If hope and fear go hand in hand, much more do hope and charity. Hope must always contain at least an initial charity. We cannot hope in the mercy of God unless we have at least some sort of love for Him. Hope reminds us of the mercy and goodness of God, and of His readiness to forgive. It turns our thoughts to heaven, and gives us a firm confidence that if we do our part, He will not shut the door of heaven on us, or thrust us away because of our past sins. It does more than this, it sets before us God's tender love for us, and it leads us on to love Him in return, and to say, "We love Him because He first loved us."
But if hope is to be the stepping-stone to perfect charity, it must not dwell merely on what benefits we may look to obtain from God, it must put before us a higher object. It must point us to the happiness of loving God for His Own sake, apart from any advantage to ourselves, except that which is derived from the mere happiness of loving so good a God. Self must gradually disappear, and hope must be fixed in the thought of God and of His Divine perfection, and of the eternal joy of being like to Him when we shall see Him as He is. Is my hope of this unselfish nature which makes it almost identical with charity?
In this vale of tears, hope and charity are inseparable. Our greatest happiness consisted of a foretaste of heaven, and what is a foretaste save a hope of still greater joys to come? The most ecstatic delights known to the saints were but a form of hope. Their perfect charity carried with it an ever-present hope of seeing God face to face, and of being united to Him in the supreme joy of the Beatific Vision. Have I a love that ever keeps alive and strong within me the virtue of hope?
- text from Beautiful Pearls of Catholic Truth; it has the Imprimatur of Archbishop Michael Augustine Corrigan, Diocese of New York, 6 October 1897