Get Our Hopes Up
Why Hope Is Not a Risk — It Is a Requirement
The death of a flower is only an illusion. It is this transformation that produces the seed. Hope is our flower. Faith is our seed. Love is our sustenance.
How many times in our lives have we been told not to get our hopes up? Looking back honestly — has that advice ever truly served us? It may have shielded us from hurt and numbed us to emotion, but it has never gifted us with promise, wisdom, or growth. The non-experience — the decision never made, the risk never taken, the seed never tended — has burst our hopes wide open far more decisively than any honest failure ever could.
In not trying, we abandon the pursuit of the Promise. We dream of an incredibly beautiful flower, then walk away from our duty to the seed. To sow without tending is a travesty — a sin against the soil.
"Hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us." — Romans 5:5
The Protective Mode That Imprisons Us
Many times in our lives we are tempted to protect ourselves — and those we love — from the pain we associate with perceived failure. We slip into a protective mode designed to save ourselves and others from heartache, misfortune, and fear. But it is precisely in our submission to this instinct that we can truly fail. This so-called protection keeps us from trying, inhibits us from moving forward, and robs us of the potential of our becoming.
We must be proactive in our being. In welcoming the experience — all of it — we allow ourselves to transform, transition, and transpire. Our growth is a process that requires experience. From doing comes experience. From experience comes wisdom. From wisdom comes fulfillment. This is our purpose, our meaning, and the essence of all we are created to be.
"For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them." — Ephesians 2:10
The Catechism speaks to this human vocation with clarity:
"The human person participates in the light and power of the divine Spirit. By his reason, he is capable of understanding the order of things established by the Creator. By free will, he is capable of directing himself toward his true good." — CCC 1704
Failure Is Not the End — It Is the Lesson
Sometimes we will trip. Sometimes we will fall. These are simple and honest errors in judgment — and they are among the most instructive experiences of the human journey. They give us the tools to move forward, the understanding to conquer our greatest challenges, the grace to heal our deepest hurts, and the strength to forgive the most difficult atrocities.
It was the first trip that taught us to look before we leap. It was the first fall that taught us to put our hands out in front of us. It was the first time we chose what was wrong because it felt so right — and were thrust into the chaos that followed — that we arrived at the wisdom that only that experience could produce. It is often our failures that teach us the most valuable lessons of all.
"If I find 10,000 ways something won’t work, I haven’t failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward." — Thomas Edison
"The righteous falls seven times and rises again, but the wicked stumble in times of calamity." — Proverbs 24:16
Failure, then, is not really failure at all. In error comes enlightenment. Our journey is infinite, and many of our greatest achievements will be things we might otherwise have labeled mistakes. Many of the greatest inventions, cures, and discoveries in human history were birthed while searching for something else entirely. An educated man can find what he seeks. A wise man seeks what he finds.
"And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose." — Romans 8:28
Wisdom Is Our Freedom
Living is motion, and motion requires emotion. Sometimes it requires joy. Often it requires pain. Our hearts grow stronger as we exercise our power to choose, and our souls are energized in direct proportion to the depth of our experience. These capacities expand and contract continually in the ongoing establishment of our developing selves. It is through these spiritual exercises that we are further prepared for all that lies ahead.
"Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope." — Romans 5:3–4
The Catechism affirms that suffering, when united to Christ, carries redemptive power:
"By his Passion, Christ delivered us from Satan and from sin. He merited for us the new life in the Holy Spirit. His grace restores what sin had damaged in us." — CCC 1708
What is to wither away will wither away. This is a requirement of growth and transformation. Letting go of what has passed releases the seed of our future. In that seed rests more beauty, greater love, and endless possibility. To attempt to return to what no longer exists is futile. There is no hope in a flower that has already released its seed — the hope now lives in the ground, waiting to become something new.
"Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." — John 12:24
Get Your Hopes Up — and Keep Them There
Let’s get our hopes up and keep them up. Let’s challenge our perception of who we are and leap forward into our being. Why should we surrender the power of our becoming to the lived past or to the ego’s endless parade of doubt?
We move forward without fear and declare:
"Be gone from me, Ego. I choose not to relinquish my sustenance to the one who would defile my seed. I am who I am — and all that I am created to be. Neither in perceived failure nor in self-glorification will I give in to thee."
We must persist. Once we master one level, it is our call to accept the challenges that will carry us to the next. Treading water will never produce anything but exhaustion, boredom, and despair. We must have hope, move forward in faith, and nourish ourselves with love if we are to experience the full joy of being.
"Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the Lord!" — Psalm 31:24
The Catechism describes hope as one of the three theological virtues — not a feeling, but a posture of the soul directed toward God:
"Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit." — CCC 1817
"Hope does not disappoint, because... it’s the confident expectation of divine blessing and the beatific vision of God." — CCC 1818
Don’t get your hopes up? By every means necessary — get them up. As high as you can. Because hope guides. When we lift our eyes to that shining city on a hill, we are drawn toward it. Our energies conspire to facilitate our goals. It is from our thinking that our being manifests.
"You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden." — Matthew 5:14
Hope is our flower. Faith is our seed. Love is our sustenance. Tend all three — and watch what grows.