Me and a friend of mine were (friendly) discussing existential stuff, life, death, actions, impact of said actiond on our lives ecc… He says, at some point, “Your (not “mine” specifically, a general “you”) hope cannot save you”.
What got me wondering, is saying such a phrase “anti-christian” (in a certain sense, since our whole concept of religion is based on “hope”) or is the Christian idea of hope different from the “mainstream” one (and so it does not really count)?
Most do not understand the concept of hope.
Hope is one of the stages or postions of the Will.
Love is when you have an image of the reality of what you consider a good place to be, a better situation that where you are now.
Desire is when you are in movement toward what you love.
Joy is when you are now in that actual reality that you imagined before, and you are enjoying this current reality.
Hope is when there is a difficult to reach image of the reality you consider a good place to be; you have to move through a lot of transitional realities to achieve the goal.
Those transitional positions are not pleasant places to be, but you go through them to reach the goal of what you desire. These transitional places are termed “means to the end”.
And Hope is when, in spite of the difficulties yet to be endured, you believe you will actually get through them all and reach the desired reality.
An “act of Hope” is when, in a difficult spot, you find the words coming out of your mouth, “I (we) really are going to make it through all this to the goal! I know it!!!”
Your Will puts those words on your lips, to awaken your confidence and strengthen your movement forward. That is how Hope “saves you”, by beefing up your determination to continue through the difficult means until you reach the end.
The virtue of Hope infused in us with the infusion of Grace is that in the atmosphere of our souls, a light shines, a light with the wavelength of Hope, to enlighten the full pathway through all we are proceeding toward the goal. We see the path where others see dead-ends, and then the Will moves our thoughts and mouths to say, “This will succeed!”
