Christian hope is a theological virtue

    In our day, it is common to see and hear the words “hope” and “optimism” used as if they were synonymous. However, it is crucial for us as Christians to be more precise than that.
    We’ve all heard the question, “Is the glass half empty or half full?” Choosing the former description ostensibly means we are pessimists, while the latter choice casts us as optimists. To be hopeful, though, is to declare these two options inadequate, because Christian hope is a theological virtue, whereas pessimism and optimism reside in the secular realm, without reference to God.
    Even a cursory glance at events in the world around us reveals the inadequacy of the pessimism-optimism dichotomy. Such a glance discloses, among other things at the international level: a Syrian despot slaughtering thousands of his own people in a desperate bid to hold on to power; a U.S. military mission in Afghanistan wounded by an American soldier’s inexplicable massacre of 16 Afghan civilians, mostly women and children; and a Frenchman who shot dead several Jewish students and a rabbi, whose only apparent sin was their Jewishness.
    Closer to home, a teenager in Florida was fatally shot by an overzealous neighborhood watch captain, evidently because he was walking in the wrong neighborhood at the wrong time, in the wrong color skin. Here in New Orleans, the killings of two other young men by policemen under quite different circumstances have exacerbated racial tensions and further weakened the already shaky trust of law enforcement among many in the black community. To add insult to these injuries, our beloved Saints were dealt a severe blow when the NFL handed down unprecedentedly stiff penalties for an informal bounty program aimed at encouraging play that could result in injuries to opposing players.
    In short, there seems precious little basis for optimism, yet it seems somehow un-Christian to be pessimistic. A third alternative seems necessary, so we can be thankful that our faith provides one: hope.
    Here we must be perfectly clear: Christian hope has nothing to do with confidence in our ability either to somehow convert the entire world to our faith or to radically transform it – without benefit of such conversion – into a place where peace, love and understanding are the order of the day. Such confidence would differ little, if at all, from the optimism to which authentic hope must provide an alternative or an antidote.
    “The Catechism of the Catholic Church” helps us to see the crucial distinction between optimism and genuine hope. In paragraph 676, we find the following: “The Antichrist’s deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgment.” In short, authentic Christian hope rests upon Christ as its foundation and culmination.
    However, this hope cannot be construed as the hope of a universal conversion to Christianity, because just as some rejected Jesus and his message 2,000 years ago, so also some in our day and any future day will reject the Gospel, no matter how perfectly it might be proclaimed. Acknowledging this does not excuse us from evangelizing the world as thoroughly, joyfully and energetically as we can, but it recognizes that we cannot predict or guarantee the success of our evangelizing efforts.
    Without question, the church also exhorts and encourages us to do all that we can, by the grace of God, to bring about a world characterized by justice, peace and harmony. However, it sternly cautions us against the folly of placing our hope in the results of those efforts. In this light, we do well to recall something Blessed Mother Teresa said: “God calls us not to be successful, but to be faithful.”
    The Catechism quotation above states clearly that our hope will find its realization beyond history, not within it. Unlike its counterfeit secular cousin, optimism, our hope is messianic: it is focused on the second coming of the just judge whose kingdom is not of this world. That kingdom rests not on our efforts to bring about a heaven on earth – regardless how sincere and well-intentioned those efforts might be – but rather on the unerring judgment, unfailing mercy and unquenchable love of God.
    This Lent and Holy Week, as always, we have been called “to wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.” It is an active waiting, supported by the disciplines we cultivate and enabled by the presence of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit and the teachings of our church caution us against a narrow, secular optimism. They also point us beyond the horizon of history toward the true source and object of our hope: the Jesus whose passion, death and resurrection we will soon celebrate, and whose coming again in glory “to judge the living and the dead” will bring unspeakable joy to those who have remained faithful throughout the intervening trials.
    Walter Bonam is associate director of evangelization and the catechumenate (RCIA) for the Office of Religious Education.