Hope confounds not because the charity of God is poured forth in our hearts.
Lethargy of Soul
From the Absence of Hope
“There is no hope.” If those four words were wholly true, the energy of man would disappear and a universal palsy would benumb the world. Commerce and education, arts and professions and trades, health and sickness, growth and decay, civilization and science and religion, all need hope and practise hope. In the region of the north the rivers become solid blocks of ice, creeping slowly to the sea; in the absence of hope the currents of life would not move, however sluggishly; they would be fixed in the hard and fast immobility of coldness and death. Hope melts away lethargy and makes the energy of life run free and smooth. When evil threatens us, we begin to fear for our hope; when evil is unavoidable, we cry out: “There is no hope.” Wherever evil most abounds, there that sad cry is oftenest heard, “There is no hope.”
From the Evils of Pain
The hospital hears the cry. In that sad spot the pains of the world are gathered: the pain which is the price of man’s entrance into life, the pain which lurks like an assassin along all the ways of man’s life, the pain whose pangs torture man out of life. Is there a moment in all the twenty-four hours in which some anguished lips do not whisper sadly: “There is no hope”? The last draught of medicine has been taken; the last incision of the surgeon’s knife has been made; and with the last clasp of the hand and last touch of the lips and look of the eye, hope is submerged by the dark incoming tide of evil.
From the Evils of Sin
The soul of man, too, as well as his anguished body, must struggle lest the cry of “no hope” ring despairingly out of its gloomy depths. For the soul sin is the great evil which grapples in a death-struggle with man’s hope: personal sin and the sins of others. Dishonesty and immorality and intemperance and hatred of a fellow-man, these are the evils which sweep in upon the soul, become another, blacker self, closer to one than his shadow and near to one as life itself. To pluck out those habits which have fastened upon the soul so firmly and have grown in so deeply, will be like plucking out and tearing away some organ of the body, parting currents of blood, rending the quivering flesh and severing the countless fibres of sensitive life. Is not the soul, contending with evil habits, tempted to moan: “There is no hope”?
From the Multiplication of Evils
The crimes of others also press upon the tortured soul. Never was man’s callous brutality to man more widely and more (quickly known than today. The telegraph and the printing-press multiply the crime or disaster almost instantaneously, and what was an evil to one or a few becomes an evil to all. A shudder encircling the globe quivers through mankind, and every heart registers the evil and participates in the grief just as the delicate needles of scientific instruments record every vibration of the earth from some far off earthquake.
From Injustice Between Men
Never were evils of others more grossly exaggerated or painted in blacker colors than they are today. Civilization seems to be breaking up into two camps, employers and employed. The intimate personal relations which used to exist, when manufacture was conducted on a smaller scale, have now in many cases disappeared. Men work for stockholders whom they know not and see not, who do not seem much concerned for them and for whom they themselves are not much concerned. Agitators take advantage of this separation to breed discontent. On the one hand, people who hold property forget their obligations and the rights of others. They are like a man, as has been said, who owns an untamed tiger and walks along the street with it, held in check by a shoestring. On the other hand, the employed forget their duties and listen to false teaching and to incentives to violence. The injustices of governments and tyrannical majorities who trample on the rights of minorities are added to other injustices. All this evil tends to drive people to despair. The soul moans: “There is no hope.”
From the Many Ways of Death
Then there is ever the gloom of death overshadowing mankind. Life is a continual struggle to keep out of the graveyard. Physicians may multiply and remedies become innumerable, but the patients outnumber them both. When science stamps out one disease, other new ones take its place. Shipwrecks or train-wrecks, fire or flood, wars, pestilence or famine, these and a million other causes which cannot be put under a class, are avenues leading to the same burying-ground. We all know that our doom is sealed; we are all condemned to death. The missile of our death may have a slow velocity or a swift one; it may be travelling through a long barrel or a short one, but the trigger has already been pulled, the bullet is on its way and in a short time it will do its deadly work. “There is no hope.”
The Mass of Evil and False Remedies
Gather together the anguish of mothers and the cries of weak infants, the moans and screams of the hospitals, the groans of remorse, the curses and imprecations upon crime and injustice, the jobbings and laments over the dead, and listen to the evil of the world as it rises and falls like the roar of a great storm over the dark waters of a shoreless ocean. That is the cry which hope must hush; that is the evil which hope must hush; that is the evil which hope must compensate for, if it cannot remove. Hope must strike the drug from the hands of those who seek the despair of stupor and must stay the hand of the suicide who blindly runs to the despair of the tomb. Hope must not let remorse drive the victims of habit to the despair of dissipation or the victims of injustice to the despair of violence. Hope must dispel lethargy and recall animation and activity; it must wipe away tears and light up saddened eyes; it must still sobbing agony and bring peace where it cannot inspire joy. All who say: “There is no hope,” must hear the cheerful and confident answer always, “There is hope.”
Energy of Soul
Goodness Incarnate in Christ’s Heart
Hope has a gigantic task to perform, and we may be sure it will not disappoint those who have it. This is the testimony of Saint Paul, who from the intensity of evil argues to hope. “We glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation works patience, and patience trial, and trial hope, and hope confounds not because the charity of God is poured forth in our hearts.” The hopeful heart is so superior to pain and other evil that it even glories in tribulation. The reason is not far to seek. “Because the charity of God is poured forth in our hearts.” Hope holds fast to the goodness of God. As one of the theological virtues, hope clings to God Himself; it fastens itself upon God’s certain promises. Saint Paul states the truth in the words just quoted: the charity, that is, the love of God, is the sure foundation of hope. Saint Paul is right. The Heart of Christ, which is God’s love made flesh, should fill the hearts of mankind with the flood of hope. Nothing else can do so better. The Heart of Christ is all goodness; the Heart of Christ has conquered all evil and bears in Itself the remedy to all evil and the answer to all of the world’s despair. The hopeful heart then will reach up to God through the Heart of Christ. Heaven and God are the goal of Christian hope, and the distance has been shortened by the Incarnation and the end seems far nearer, now that God’s love comes to us in so attractive and winning a form, revealed to us in the wounded Heart of the Man-God.
His Wounds – Assuaging of Pain
So, wounded heart, you who suffer pain in the world’s hospitals, you must never let those cold words cross your lips, “There is no hope.” Before you is the Heart of the risen Christ. He invites you to bring your hand and put it into His side and to believe and hope. His Heart has not permitted Its wounds to close that you might not despair. His death has made your pain rich in merit. Suffering was a penalty for sin; Christ’s death and resurrection has made suffering a source of grace, a promise of greater happiness. Christ suffered to enter into His glory; you suffer to enter into your glory. So when you are in pain, you are travelling towards the reward of hope, and when earth has exhausted its powers of relieving your pain, you have almost reached the end of your journey. Before you is the risen Saviour with every scar radiant, with His wounded Heart resplendent as the sun. Tribulation has worked glory for Him and it will for you. Your pain is the pledge and guarantee of your hope. Turn not, then, away from this fountain of hope to the despair of stupefaction. Drugs may relieve you, they should not be allowed to destroy you. The saints in their trials, the martyrs in their torments, exulted in their pains because they fixed their eyes upon that Heart which proved to them that wounds and anguish are the distinguishing and consoling badges of God’s friends, just as they have become the glory of Christ’s Heart.
His Rising – Destroyer of Sin
And you, sinful heart, wherever you may be, do not you either despair. What if sin has brought you to the death of the soul; what if habit seems to have sealed you in the dark grave by the weight of a tombstone; one touch of the risen Saviour and the stone exceeding great was! rolled away on the first of Easter. Remember, too, that the earliest fruits of the resurrection were lavished on sinners. Peter and Thomas and Magdalene, she upon whom lay the heavy weight of habit, out of whom Christ cast seven devils, these were the ones Christ opened His Heart to. So do you, tortured heart, who are tempted to despair, look up and you will see Christ before you, with the cry of peace on His lips, extending to you the invitation to approach to His wounds. Those wounds were made for your sins, and every sight and thought of His wounded Heart must be an increase of hope for you. Christ has conquered sin and the world and the flesh and the devil, and His Heart remains forever as the splendid memorial of that victory. The return to innocence will not be harder under that standard. Through that avenue of love and mercy and infinite forgiveness which lies open before you, make your way, despairing heart; through the wounds of the Heart of Christ you will find hope.
His Suffering – Relief of Injustice
And you, worried heart, who feel the injustices of the world, do not have recourse to violence, which is really a kind of despair. Do not think that injustice is to be met by injustice. Christ, you know, was a victim of the crudest injustice, but He did not take up the sword or call upon His Father for legions of angels. No, He prayed for His persecutors, He died for them and made His crucifixion, not their condemnation but their conversion, should they so desire it. Today also the hopefulness of love and not the despair of violence must unite the warring factions of the world. The rich do not possess all rights and no duties; the poor have not all duties and no rights. Love must make wealth and power merciful and service faithful. The owner of an income from stocks and bonds must not look upon them as a well whose source goes through rock and earth, he cares not whither if only its supply fail not. The fountain of his wealth may pierce through flesh and bone and tap the stream of life-blood. Wealth, therefore, cannot look with unconcern upon the Heart of Christ, if wealth knows its income is pressing a cross into any human heart or tightening a crown of thorns about that heart or draining away man’s life through gaping wounds. To the poor likewise Christ’s wounded Heart teaches love, and love will be the answer to those who appeal to violence. On Calvary the world’s violence met Heaven’s love. They clashed in the Heart of Christ, where violence was defeated and love triumphed, and peace was made between man and God. The Heart of Christ will therefore be the best bond of union and the solid assurance of hope among men and will keep you patient and hopeful, worried heart.
His Death – Eternal Life
Lastly, frightened heart, do not despair because death is all around you, under foot and overhead. The nearer death comes, the more you must hope. Death is not the end of all. Christ’s Heart died; Christ’s Heart began to beat again in life. The heart within your breast will cease to throb; its substance will pass into dust, but the vision of the risen Heart of Christ is your most certain assurance that the dust will once more take shape and warmth and life and begin again to throb within you. Hope, too, when your friends are stricken down in death before you. Think not that you are going farther and farther away from those whose hearts were filled with love for you and are now in dust. Hope has other thoughts for you than that. You are not ten, twenty or thirty years farther from your own, but all those years nearer to them. “We do not grieve as those who have no hope,” Saint Paul teaches us. The Heart of Christ reminds us that all the hearts now dust will throb again with renewed life.
The Greatest Evil the Greatest Good
There is every reason for hope in the Heart of Christ, wounded, crowned with thorns, surmounted with a cross and yet transfigured with the splendor of Heaven. Then fix your eyes upon the Heart of Christ and cease not to hope. Christ entered into what seemed to human eyes a most hopeless conflict, one man against the greatest civil power and the strongest, not to say most fanatic, religious power then in the world. A weak, human frame contending against an accumulation of physical tortures; an innocent soul withstanding the immense mass of the world’s iniquity! What could be more hopeless? Yet the Heart of Christ is before you to testify to the wonderful, exalting outcome of that conflict. From pain came joy; from torture, bliss; from weakness, strength; from disgrace, resplendent glory; from sin, sanctification; from death, eternal life; from the slaying of God, the saving of all mankind. Most astounding paradox that ever was or could be! The Heart that met pain, sin and death on Calvary is before you, hearts of the world, painless, sinless, deathless; “always living to make intercession for us”; and could there be anything more hopeful than that?