Lent 2008: Week 6, Day 4
Holy Thursday
Faith, hope, and love. All our years we've been told that of the three, love is the greatest. And since faith is what punches your ticket to heaven, that's likely a strong candidate for Important Virtue No. 2. Yet, despite the significance of faith and love, hope is not exactly chopped liver.
Often we don't know what hope is until we no longer have it. Tomorrow, Good Friday, and Saturday are the darkest days on the Christian calendar. The two days in those earliest years when hope was hard to maintain and many of Christ's followers relied solely on the strength of their faith; faith in a man who proclaimed he was the Son of God but who was now suddenly dead.
In the book "365 Saints," the editors extoll these three greatest virtues and note that of them, hope is the one most closely linked with life on earth.
"The essence of hope is trust -- trust in things unseen and in the love of an unseen God. Once we leave this world, what is hidden will be revealed and then we will no longer have need of hope" (June 11, St. Barnabas, Patron Saint of Encouragement). In many ways, hope is a first cousin to faith.
Today is the day we remember the Last Supper and the washing of the feet. Tomorrow the day when hope was cast out, however temporarily. Saturday is the day when the faith of those early followers was perhaps most tested. And Sunday the day when all those hopes and all that faith came together and the greatness of love revealed.
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