Category: Hopeful Thoughts

In his Confessions, St. Augustine reflects on the relationship between desire, love, and hope:

But what am I loving when I love you? Not beauty of body nor transient grace, not this fair light which is now so friendly to my eyes, not melodious song in all its lovely harmonies, not the sweet fragrance of flowers or ointments or spices, not manna or honey, not limbs that draw me to carnal embrace: none of these do I love when I love my God. And yet I do love a kind of light, a kind of voice, a certain fragrance, a food and an embrace, when I love my God: a light, voice fragrance, food and embrace for my inmost self, where something limited to no place shines into my mind, where something not snatched away by passing time sings for me, where something no breath blows away yields to me its scent, where there is savor undiminished by famished eating, and where I am clasped in a union from which no satiety can tear me away. This is what I love, when I love my God.

Our hopeful thought for today is from Phil. 2:5-11.  Recall our discussion during week one about the fellowship of the Trinity, and reflect on what it meant for Christ to “empty Himself.”  In the midst of your suffering, how does the self-emptying of Christ bring you hope?

Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.  Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.  For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Our “thought” for the day is an image. This is a picture I took of a 17th Century Spanish painting that hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. BTW, walking through the Met’s Medieval and Renaissance Art collections can be a neat spiritual exercise because so much of the art from those periods focuses on Christ.

I appreciate this image because of its realism and power. It is painted on a large wooden panel and hangs high overhead in the museum. To me, it conveys the brutal reality of Christ’s passion, as well as the universality of Christ’s suffering. It’s size and scope, with the sagging, distended posture of Christ’s body, communicate to me that the weight of all the suffering in the world is falling onto the broken body of Jesus. At first blush, this seems a strange jumping-off point for “hopeful” thoughts. Take a moment, however, to allow this image to sink in as you return to our reading for the week in Colossians 2. How does the physicality of the cross communicate hope to you in the midst of your own suffering?

As long as we see Christian hope in terms of “going to heaven,” of a salvation that is essentially away from this world, the two questions are bound to appear as unrelated.  Indeed, some insist angrily that to ask the second one at all is to ignore the first one, which is the really important one.  This in turn makes some others get angry when people talk of resurrection, as if this might draw attention away from the really important and pressing matters of contemporary social concern.  But the Christian hope is for God’s new creation, for “new heavens and the new earth,” and if that hope has already come to life in Jesus of Nazareth, then there is every reason to join the two questions together.  And if that is so, we find that answering the one is also answering the other.  I find that to many — not least, many Christians — all this comes as a surprise:  both that the Christian hope is surprisingly different from what they had assumed and that this same hope offers a coherent and energizing basis for work in today’s world.

N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope:  Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church

From St. Isaac of Syria, a Christian monk who lived in the 7th Century:

No one has understanding if he is not humble, and he who lacks humility is devoid of understanding.

No one is humble if he is not at peace, and he who is not at peace is not humble.  And no one is at peace without rejoicing.

In all the paths on which people journey in this world they will find no peace until they draw near to the hope which is in God.

The heart finds no peace from toil and from stumbling-blocks until it is brought close to hope — which makes it peaceful and pours joy into it.

This is what the venerable and holy lips of our Lord said:  ‘Come unto me all who are weary and heave laden, and I will give you rest.’

Draw near, he says, to hope in me; desist from the many ways and you will find rest from labor and fear.