“Your strength will lie in silence and hope.”, Rule of St Albert [21], distils essential wisdom from poetic sequences found in the Book of Isaiah.
From “The testament of Isaiah” in “Poems on Israel and Judah”:
“For Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel, says this,
‘your salvation lay in conversion and tranquillity,
your strength in serenity and trust,’
but you would have none of it.” (Isaiah 30:15)
From “The majesty of God” in “The Book of the Consolations of Israel”:
“Youths may grow tired and weary,
young people stumble and fall,
but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength,
they will grow wings like eagles,
they will run and not grow weary,
walk but never tire.” (Isaiah 40:30-31)
The eagle is the symbol of St John the Evangelist, the author of the fourth Gospel. My Saint’s name is John.
In the Autumn of 2023, approaching by 70th birthday, I noticed that I was beginning to feel old. An awareness of inevitable mortality occupied my waking thoughts. The good news was that I had outdone, by 30 years, the fictional Charles Ryder who, in the prologue to “Brideshead Revisited” by Evelyn Waugh, laments “Here at the age of thirty-nine I began to feel old.”, going on to explain “Here my last love died.”
Like all fleeting feelings, it passed in time. However, feelings have a function to tell me something about myself at that moment. Prayerfully sitting with the feeling, in silence, allowed me to review the situation and take whatever action I was prompted to make by the Holy Spirit.
Pondering on hope, I was drawn to St Paul’s “Hymn to Love”:
“for now we see in a mirror, confusedly, but then we shall see face to face. Now I know only partially, then I shall know fully, just as I am fully known. Now faith, hope and love abide, the three of them, but the greatest of them is love.” (1 Corinthians:13 12-13)
I realised that there is a connectedness between these three theological virtues, faith, hope and love. They do not stand in isolation. There is a movement from one to another. Faith in God leads to hope in Jesus the Christ, the Son of God. This leads to an understanding that God is the source of love which flows through the world. I can act like a conduit for love. I can freely give to others the love I am freely and continuously given by God. Love doesn’t run out. I don’t have to conserve it. There is an endless supply. An analogy could be made with the way the energy from sunlight flows through ecosystems, energising the whole planet. There is enough and more to keep it functioning. When darkness comes at night, we hope there is plenty more light the next day. The hope is so strong that it becomes knowledge. It becomes a certainty. I wake up most mornings with gratitude for a lot of things but rarely remember to give thanks for the sun rising. Nevertheless, on an overcast day, I do feel very good when the sun becomes visible, however briefly, in a break in the clouds. What occurred to me, in my musings, was that love is always flowing, in abundance, whether we recognise its source or not.
For me, my understanding, in an abstract way, of true faith in God started in my 40s, accepting the source of love to be God. Without God, the world just seemed to languish in inexplicable absurdity. Progressing from faith in God to hope in Jesus the Christ came about when I was able to truly believe in the divinity of Jesus. In the Gospels, Jesus is slow to declare himself to be the Son of God, the second person of the Holy Trinity, but, during his passion, he says “I am” (Mark 14:62) echoing “I am who I am” (Exodus 3:24) which God says to Moses. I believe Him. My hope in Jesus is summarised in the Commemoration of the Dead in the Eucharistic Prayers in the Order of Mass: “To us, also, your servants, who, though sinners, hope in your abundant mercies,” (EPI) or “Remember also our brothers and sisters who have fallen asleep in the hope of the resurrection.” (EPII) or “There we hope to enjoy for ever the fullness of your glory, when you will wipe away every tear from our eyes.” (EPIII). It is the divinity of Jesus which enables me to hope in something beyond and after what the world has to offer. However, hoping to die a good death requires me to live a good life. Learning about and relating to the humanity of Jesus in the gospels encourages me to attempt to respond to the life of Jesus, to align myself to the will of God, in a way that I can begin to understand, seeing God face to face.
My pilgrimage of hope continues…
Robert Johnson T.O.C
•Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, 1945, revised 1960
•Holy Bible passages quoted from The Revised New Jerusalem Bible, 2019
•Eucharistic Prayers quoted from The Order of Mass, The New English Translation, 2011
•Rule of St Albert passages quoted from Living the Carmelite Way, the Rule for the Third Order of Carmel, 2003
