Well in his first letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul spoke of the three things that last - namely faith, hope, and love.
Following that Pauline prompt our tradition has identified those three as the great
Theological virtues meaning the virtues around which the spiritual life really is structured now. Here's a conviction of mine
I think [one] reason why
Religion is often seen [in] a negative [light] today is that people?
Misunderstand dramatically what we mean by Faith hope and love the distortion of those three has led to all [kinds] of problems
First of all faith I know I've spoken about this before, but I think it bears repeating because in today's world
Faith is maybe the most under misunderstood of the theological virtues how do people in the secular world tend to see Faith?
well in a culture besotted with the physical sciences they tend to see faith as
bad science or primitive science something lying below the threshold of [reason]
superstition credulity
Naivete that's what Faith is so simple-minded people have faith serious people have science so which [of] the new atheist was [it] Daniel
Dennett you know so that
atheist should be called the bright and
Religious people I guess would be the [dulls] or something. You know well in the catholic tradition anyway
Faith is never something that lies below the threshold of reason let me just say that as emphatically as I can
Faith is not
sub Rational or irrational
It's not something that fails to meet the demands of reason the Catholic Church hates superstition
It's against credulity. It's against naivete and
Consistently throughout its history the Catholic tradition
supports reason the Sciences philosophy
ETC, so what is Faith Faith?
Is indeed a surrender faith indeed involves a kind of leap into the darkness, but it's a surrender
on the far side of reason
it's a leap into a darkness Beyond the place illumined by
Philosophy and science and reason
Faith is a trusting confidence in a God who can't be controlled
By reason now flip the thing around [to] because I think this is illuminating
Think of the number of people of Faith who are also people a very serious
scientific interest from George Lameta the formulator of the Big Bang theory
father George coined the for a long time director of the Vatican observatory
Think of someone like Stanley [Yaqui] who was a benedictine priest and also high-level scientist ar de Chardin on and on?
What do all these people see they see as they reverence the sciences?
that the scientists themselves
rest upon something not unlike Faith
for example that faith that
Confidence in the intelligibility of the world without which science can't get off the ground
Lonnegan saw this very clearly to the faith in the work done by
Thousands of other scientists that they themselves have never verified if you're doing scientific work
You're basing your work on all kinds of unverified data that was given to you by lots of other people or think of an Einstein
who all his life was searching for the unified Field theory there was a
sort of imagined goal of his intellectual work that was not itself the product of reason, but was
Accepted on something like faith you might say in other words in short the war between Faith and reason is a myth
Born of a misunderstanding of faith people that rightly grasped the meaning of Faith see no conflict [between] the two
Okay, there's faith
hope
Hope is also in our world
Grossly Misunderstood
Maybe you would wonder you know after an event like Newtown just a few weeks ago, [and] [named] any other great
Moral or physical tragedy people say how could you possibly be a person of hope?
the trouble there is people are misidentifying hope as a kind of
Optimism you know all will work out fine
Everything's going to be great if God exists if I if I faith in God, well
Then God will just eliminate all such tragedy and suffering and problems from the world
Here's the thing about it
Look at the Bible. Look at the bible every page [of] the Bible is written by somebody of enormous Faith in God
Right they all passionately believe in God
but the Bible is filled with accounts of
Tragedies and suffering and murder attempts at genocide rape
the death of children on and on and on and
Nobody in the Bible is thinking well somehow these two are utterly irreconcilable
I can't believe in God and then and then accept all these things well, no of it
They take them almost for granted the two can coincide
to make it real specific think of someone like Jeremiah
Was there anyone in history who had greater?
Hope and God [than] Jeremiah at Jeremiah Witnesses the destruction of Jerusalem is utter disaster for an old testament Jew
think of David a man had hoped in the lord all the time it yet was pursued by
Saul think of St.. Paul himself, you know no one had greater. Hope in God than st.
Paul [but] yet, Paul endure his ship [Bracken] and torture and eventually he was put to death
so
What is hope?
It's not giddy or naive optimism. Not some you know naive belief that
God will eliminate all suffering
Hope as a theological virtue is the conviction that God
is the Sovereign
Lord
God is the sovereign lord of all creation? He's the sovereign Lord of the visible and the [invisible]
God presides over in his love the totality of created reality
How it's all making sense well, God?
Understands that utterly I often don't understand. I don't see it. Hope is not optimism
It's a conviction that God is the Sovereign Lord
who is
Commanding and leading and guiding his universe
Therefore, it's utterly reconcilable with the existence of all sorts of this
Hope isn't naive just his faith isn't naive. It's a trust in the
Ultimate sovereignty of God think of someone like Julian of Norwich the great English mystic who said you know famously in ts
Eliot Colder all will be well all manner of things will be well
That's not an optimist talking like they'll never be [in] new town. They'll never be a tSUnami tragedy. No. No it means
ultimately God is in [charge] of his creation and in that I put my confidence, so
[Faith] Hope
lastly love
How his love misconstrued well?
it's misconstrued as being a nice guy right to be a person of love is to be a nice guy a nice gal or
As Flannery o'connor said to have a heart of gold
Or merton in the 7-Story Mountain recalls when he was in high school in in England his professor said
Look at Corinthians 1 Corinthians 13 the hymn to love and just put the word [gentleman] in there
And you'll understand it properly a gentleman is this and that so [that] you know being a person of love as being a gentleman?
Now again nothing in the world wrong with being a gentleman or having a heart of gold or being a nice guy
but that isn't love
Love is
Willing the good of the other and then doing something concrete about it
It's not an emotion not an attitude. It's a move of the will
to want the good of the other
And do something about it. That's love
Now once you see that you see that love is [altogether] reconcilable with not being a very nice guy sometimes
Not being a gentleman sometimes you know what I mean is tough
Love you know if you're challenging someone who's caught in an addiction
And you guys saying some pretty tough things make some really strong demands. You're being anything, but nice at that moment
but you are being a person of love or
think of the call to conversion
[my] generation hardly ever heard the call to conversion. We heard God is love and therefore everything's fine
you know
But the call to conversion is greedy in love why because love is wanting the good of the other if [someone] [thought] an errant path
someone's on a sinful of state of life
the loving thing to do is to get them out [of] it is to shake them out of their complacency change them, so
[love] is utterly reconcilable with being
Not a nice guy beings
ungentlemanlike
Love as dostoevsky said and dorothy day famously quoted him love is a harsh and dreadful thing
[nice] guy nice guys aren't harsh and dreadful. Maybe not but people of love can be
Because love is a is a willing of what's truly good for the other
So as I say I think one [reason] why religion is often seen negatively today is
People don't understand what we mean by these three things faith
Hope and love we need to put I think some teeth back into these theological virtues
you