THE TEST OF HOPE

In The Wound of Love, the admirable collection of Carthusian writings, one author describes what happens to a new monk. “In the first days of the monastic life, heaven is very near, and the road that leads there seems short.” Then, as time goes by, the way becomes longer and more sinuous, and the goal further and further away. Gradually, “God withdraws the sensible consolations of the first days and hides himself the mystery of absence.”

This happens, I think, not only to monks: it seems true of almost all believers who take their faith seriously. Most people who would not call themselves atheists or retreat into the often mendacious cover of “agnosticism” spend years being what Matthew Arnold memorably called “light half-believers of our casual creeds”. Then something happens that changes them and makes them decide to take their faith seriously. At first, this turns out to be brilliant and exciting. One wonders where it has been all one’s life. It seems as if each day is a conversation with God: one asks questions, and receives answers.

Then, gradually, this too becomes a routine. Prayer is more frequent and more intensive, but there is less and less sense of being answered. The “sensible consolations” seem to have disappeared except on rare occasions. One is increasingly aware of the total indifference to faith of the world around one, and even one’s own mind begins to ask awkward questions. Death is less and less distant: what does happen afterwards? “I have a sin of fear,” wrote John Donne, “that when I have spun my last thread, I shall perish on the shore.” Has it not all been an illusion, a centuries-old structure of wishful thinking?

If we can allow ourselves a metaphor, this state is like the increasing dark of the year as it moves into winter. Days get shorter; and while there is a certain comfort “when melancholy autumn comes to Wembley,/And electric trains are lighted after tea” (Betjeman) the air is cold and dank, clothes seem heavier and comfort harder to find. In other words, we are moving into Advent.

Today is Advent II, and it teaches us a hard lesson with which the Carthusians can help us. When God hides, as the sun seems to hide, in the mystery of absence, it is to us a lesson that we must rely solely upon Hope. Hope instructed by Faith; Hope fed by the Word of God – a daily diet of “read, mark, learn and inwardly digest”; Hope that continues to bear the fruit of Charity, nevertheless. Never the less.

Hope, the second great theological virtue. Not blind hope; not Micawberish trusting that “something will turn up”; not betting on an outsider to win at 20 to 1. Informed Hope, instructed Hope, intelligent Hope. Hope as trust, Hope as the Force that is with us, that allows us to get up the twenty-seventh time after we have fallen twenty-six; Hope that keeps us hanging in there when all seems lost; Hope that sees beyond foolishness, beyond crime, beyond sin. Hope that lights two candles as the world goes dark and very, very cold.