October is the month of the Rosary. We have done a great job working our way through the three divine virtues. We first discussed the virtue of Charity, the founding principle of our order. We also discussed the virtue of Faith, recalling that faith is an enabler that allows the grace of God to flow into our lives. We are leD with the virtue of Hope, so I thought that I would discuss this virtue tonight.
We are in the throws of football season, be at the high school, college or professional level. We are far enough into the season now, that you know the caliber of your team and you are starFng to set your expectaFons for the post season. I know its early to be thinking about the post season, but some folks start the year off thinking about the post season. If your team is overperforming, you might be hoping that they will win out and cap an outstanding season with a championship. This type of hope, a feeling of expectaFon and desire for a certain thing to happen, is the modern definiFon of hope. This is what I thought we were asking for an increase in when we prayed for an increase in hope.
I was wrong. The hope we are praying to increase is the confident expectaFon of what God has promised and its strength in His faithfulness. The older or archaic definiFon of hope is, “a feeling of trust”. Certainly, when we think of hope as a feeling of trust, we would want to pray for an increase in hope. Increasing our trust in God can only have good consequences. But it is hard to trust God. It is easy to say that we trust God, it is another thing to put that trust into acFon.
You have all experienced at some point in Fme in your life a moment when you had to place your trust in another human being. Maybe it was the pilot of the aircraD that you flew on recently (although those are geQng automated, as it was pointed out to me by an Air Force fighter pilot, that the planes can fly themselves, but people don’t trust the computer), or it was a the driver of a car passing you on the road, or a cashier at the grocery store giving you change. You are providing trust in these folks to do their tasks without changing.
Now let’s consider that classic trust exercise that folks do for team building. Where you have a parFcipant climb onto a chair or step and turn their back to their colleagues and fall backwards waiFng to be caught. This last act of trust puts all of us into an uncomfortable space. When you are standing on the chair facing away from the crowd, doubt starts to seep in with thoughts of you weighing too much or they aren’t ready for you when you fall. It is scary to trust. It is hard. It is not in our nature to freely give our trust. But God trust us. He gave us free will. What an act of trust. He chose to let you decide if you wanted him in your life. Everybody could have said, “No”. Abraham didn’t say no, he took Isaac up on the mountain and was prepared to sacrifice him. Knife in hand, he was stayed by God’s angel. Wow, that is trust. I see why he is the father of faith.
God wants us to trust in him. The more we trust in God, the closer we will be to the path that he has chosen for us. It is not easy to trust God, but it is rewarding. So, the next Fme that you are praying your rosary, which I hope will be soon, when you come to the first three beads for an increase in Faith, Hope and Charity, remember that the increase in Hope is not just an increase in a wish, but rather an increase in trust that God will deliver on all his promises.