Mary Can Help Us Work with Hope - Happy Day!

Let's see if we can work with hope today.

Not saying we'll hope things go well during the day. In business we try to do better than hope for good results. So I'm not talking about hope in that sense. We're focusing on  spiritual hope. With some luck we'll wind up with a deeper understanding of "holy hope." And with that understanding, we might be able to help grow our spiritual life, even in the midst of a busy day at work.

To help us, we turn to Father Edward Leen. We've seen Father Leen in the past. He's one of the best sources I know of good spiritual reading. His theme today is Mary as Mother of Holy Hope. I learned how important the virtue of hope - Holy Hope - really is to us all.

“Mary is the Mother of Holy Hope. Why of Holy Hope? It seems as if but few realize the extraordinary importance of Holy Hope in the spiritual life. This may seem a rather unimportant virtue. They consider it of less importance than that of her theological virtues of Faith and Charity, and the least practical of the three in the handling of daily life. Why is this? There are few who in their daily lives act sustainedly in the virtue of Hope. We act in Faith and in a certain measure in Charity. Why is it so difficult to act in Hope? Hope is a tending towards an object that is distant, an object not yet acquired, and possibly in itself extremely difficult of attainment. Our tending towards the object is sustained and buoyed up by the consciousness that we have at our disposal means which will help us to attain it."

We note right away that "few...act sustainedly in the virtue of Hope." We mentioned above that hope - understood in the ordinary sense - will not gain results we seek in our business. That's true. But if we aspire to some goal or goals in our work life that currently exist beyond our reach, wouldn't hope help us in our endeavor? Yes, we need a plan and we need to work that plan. But rarely does anything in this world progress smoothly or in a straight line. To sustain us in those bumpy, even discouraging moments, hope can help.

In fact, Father Leen defines Hope as "a tending towards and object that is distant, an object not yet acquired, possibly in itself extremely difficult of attainment." Do you have such objects at work? I do. Some have been distant for a long time. But if they continue to be worth the effort, hope certainly helps me to keep plugging away. 

Of course, Father focuses on a higher plane, on the "attainment" of God. Before you characterize this as the aspiration of only especially "holy" folks, think again. Notice here how he ties this aspiration directly into the daily duties of our state of life, including the specific tasks awaiting our attention today at work:

“What is the object, distant and difficult to attain, of the virtue of Hope? What can be more difficult of attainment to the creature than God? Only God can reach God. Is it not an extraordinary thing that a creature should aspire to such a goal, aspire to reach God, to rise to that power, that activity, which will put it in possession of God, and that even here and now? We may ask ourselves how many people, in the ordinary activities of daily life, press on in the hope of coming thereby to God. We hope to reach him in prayer, but do we seek to find Him in our ordinary daily duties – in teaching a class, in sweeping a room, in working at the sewing machine? In these activities, do we act in the way of Hope? Do we realize that in these things we can tend continually towards God, so that there need be no moment of life, no activity, no duty, in which we are not tending towards Him. We act in Faith. We act in Charity. Why do we not act in Hope?”

So we see we can work to achieve some our more ambitious "stretch" goals in our work and our personal life relying on hope to sustain us. And at the same time, with "holy Hope" in those very efforts to achieve our practical goals on the job, we can reach towards God. Hope serves as the catalyst and the glue that unites and combines our daily work with our spiritual life.

We'll continue our discussion next time...