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Forming those who form others

On Hope

If the desire for God is a drive as deep as it is indestructible (which is to say, a longing so profound and pervasive that on the strength of its universality we cannot understand ourselves as other than religious beings), then God’s answering response represents the definitive disclosure of divine love, soliciting our freedom for a life of unending communion with God and his angels and his saints. However, to negotiate our way from one state to the other, from the exile in which we languish to the eternity to which we are called, requires hope, a supernatural virtue on whose exercise everything depends. What then is hope? And how does one get a handle on it? Josef Pieper is wonderfully lucid on the subject. It is, he says, “the confidently patient expectation of eternal beatitude in a contemplative and comprehensive sharing of the triune life of God.”[i] What is immediately striking about this description is the high level of certitude at which the claim is made. So strong and secure is the structure of hope, that we may say, as Paul certainly does in his letter to the Romans (8:24), we shall be saved by it.

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Regis Martin, S.T.D., a longtime professor of systematic theology at Franciscan University (25 years and counting), is the author of a half-dozen books (The Beggar’s Banquet, most recently). He has been a theological consultant to religious organizations and dioceses, and written for numerous scholarly publications and popular Catholic magazines and newspapers. Along with other Franciscan University professors, in 2006 Dr. Martin contributed to a preparatory paper on the Franciscan perspective of beauty for the Pontifical Council for Culture, which was warmly received by Vatican officials.

He has been a theological consultant to religious organizations and dioceses, and written for numerous scholarly publications and popular Catholic magazines and newspapers. Along with other Franciscan University professors, in 2006 Dr. Martin contributed to a preparatory paper on the Franciscan perspective of beauty for the Pontifical Council for Culture, which was warmly received by Vatican officials. - See more at: https://spt.franciscan.edu/faculty/martin-regis/.
 

This article is from The Catechetical Review (Online Edition ISSN 2379-6324) and may be copied for catechetical purposes only. It may not be reprinted in another published work without the permission of The Catechetical Review by contacting [email protected]

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