inzet x

Ours is not a battle without hope.

He who does not hope, abandons the struggle. And he who continues to fight, does so because animated by hope.

Hope is the virtue which illuminates the darkness of the night. In the night, we do not see and the object of hope is precisely that which our senses do not see, because hope is only practised when we cannot see that for which we are hoping. For this reason, we only practise the virtue of hope on this earth: in Heaven, we will possess what we now hope for. In this sense, he who hopes is similar to he who possesses. In hoping, man already possesses, imperfectly on earth, what he will one day possess perfectly in eternity.

The Council of Trent teaches that hope is a duty of the Christian: “In Dei auxilio firmissimam spem collocare et reponere omnes debent.” Given that, as the theologians say, one cannot hope without faith, the primary virtue of the militant Church is the mixture of faith and hope which is called trust, which means believing in and hoping for blessings which our senses tell us are most distant. St Paul defines confidence as “gloriam spei”, “the glory of hope” [Heb. 3:6] and St Thomas defines it as “spes roborata ex aliqua opinion”, “hope strengthened by solid belief”.

Hope fortifies our actions and renders our prayers effective. It is a fine thing to fight in defence of a Church, whose dazzling beauty is concealed, but which we love, because we believe and hope in it. If in Heaven there will be no hope, because we will possess the thing hoped for, in hell there will be eternal despair, because one will suffer the absence of the thing in which one has not believed and not hoped for.

What we believe and hope for is none other than God and all the blessings which bring us close to Him. We must therefore repeat, with St Claude de la Colombière: “Je Vous espère Vous-même de Vous même, ô mon Créateur.”

We can lose everything, except trust. We trust not only that we will receive a reward for good works but also, according to St Augustine, for performing these good works with the help of God. We trust in the struggle until victory because we hope in it and because the object of our hope is God himself.

We hope not only one day to possess it in heaven, but to glorify it on earth, fighting for the social Kingdom of Jesus and Mary, for the realisation of which He leads us to hope. The Lord ignites hope in the hearts of those who hope in Him; and he who hopes will do so because he has already received the gift of hope.

An immense trust, nourished by the promise of Fatima...

animates our struggle in the battle on earth...

which is pleasing to Heaven


~bron~