What’s Your Reason to Hope?

Often we find ourselves searching for some event or thing to make us happy, but it never will.

We find ourself saying, "When I get that gadget, car, boat, house, career  ... then I will be happy. Or maybe you actually have the fulfilling career, the beautiful house and your dream car and find yourself saying: "is this it?"

Pope Benedict XVI writes,

We find ourselves facing the question: what may we hope? A self-critique of modernity is needed in dialogue with Christianity and its concept of hope. In this dialogue Christians too, in the context of their knowledge and experience, must learn anew in what their hope truly consists, what they have to offer to the world and what they cannot offer (Spe Salvi, 22).

Pope Benedict explains that the fundamental error of materialism is that scientific progress and the acquisition of material wealth will make us happy. And he asks: what does progress really mean? If the progress is external only, without a corresponding progress in ethical formation—man’s inner growth—then it is not progress at all.

Instead, it becomes a threat.

A fascinating and perhaps even prophetic work, The End of the Present World, by Father Charles Arminjon, originally published in French in 1881, was translated by Susan Conroy.

Father Arminjon describes how the advent of a civilization dominated by atheism and materialism will set the stage for the coming of the Antichrist. “[W]hen the Christian faith has finally died out in the hearts of men—when pleasure and well-being have become the gods of the day—human activity will then have a single goal; the power of the state; one single lever and stimulus: public opinion; one inspiration and driving force…gold.”

Our hearts are made for only one thing—God. So when we try to find fulfillment in other things like entertainment, power, attention, money, or sex we will end up disappointed. These secondary goods can only satisfy us temporarily. Once the thrill of the moment wears off, we look to fill up our bucket again. We end up in the constant cycle of trying to be filled, but we are always left feeling empty.

Ultimately, Father Arminjon’s message is a sign that we are made for more, as is Pope Benedict’s message in Spe Salvi. For we are “children of the light,” not of the darkness (John 12:36). Walking in the light gives us hope.

We are created by God, for him. We cannot be happy with lesser things. Our hearts yearn for the infinite. That is why, when we fall in love, only “till death do us part” will suffice. And only God’s love can give us the hope we need to persevere throughout this vale of tears, for there are many disappointments along the way.

The world is imperfect, sin abounds, and every day it may seem like there is a new failure in our lives.

But we must remember that despite our sinfulness and disappointments, we are saved by love. Once we encounter the living God, when we have entered into an intimate relationship with him, we “become capable of the great hope, and thus we become ministers of hope for others” (Spe Salvi, 52).

So while many people seek to fulfill their hearts with toys that pass away, we hope in the living God. Our hope becomes hope for others, and for the world.

What do you put your hope in?