritual hope. The greater one’s sense of faith in the Lord, the greater one’s hope becomes. Mary, the mother of the Lord, “…who believed that what was spoken…by the Lord would be fulfilled” is a model of Christian hope. Mary’s hope and expectation of what the Lord was doing in her life created great energies and excitement in her life. She is pictured as having “…traveled…in haste” on a rather long journey into the “hill country…of Judah, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth”. Hope helped her to “proceed in haste”. We only “proceed in haste” in living our lives according to the Lord’s plan if we have Christian hope. Without hope and expectation, there can be no “proceeding in haste”. Christian hope moves us to go out to the Lord and to others in love and service.
Natural hope may move us to go out to others only to further ourselves and achieve our human goals. Certainly, that is not bad in itself and is very necessary at times. There are many things people can do for others to build up themselves at the expense of others. We can go out to others for their sake and the Lord’s. This is more likely to happen in the case of one moved by Christian hope. In practice, we probably go out to others with both kinds of hope, natural and human, as well as Christian and spiritual. But life presents many people who are filled with natural hopes and optimistic personalities who seem to have no Christian and spiritual hope based on Christ and the Lord. Many others have very little natural hope and yet have great Christian and spiritual hope. They may find themselves in a set of circumstances which just simply aren’t naturally hopeful or filled with good possibilities for the future. So there is a difference. I tend to think, since life tends to take things away from people (youth, friends, possessions, and ultimately life itself), that natural hope alone cannot sustain the human person indefinitely. On the other hand, spiritual and Christian hope can grow and develop endlessly, provided we don’t throw away our hopes through sin, refusal to follow the Lord’s will in our life, or through a lack of faith or understanding of Christian hope.
Natural hope flows out of realizing one’s own talents and possibilities and opportunities. For this reason alone, it cannot always remain the same and can vary considerably depending on one’s age and life cycle. The unsure teenager becomes a confident and mature adult. The confident and assured young adult may become an insecure and weak person under stressing life problems. The fully matured, confident, healthy and vital human person must sooner or later give themselves over to decline in energy, vitality, and death itself. Natural hope unsupported and filled out with Christian and spiritual hope based on Christ and God, has built into it non-hope. The Scriptures express it in many ways. One way that occurs to me now is the saying of Jesus: “What profit would a man have if he gained the whole world and lost his soul in the process?”. A sense of the limitations of human hopes can help us to love our lives more realistically and more centered on God and the promised future and present He assures us we can have through our divine faith, hope and love.
Christian hope belongs to the same family as Christian faith and love. Mary’s hope flowed out of her faith. Our hope flows out of our divine faith too; just as our human hope and faith come from what we have received from other humans who have treated us in faithful and hopeful ways. Christian faith, being a spiritual vision of God’s world, opens us to the possibilities and plans of God for our lives. As we grow in faith, that is God’s vision to us fully in Jesus, who has seen the Father and the Kingdom, we also grow in hope. Christian hope flows out of believing that what we have seen in faith will be fulfilled in our life.
Our hope grows as we absorb the Word of God, and allow the promises and realities of the Word of God to take root in our hearts and lives. The Word of God grows in us. As we dispose ourselves for the Word to grow in us, our hope also grows. Divine hope and faith and love grow as do human hope, faith and love. Human faith and hope comes from becoming our best selves, which is aided by the love, encouragement, support and help we receive from other humans. We can’t give hope to ourselves totally. It basically comes from others. The same is true of divine faith, hope and love. It is given to us through the Holy Spirit. As Elizabeth heard the good news from Mary, we are told she was “…filled with the Holy Spirit…” When we believe that the Word of God says we have faith, and when we believe that what we have seen in faith will take place in our lives, we have Christian hope.
Often, what the Word of God tells seems foreign and even against the circumstances of our lives, our Christian hope is tested and challenged. Mary and Elizabeth can help us, especially in situations which are difficult and in which we need hope. And yet, it is what many throw out of their lives first. Hope is a candle burning in a dark night. Hope is a jar of water to guard in a desert. Christian hope is the realization that the Lord's forgiveness is greater than my sins.
Jesus is our hope who moves us, as He moved Mary to “proceed in haste”, in our lives, and as He moved Elizabeth by the Spirit to respond: “…Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? … Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled”.
Help us Lord, to have the same kind of hope and faith, and to trust not just in ourselves, but your greatness, which reaches to the ends of the earth.
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