Homily

There is one idea, one thought in particular, that always catches my attention whenever this epistle from the letter to the Hebrews is read. That idea is hope. And actually it's not an idea, it's a virtue, one of three theological virtues which include also faith and love. In today's reading St. Paul reminds us that if there is any promise we can trust in, surely it would have to be God's promise because "it is impossible for God to lie, therefore we who have taken refuge might be strongly encouraged to hold fast to the hope that lies before us. This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, sure and firm which reaches into the interior beyond the veil where Jesus has entered on our behalf."

I think about that anchor of hope for myself and I ask myself how well am I tied to that anchor of hope? I certainly think there is still plenty of room for me to grow into greater hope. But not just me. Looking around it is plain to see that we have a huge deficit in our national budget, but perhaps an even greater and more dangerous deficit in the virtue of hope. How so? People certainly have desires and goals and ambitions and things that they would like to see happen and wishes they would like to see fulfilled. If these goals and wishes and desires are for good things, then there is nothing wrong with them but so many of the things people say they hope for are not actually about the Christian virtue of hope.

The Catechism explains that hope is the virtue "by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ's promises and relying not on our own strength but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit." Hope is not pointing us to greater glory in this life, but instead it points us to the glory of the life that is to come after this earthly life is over. Every human person wants to be happy, and hope teaches us that our perfect happiness will never be found in this life because we were born for so much more than just this life. We were born to live eternally in the presence and love of the Lord our God, to be citizens of heaven and heirs to the glory promised to all who accept His gift of divine life. That is the focus of Christian hope. Whatever may be going on in our lives right now whether good or bad, hope tells us that we ain't seen nothing yet, for in the end the faithful will receive the greatest good that can ever be given, the greatest joy, the greatest love.

It is not so difficult to see what happens when people live without this kind of hope. Just one example: look at the riots and the destruction and violence that have taken place in different places in our country this past year, including Eugene and especially Portland. When we push Christ aside then we can look only to this life and this material world to find the happiness that our hearts so very much desire. We don't even have to deny Christ to do that. We can just live as though He doesn’t matter as we look for different sources of satisfaction for our restless souls. And we don't want to be talking about eternity, thank you very much, we want to only be talking about life and not about a life that is yet to come because then that death thing comes up again and we surely don’t want to be thinking about that.

It's not surprising then that you can find on any given day in the mainstream media, dozens and dozens of articles and videos on how to eat and how to exercise and what to do so that we can live longer lives, but how many pieces will you find that explain why you are alive and what is the purpose of your existence in this world? If we do not know why we are here it's even more difficult to consider the time that we, and those we love, will no longer be here. Without hope, what are we left with? It seems to me that more and more, with weaker hope, or no hope at all in the promises of Christ, we are left with greater expectations of what life in this world should be for us. Then it is inevitable that we want to downplay our mortality and hide from the reality of death.

This is why our culture has invented "Celebrations of Life" to replace funerals. And what I have always found so disturbingly strange is when, inevitably people are asked to get up and share their thoughts about the departed, so many of them want to tell funny stories. Not remembrances of honor, virtue, love, or loyalty—no; funny stories. And people laugh and laugh. I have been at a few of these that reminded me more of amateur comedy night than a funeral. It used to bother me until I realized why it was happening. They are like people whistling in the dark. In the face of death, the best they can do is to joke and make fun and pretend it is all good if you don’t think about the seriousness of death. Now there may sometimes be thoughts and words that the departed is now in heaven, in an attempt to comfort people, but what it means to be in heaven or how one actually gets there, apart from believing in an automatic delivery into paradise when someone takes their last breath—apart from that let's just roll it up and move along lest we start considering our own mortality—and why would we ever want to do that now that we have the internet and streaming tv movies?

Dear friends, I hope we want to do that, because in doing that we can find our true hope. Yes we have other hopes for ourselves and others in this life, and we may and can work for and pray for good things for ourselves and others. We can look for happiness here and now. But we will never know genuine happiness unless it is pointing us toward eternal happiness. We will never avoid discouragement unless we live in hope. We will never love as fully as we are able unless hope eases our fears that we are giving too much away, and not getting what we really need. Christian hope is itself a fortifier of faith, for our anchor of hope is not in those things that are passing, temporary and never completely satisfying. Our hope should never be in these things.

It is so easy to lose focus on this great goal in our daily lives, as so many things are constantly calling for our attention and our care. But even in the midst of all that, we ought to keep in mind that we are the people who have the greatest of all hopes, and we ought to pray that this hope enlightens and guides our thoughts, words, and deeds so that we truly live, more and more, in our hope in Christ as an anchor for our souls. Let us not live in the fear of death, nor live as though this earthly life is all we have. Christ came and suffered death so that we might, in the face of our own mortality, live in the hope of His eternal life offered to us. Let us keep working to convert all our lesser hopes to point us and carry us always towards Him, because He alone can convert that hope into everlasting glory.