What is Our Daily Hope?
In his well-known series of General Audiences collected under the title Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, Pope St. John Paul II wrote:
“The ‘redemption of the body,’ however, expresses itself not only in the resurrection as a victory over death. It is present also in the words of Christ addressed to ‘historical man’… when—in the Sermon on the Mount—Christ invites us to overcome concupiscence, even in the exclusively inner movements of the human heart… Here it is not a question of the eschatological hope of the resurrection, but of the hope of victory over sin, which can be called the hope of everyday.”1
This same sentiment is reflected in the concluding petitions of the Te Deum, the traditional hymn of praise attributed to St. Ambrose and St. Augustine.2
℣. Keep us today, Lord, from all sin.
℟. Have mercy on us, Lord, have mercy.
℣. Lord, show us your love and mercy;
℟. for we put our trust in you.
℣. In you, Lord, is our hope:
℟. and we shall never hope in vain.
So, what is our “daily hope”? It is the hope that this very day, in His love and mercy, God will give us the grace we need to overcome our disordered desires, gain victory over sin, and save our souls, striving to “be perfect as [our] heavenly Father is perfect”3 and “holy as He is holy.”4
Created for Holiness
Pope St. John Paul II wrote elsewhere that since we are created in the image and likeness of God who is love,5 we are created for love. He concluded: “Love therefore is the innate vocation of every human being.”6 And because we are created for love, we are created for holiness, since holiness is the “perfection of charity.”7 It is this holiness to which every Christian is called, as the Church has reminded us: “all the faithful of Christ of whatever rank or status, are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity.”8
Our Daily Hope—an official publication of Array of Hope Ministries written by Dr. David Hajduk—will offer reflections on the vocation and challenge of holiness in our times, rooted in the conviction that holiness is indeed possible by our sincere efforts, supplied and sustained by God’s grace.9 For God never commands the impossible, but wills that we do what we can and pray for what we cannot, and He will give us His aid to enable us.10 As St. Thomas Aquinas taught, hope is the theological virtue by which we, relying on God’s strength and trusting in His promises, seek an arduous but possible good.11
It is our hope that these works will enlighten, inspire, challenge, and encourage you to become all you were created by God to be, to conquer sin and concupiscence in your life, to grow more perfect in love, and to know the joy and peace that a life of holiness brings.
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Pope St. John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, 86:6 (my italics).
The tradition claims they made this hymn together, reciting it back and forth when St. Ambrose baptized St. Augustine in A.D. 387.
Matthew 5:48
1 Peter 1:15-16
1 John 4:8
Pope St. John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, no. 11.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 1709, 2013.
Vatican II, Lumen Gentium, no. 40.
Cf. John 15:5, Mark 10:27, Romans 5:5
Council of Trent, Sess. VI, Decree on Justification Cum Hoc Tempore, Chap.11, Canon 18. Cf. St. Augustine, De natura et gratia, c. 43 (50), PL, XLIV, 271.
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q.17, a.1.
