The christian Hope. (Dr Canals)

THE CHRISTIAN HOPE.

by Dr Canals, Salvador (by his book ¡meditating ascetic") Among the virtues that leave the deepest imprint on human mind that more evident influence on the life and the act of men, is the Christian virtue, theological, the hope. The same man, in fact, according to live under the breath of hope or s'ajegui under the weight of despair, it presents as truth-and is like a giant or a pygmy. In our living and our men are dealing with every day, not without surprise witnesses or pena- of these amazing transformations; So perhaps more than any other in our century suffers from the lack of this virtue. How many philosophies, many attitudes, many moods of the men of our time are rooted in souls without hope, that struggle between anguish and fear, an anxiety that can not be separated, a fear that nothing can get away!

The truth is that the man can not live without hope. The hope is the call of the Creator beginning and end of our lives, which no human being can escape; is the voice of the Redeemer who ardently desires the salvation of all men, "he wants all men to be saved": no one can, without losing the peace of the soul, refusing to listen; is a deep longing for God that He has left us a marveling- gift like after having made for each one of us, those ineffable "works of his hands", in the language of theologians, Creation is called, Elevation, and Redemption.

This deep longing of the human heart, few have been able to express it through the Christian centuries with that persuasive tone acquired knowledge with those suffering shocked accents experience with the St. Augustine expressed. Writer

of high intuition and profound states of mind, was able to define a cry of his great spirit throughout the condition of man, passing through the land: oh Lord !, "You made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until they rest in you".

Let us pause for a moment about that phrase to try to shed light on our sympathy and give us a reason for our anxiety. Nostalgia will always be our traveling companion, friend of the happy and sad times in our earthly day. But -and duties can be lightened, and so is the task of the virtue of hope. In the second part of the sentence opens Augustine, indeed, as a respirator. If the vent is closed, anxiety and nostalgia would become despair and anguish.

While we are on the way, while we are on this pedestrian t While we are on the way, while we are on this earth pedestrians, bring us the longing for God and an obscure uneasiness, engendered by the uncertainty regarding the achievement of our ultimate purpose (because no one can, indeed, out of a private God's revelation, feeling certain of his own eternal salvation): nostalgia and restlessness that can not now due which we are convinced that was a - was lightened by the Christian hope. We, the Christians of this world, we rely on hope and fall when the hope, together with faith at the end of our earthly day, then we will have the joy of possession without shadows and the kingdom of love without any fears. At the end of our human affairs, will for each of us and the joy of possession or despair of being forever deprived of God. The hope, theological virtue, makes us tender towards God continually, hoping to reach him, the relief promised us:" have confidence", I have overcome the world. the reason The formal reason

(as they say theologians) of this virtue is God who always comes to our aid: omnipotence helper.

However, it sometimes happens that we, Christians (and this is one of the many contradictions of our lives), replaced in our souls and in our hearts this great and beautiful hope, which is God and our leading ultimately to other smaller human hopes, even beautiful. And it is not that Christians should not have human hopes, on the contrary there are even beautiful and noble hopes that must be in our heart more than any other. But here-in the "province" of the HOPE need in our souls and in our hearts there order, hierarchy and harmony of hope, and that no human hope -for that is noble and beautiful - can dim the light and reduce the power of hope to own and enjoy forever in eternal life, God, our ultimate end.

Happens so often in our lives that God, through the game of his Providence, he fell miserably any human hope that our personal "measuring values" had perhaps exorbitant, with the aim of preventing them occupied that place in our hearts that only God is the great hope of filling. Then we must know how to play the game and learn from Providence to restore the true order of values in the scale of hope.

God help us effectively relieve those human hopes, in order for him to gift set, we have not hesitated to put in its proper place. If, on the contrary, to break this divine disposition of human hopes we would answer with such a constance away from us the great hope of God, then we would dig with our own hands a pit of despair and revolt.

I need not tell you how many crises of this sort have known: you also, in your experience, many you had known. Crises that often only see the human aspect

exterior, and to which we give the name of the complex or neurosis when his true appearance is another and the diagnosis should be plus spiritual content deeper .

One thing is very certain: until you live and possess the true Christian virtue of hope, lack firmness in our lives and we will live in instability.

Pass with extreme ease of presumption, when everything goes well and our life progresses without shocks and disappointments, which will point to discouragement and will nest and give our mind, just something goes against our expectations, and shock against our sensitivity, our programs disturbed and disappointed our expectations. The virtue of hope, if he lives deeply, is invincible firmness and confident abandonment in a constant fidelity to duty, puts us precisely on such fluctuations.ÂżDo you remember the words of Christ and curled the threatening waters of the Sea of Galilee? , "be silent, mute". They seem to represent the voice of hope that, with his strength, imposes silence tumult inside discouragement. and it followed (follow the Gospel passage), an infinite calm. This is precisely the fruit of hope: calm, serenity, peace.

The hope, as the theologians teach us, gives a certain trend: " in the hope certainly tends towards an end", says St. Thomas. But in our failures, our contradictions, our fault, we have to wait forever in God, who has promised his help to those who ask with humility and trusting perseverance: " you told us "ask us; ask and you shall be given". What? The temporal goods, conditionally, "id set", to the extent that they are useful to our eternal salvation; thank necessary without conditions; not only grace, but

the Holy Spirit "altissimum Donum Dei" (The highest gift of God) And here again spontaneously to mind the words of Jesus to the Samaritan woman: " if ... you knew the gift of God": and if you really knew, understood entirely the gift of God with much we would invoke often the Holy Spirit and ask trusting everything that we need not to deviate from the straight path and to achieve without falling and without delay our last end.

The battle of the Christian's hope we face every day: me and the Lord governed shepherd, the Lord governs and I had to miss me aware (because this is part of the same theological virtue of hope) that it is not based on our merits or virtues, but on God's omnipotence and mercy.

In the light of hope, indeed, God appears more than ever non appreciator merits, not as estimator merit, but as forgiving of our faults, as we repeat every day in one of the prayers Mass with us to have Communion. We have to to rely on the forces that come from this theological virtue and learning and to fight discouragement impulses that disturb our daily journey toward evangelical perfection; we must learn to resist, also daily bites of pessimism, which tend to exacerbate with time and wear the monotony of life. In such moods are evoked something back to our memory, with its quiet strength and a little melancholic, two evangelical figures: the woman bent (inclined woman) and righthand man stagnant, two figures for the depression, fatigue and inactivity are reported particularly suited to express the effects on the human mind by these diseases is called moral pessimism and

discouragement, which are nothing more than the grace the virtue of hope.

But we must not only try to take control of ourselves with the strength of Christian hope: you need to know to instill in others the confidence and serenity, giving life to a true apostolate and self confidence, according to the example of anonymous friends of that blind speaking St. Luke in his Gospel, which was encouraged by them to respond to the vocation of the Lord, these precious words: : "surge", vocative now! "Bear in good spirits; Arise, is calling you!"

The Christian hope leads souls to abandonment: who really hopes in the Lord is indeed faithful to the will meant God (fidelity entering into the area of the virtue of obedience) and has thus effectively their spirit to drop against the will of God blessing. But this perfect abandonment, which leads to the virtue of hope, deeply different - you know well-the "quietism" precisely because the abandonment, when true, is accompanied by the hope and the constant fidelity to the duties of each day, even in the minutiae of the moment. The hope, in fact, does not leave aside the Christian: it agrees with all his might and with all its possibilities, forcing him to continue to persevere in their way, even when they have sunk all media humans; On the contrary, then everything about the true hope in God is strengthened in all its grandeur. That is the time to wait however ("against hope, I believe in hope", says victorious St. Paul), time is always a moment of God, a moment that he reserves the souls particularly loved .

And never be a convenient substitute for our laziness. The Lord reminds us, two miracles

performed by Him when Cana in Galilee turned water into wine, and when facing large crowds multiplied the loaves and fishes. Both as a miracle in the omnipotence of the Lord intervened when all human possibilities were exhausted when men had done all they could do: no water was transformed into wine but when the faithful servants of the amphorae had filled water, " until the edges". And before multiplying the loaves and fishes, the Lord asked the total sacrifice of all its means of subsistence, of the loaves and fishes that they had; And no matter who they were few, because the important thing was that they gave everything they had. To begin to live the virtue of hope, so we have no more than invoke the help of our Heavenly Mother, who is one of our hopes, our hope, Mater mea, ¡Mother, my confidence! ll book particularly dear souls.