2532AFC080825 – How Big Is Your Hope?
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Wisdom 18:7-8 –
7 The deliverance of the righteous and the destruction of their enemies
were expected by your people.
8 For by the same means by which you punished our enemies
you called us to yourself and glorified us.
Psalm 33:18-20 –
18 Truly the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him,
on those who hope in his steadfast love,
19 to deliver their soul from death,
and to keep them alive in famine.
20 Our soul waits for the Lord;
he is our help and shield.
Hebrews 11:1-2, 8 (GNT) [1]– 1 To have faith is to be sure of the things we hope for, to be certain of the things we cannot see. 2 It was by their faith that people of ancient times won God’s approval. 8 It was faith that made Abraham obey when God called him to go out to a country which God had promised to give him. He left his own country without knowing where he was going.
Luke 12:48 b – From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.
Aloha nui loa, ʻŌmea! It’s Aloha Friday! Praise the Lord for that! Bless his Holy name! Praise the Lord! What is Hope? Or, should we ask, Who is Hope? It’s astonishing how much has been written about Hope! I’ll begin with one of my favorites:
“Hope” is the thing with feathers—
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
~~Emily Dickinson
The last two stanzas speak to me in the way I understand Hope. Hope comes from humble Love because Hope is neither selfish nor proud. Indeed, Hope is selfless and humble. There is a Latin phrase, “Semper Idem, Semper Fidelis, Spes Numquam Deficit.” This means: “Always the same, always faithful, Hope never fails.” A similar aphorism is “Semper idem, semper fidelis, spes non frangitur.” Always the same, always faithful, hope does not break.
Hope is always the antecedent of Peace. Peace is the realization of Hope. I mentioned that back on Valentines day (← Check it out!) this year. No matter how rough the storm, that little feathered thing called Hope still sings, still nests in the heart, still calls us to move with confidence wherever the Holy Spirit leads us. All of this is done for us, with us, and in us without requiring so much as a tiny crumb of compensation. How else could something like that happen except that it be a Gift from God? When we acknowledge and accept that Gift of Peace, we find the other two sisters of Hope – Faith, and Love. It is a Gift of Unmerited Favor, and what is that, adelphos? That is Hope – a Divine Gift from God, a gift of Grace, Grace that is greater than all our sins. (↔ Music Link)
Hope is just so amazing – and I’d surmise that is because it is based in Grace which we know is Amazing – and The Apostle Paul got it absolutely right when he said To have faith is to be sure of the things we hope for, to be certain of the things we cannot see. Belovéd, what if our F.A.I.T.H. was so huge that our Hope became as powerful as that little bird who weathers every storm and the chilliest of starless, stormy nights? Dare we ever Hope for such Grace? Beloved, Grace builds up Faith. Faith builds up Hope. Hope builds up Love. And Love is our greatest treasure. Why? Because, the only reason we have it is so that we can give it away! Faith is All-that-is-Good because it is Good for All, and everything that is Good for All is from God as a Gift of Grace. Again we see these Three Sisters named Faith, Hope, and Love.
Here we are reminded of Saint Sophia and her three daughters who were martyred by the Emperor Hadrian. He is infamous for his vicious destruction of Jerusalem, even more vicious persecutions of Christians, and the absolute crushing of the Jewish Revolt in 135 AD. It was Hadrian who banned Jews from living in the lands along the Eastern Mediterranean Coast. He destroyed Jerusalem and then “rebuilt” it as a pagan city. St. Sophia (whose name comes from the Greek word for Wisdom) was a Christian widow who had three daughters named Faith, Hope, and Charity. They were brought to Hadrian who tried to force them to renounce their Faith. They refused repeatedly. The girls were submitted to unspeakable tortures and then beheaded all without denying Christ. Their mother later perished over their graves. You can find out more about that here (↔ Click Link). It was Hadrian who named the lands on the western coasts of Israel “Syria Palestine,” and we all know how that rankles to this very day.
This is the story of but four Holy Martyrs who had so much Hope that they willingly died for the Faith and Love that Bolstered that Hope. We know that hundreds-of-thousands of Christians were martyred – most through great suffering – over the past 25 centuries. Many of you might know that in this present age of dark violence, there are hundreds more Christians martyred for their Faith. This is especially true across Africa and Asia. (←See a link to an informative map here. I strongly urge you to take a look so as to understand how grave the persecutions are around the World.) You may notice that in North Central Africa the Nation of Chad appears to be free or nearly free of persecution, yet Boko Haram and other similar Islamist groups are trying to change that and are increasingly active there.
Now, I must ask you, what if Boko Haram, ISIS, HAMAS, ISIL, Al-Qaeda, and other Jihadists could muster a large enough hope that they could overpower the nations and peoples they oppose? Could that happen? We know for a fact that in the past there have been nations that instituted NATIONAL restrictions and persecutions for various groups – most prominently Christians, but others as well. My answer would be NO. Because why? Because they may be able to generate high hopes, but those hopes are based on Hate, errors in faith (wrong gods), and their hope is therefore in vain because at the end of it all, they do not have Faith, Hope, and Love as Graces from the One True and Living God, the Father of our Lord, Jesus, the Christ of God, and the Holy Spirit the Unity and Love of the Father and the Son. Without that surety of Grace, they can never succeed. Nonetheless, they can make one horrific mess of everything for billions of people, and that is why they must be opposed – in Love – at every twist and turn of their campaigns of violence. Their acts, their plans, their goals are utterly unrighteous! That is because they dwell in Darkness; but we, instead, radiate the Light of Truth (↔ Music Link) in Righteousness. And what does Wisdom say about the Righteous?
The deliverance of the righteous and the destruction of their enemies
were expected by your people.
For by the same means by which you punished our enemies
you called us to yourself and glorified us.
Why?
Psalm 124:8 –
8 Our help is in the name of the Lord,
who made heaven and earth.
And also
Romans 15:4 – 4 For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope.
So that
1 Peter 1:3 – 3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
So then What is Hope and why do we have it? Where do we get it, and from whom? In Hebrew it is tiqvah (tik-vaw’). The root is literally the word for cord, as in a measuring line. In Greek it is elpis (el-pece’), the expectation of what is certain. In either language it implies patience – hupomoné (hoop-om-on-ay’) – literally “remaining under” as in to endure steadfastly whatever challenges God allows in our lives. Hope is patient-waiting for something we are confident will eventually be ours. We wait in the Hope of his steadfast love. The wait-and-watch Hope of Mercy (steadfast love) comes from our innate desire for what is Good, and that desire comes from God himself, as do all things that are Good (See James 1:17). Hoping is a way we patiently and vigilantly wait for something better, something encouraging, something we trust as well worth waiting to obtain. It is not complacent, vegetative waiting; it is active preparation for a future Blessing and so we act in Hope because of Hope.
Our hope was first promised in Genesis 3:9-23 when God promised that earthlings would eventually overcome the evil caused in Eden, all through “the seed of the woman.” (See = zera (zeh’-rah) Descendants, offspring, child/children) This is a very important fact to remember, because it is the Source of our Hope as well as the process through which it will be fulfilled. God told Eve and Adam that their sin conferred on them the curse of mortality; their inheritance would be Death. In God’s infinite Wisdom, that mortality was also the means through which humanity would be restored to unity with God. Here is how that Miracle is expressed in the Preface to Eucharistic Prayer III:
For we know it belongs to your boundless glory that you came to the aid of mortal beings with your divinity and even fashioned for us a remedy out of mortality itself so that the cause of our downfall might become the means of our salvation, through Christ our Lord.
Now, to me, that is completely amazing – a remedy out of mortality itself. In other words, it is Grace upon Grace. For me, that is Hope. When I look around the world and see loved-ones suffering; innocents being murdered, persecuted, tormented, and terrorized; natural disasters overwhelming the great and the small alike; the oceans, the lands, and the very sky above us polluted and dying; then I turn my eyes toward Jesus, and I see HOPE. It is such a great and wonderful Hope that I don’t mind waiting until (↔ Music Link) the Darkness fails because what I’m waiting for will be Great and Wonderful! And yet I wonder if my Hope is anywhere near as big as the Hope of St. Sophia and her daughters, or of St Pope John Paul II, or St. Mother Teresa, or “God’s influencer” St Carlos Acutis (See image at left). These last three are people who are my contemporaries, and should be my exemplars ; but then so it is with Sts. Sophia, Faith, Hope, and Charity and so many others like each and all of the Apostles all of who were martyred in grotesque ways. They died for HOPE; not fashion, not adulation, not for anything to do with feelings.
In today’s world, feelings are more important than Truth, and that’s a very sad fact. The World takes delight in shaming and persecuting us; nonetheless, we can – and must – endure in firmly-declared and patient Truth. DO we want to be liked more than we want to be truthful, or reverent, or righteous because we Love God? How easily we have forgotten that nothing, nothing in this World is worth dying for! Only that which is beyond the muck and smut of the World is worth dying for because only those things are worth living for. If your Hope is in Christ Jesus, it will always be big enough to hold the Hope of all the earthlings who have ben, are now, or will be inhabitants of this Earth which is merely a speck in the eye of the cosmos (and it’s even big enough for all of the rest of that cosmos, too!)
Because of our Great Big Hope, we have been given charisms, Holy Gifts from God, which we must use to Love and Serve God and each other. Those Gifts are just big enough to fill up our lives if we use them. They are generally the more-than-enough kind of Gifts, so when we get them, we are expected to use them by giving them away and in that way whenever we are gifted with much, much will be expected from us. If Love was like a jet airliner, maybe Hope would be the jet fuel. Big Jet – Big Hope. I’m looking forward to a soft landing!
Whatever, whenever, wherever, whoever, however, if ever, forever —
at your service, Belovéd!
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Unless otherwise indicated, all scripture passages are from the New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE) New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Biblical languages inserts from Bible Hub (Bible Hub: Search, Read, Study the Bible in Many Languages) Visit at http://biblehub.com
Aloha Friday Messages by Charles O. Todd, III is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License
[1] Passages marked (GNT): Good News Translation (GNT) are from the Good News Translation® (Today’s English Version, Second Edition)© 1992 American Bible Society. All rights reserved. For more information about GNT, visit www.bibles.com and www.gnt.bible.
