Inbox Inspiration: February 5, 2020 - February 26, 2020: Faith, Hope and Love

Faith, Hope and Love – 1

Dear Friends,
We have all heard it: live lives of virtue.
Usually, when we talk about virtue, we are referring to good moral living.
Virtues are habits, attitudes or dispositions that lead us to do good things.
For example, the virtue of temperance moves us to a healthy and moderate consumption of food and drink.
Developing these human virtues is important for living out the gospel.
In our Christian and Catholic understanding, we also have theological virtues.
These are the virtues of faith, hope and love.
We are all familiar with these.
They are foundational for everything else, including the human virtues.
These are not acquired through the combination of our own effort and the grace of God – like the human virtues mentioned above.
Instead, these theological virtues are gifts from God, given to us first at baptism.
These virtues come from God and then relate us and our lives directly to God.
That is why they are called theological – from the Greek word theoswhich means God.
These theological virtues enable us to live in relationship with God and, in doing that, they strengthen our human virtues.
In the upcoming weeks, February 12, 19 and 26, I will reflect on each of these three theological virtues: faith, hope and love.

“Faith, hope, love are called ‘theological virtues.’ That can sound rather scientific. The term is accurate enough: we are speaking of ‘virtue,’ a person’s way of being, not an occasional fluke; and the virtue is ‘theological,’ having its origin and end in God.”
From The Impact of God: Soundings from St. John of the Cross by Father Iain Matthew, OCD.

Good and gracious God, may faith, hope and love be the grounding for who we are and all that we do. Amen.
Father Michael Schleupner

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Faith, Hope and Love – 2

Dear Friends,
When listing the three theological virtues, we always speak of faith first.
This is not because faith is “higher” than hope and love, but because it is foundational.
It is, so to speak, the foundation of the building.
Hope flows from faith and love flows from faith and hope.
Faith is not just a list of truths or doctrines to which we assent.
Our Apostles’ Creed and Nicene Creed are important.
We recite one of them as our Profession of Faith at Mass.
They contain basics of what we believe about God and about God’s love for us in Jesus Christ.
However, our faith is more than these Creeds or statements.
In its essence, faith is trust – trusting that there is a God and that God relates to us.
And so, faith is a relationship between God and us –
a relationship with God communicating to us especially in the Scripture,
and with us communicating with God in our prayer.
This relationship with God, our faith, then becomes our fundamental vision of reality.
It is the fundamental stance we take about life.
It is a seeing beyond the visible and empirical, a seeing of the world of the Spirit.
Faith is a living with and in God and a living out of this vision and stance.
For more reflections on faith, hope and love, see the Inbox Inspirations of last week, February 5, and for the next two weeks, February 19 and 26.

“Faith…is not a separate dimension of life, a compartmentalized specialty. Faith is an orientation of the whole person, giving purpose and hope to one’s hopes and strivings, thoughts and actions.”
From Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning by James Fowler.

Good and gracious God, may faith, hope and love be the grounding for who we are and what we do. Amen.
Father Michael Schleupner

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Faith, Hope and Love – 3

Dear Friends, 
There is a spark of the eternal within each of us.
This must be so since we are created or brought into being by the eternal One – by God.
Our being comes from the very being of God.
We experience this spark of the eternal in our hunger for life, for eternal life.
We all have this hunger.
The Christ, the Anointed One of God, Jesus, has confirmed this.
He has lived and revealed the mystery of dying and rising.
Death, in all its forms, can lead to fuller life.
This, I believe, is the foundation of hope.
The theological virtue of hope comes to us from God, from Christ.
And it leads us to God.
With this hope, we approach the many dyings of life’s journey with the trust that new life can emerge.
And with this, we encourage one another in times of darkness and death.
This, I believe, is the core of hope.
For more reflections on faith, hope and love, see the Inbox Inspirations of the last two weeks, February 5 and 12, and for next week, February 26.

“When we speak of hope, often it refers to what is not in humanity’s power to realize, which is invisible. In fact, what we hope for goes beyond our strength and our perception. But the birth of Christ, inaugurating redemption, speaks to us of a different hope, a dependable, visible, and understandable hope, because it is founded in God. He comes into the world and gives us the strength to walk with him: God walks with us in Jesus, and walking with him towards the fullness of life gives us the strength to dwell in the present in a new way, albeit an arduous one.”   
From On Hope by Pope Francis.

Good and gracious God, may faith, hope and love be the grounding for who we are and what we do. Amen.
Father Michael Schleupner
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