The Three Theological Virtues: Faith, Hope, & Love

CHRIST BEFORE ME  CHRIST RENEW ME

HisNameIsMercy.com

The Three Theological Virtues:

Before any renewal can take place, there are these three theological virtues which we must begin with.  Before any renewal can take place in our souls, we must have faith in our triune God, we must have the hope of eternal salvation, hope of eternal union with God, and that faith with hope lead us to love of God.  Any renewal must begin with the three theological virtues.  Let us pray that they grow and deepen within us.

“The just live by faith.  You are the living temple of 

The three steps supporting this cross represent the three theological virtues.God.  Visit this interior sanctuary often, and see that the lamps--that is, faith, hope, and charity--are burning.” --Saint Paul of the Cross

Faith:

We need a reminder to have faith, to pray for the gift of faith.  We need to be aware of anything that holds our faith back.  We must begin with a belief that the triune God--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, wants to draw us near.

“We can’t have full knowledge all at once.  We must start by believing; then afterwards we may be led.”

--Saint Thomas Aquinas: 

 "Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all. And faith means believing the incredible, or it is no virtue at all."   --G.K. Chesterton

Faith comes to us before hope and hope leads to love.  Saint Ignatius of Antioch taught us that “faith and love are the beginning and end of life.  The beginning is faith; the end is love.  Both, joined in unity, lead to God, and all the rest that attains perfection and holiness, follows from them.”  For more on this, read 2 Peter, 1:5-8.

Sometimes teachings are difficult to believe.  We don’t understand them; so we choose to ignore them or set them aside.  That is a great disservice to yourself.  You need to pray for understanding to come but have faith first.  In other words, have faith in your faith, that the teachings of the faith are true.  You may not understand them, but does a child understand a parent’s reasoning all the time?  We are even dumber compared to God than children are to their parents.  Saint Augustine advised, “Seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.”  Believe first, and understanding will come.  This is hard to do but it does happen this way.  Just think of your early childhood--how little you understood anything and you just took your parents’ words for it and now you understand.  Understanding your faith happens after you believe.

Hope:

Faith is not enough.  Even the devil has faith that Jesus is God.  Believing is not enough, or we may fall into the snares of the devil.  We must have hope for an eternity with God in heaven.

“Most men need patience to die, but a man who understands what death admits him to should rather need patience to live.” --Peter Kreeft

“The Lord grants in a moment what we may have been unable to obtain in dozens of years.”

--Saint Philip Neri

Isn’t that what we really hope for?  For God to grant us what we are after?  That is the bottom line.  It doesn’t sound hard to understand or too complicated, does it?  

It seems easy to say we have hope and have not lost it.  But it happens to so many of us all the time.  When we force things to go the way we want them to, we have lost hope, hope that God would grant us what we are seeking.  We give up on His timing, or worry that he won’t actually do what we “know” to be best.  Hope is very closely tied with trust.  If we have true hope, then we have trust.  We must order our lives and our desires, fortifying our souls with proper hope, the hope of spending eternity in God’s presence.

Saint Padre Pio

“Pray, hope, and don’t worry.”

We have to be patient and cooperate with God’s plan and His timing.  When we do, we fi

Saint Padre Pio

“Pray, hope, and don’t worry.”nd that in the end, things just happen and fall right into place.  Prayers are answered in ways far superior to what we envisioned.  Things we try to do in our own ways, plans made with our own minds, understanding we seek by studying and reading--these don’t give us any success, wisdom, or peace because we attempt them without real cooperation with the Lord.  When we do let go and let God, the Lord fills our minds with His wisdom and we soon have deep love and union with God that we could never have obtained on our own efforts.

Hope is all about our future, and it orients our thinking now.  Hope leads us to really trust our lives to Christ.  We hope for heaven where we can permanently contemplate God.   Hope gives us proper focus on the mission of our life.  We know what we are hoping for and so we order everything about ourselves and our lives to get there.  That is why hope leads us to the third theological virtue of love.

Love (Charity):

Words of encouragement to develop the virtue of love:

St. Ephrem of Syria:  “Blessed the one who, exalted by Love, has become a city founded upon a mountain, from which the enemy, when he saw it, withdrew in fear, trembling at its security in the Lord.”  The city is you and the mountain is the cross.  Wouldn’t we all love to be so exalted by Love that the forces of Hell flee from us in fear?  We don’t need to fear evil.  Evil trembles at the sight of those full of love.

The One who is Love showed us the way, and the way is through the cross.

Please support your parish who provides you spiritual food and brings you to Jesus.  Support life by being there for desperate pregnant mothers & their children at Our Lady’s Inn www.ourladysinn.org & Good Council Homes www.goodcouncilhomes.org

O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to you.