By Bishop Louis F. Kihneman III

Bishop of Biloxi

In my previous column, I touched on what St. Thomas Aquinas refers to as the cardinal virtues – prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude as the cardinal virtues. In this column, I will expound on the three theological virtues – faith, hope and love.

Faith

Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen. (Hebrews 11: 1)

Faith begins by trusting the Word of God. This is critical because what we see is not all that there is. Science has proven this many times. Think of the atom. It took humans thousands and thousands of years to figure out the mystery of what is inside of an atom. It was not seen but it was there. Likewise, the spiritual world is there even though we may not “see” it.

As we build our faith, we build our confidence. There is a certain amount of confidence that comes with faith that is our confidence in hope. Faith and hope have a real relationship and the Word of God is an essential part of that relationship. Being in relationship and spending time with others who read the Bible on a regular basis is important.

Being people of prayer is essential because that is when we are able speak with God and especially listen to God speaking to us. That is one of the gifts we receive during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. God’s word comes to us very specifically, and we are able to have a conversation with God. Then we have Jesus Himself offering us His body and blood, which is quite profound.

The Word of God, which we believe is Jesus, was spoken from the beginning of time and that is what brought about all creation: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be. What came to be through him was life ,and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:1-5)

Through the Word, we came to be. We are expressions of Jesus Himself. The whole of creation has literally been framed by the Word of God and, indeed our very existence. Faith enables us to begin to see that God has taken a step toward [KDU1] us and faith is our way of receiving that step.

The sacraments support us in our faith. The sacraments are visible signs of God’s love for us, visible signs of the grace that Jesus Christ offers us and visible signs of what is happening to us internally or spiritually. We still do not see the spiritual world very clearly, but the spiritual world is present to us.

Faith not only gives us hope but it enables us to have confidence that there is more than what we can “see”. There is a power there that enables us to be able to live, move, breathe and have our very being – “Rather it is he who gives to everyone life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:25b).

A huge part of faith is believing that God’s plan is unfolding for us and that God’s love is present in our lives, even in the most difficult moments.

I have had some powerful moments while accompanying people who were experiencing deep suffering, and they are a powerful example of faith for me. Even though I am there to support them, many times, it has been their tremendous faith and willingness to give themselves to God completely that touches my heart deeply and lifts me up in a very big way.

It is in these moments that we can realize what is unseen is eternal. The spiritual world enables us to hear and experience God’s great love for us. Hearing, reading, contemplating, praying with the Word of God enables us to know who we are called to be and how we are called to live. It allows us to recognize the voice of God when he speaks to us in other ways.

When I have been with people of faith as they breathed out their last breath, there was such great trust, such great love, and such great dignity that I sensed that they had embraced the truth of God, the creator of all things, calling them to Himself. It is a very powerful gift to witness.

One of the most tangible signs of faith is good works. It shows not only that we are saved but we are able to witness to the existence of God through our good works. When we help someone encounter Christ though our good works and walk with that person, it changes us. It enables us to get in touch with what love really means.

Hope

For I know well the plans I have in mind for you—oracle of the LORD—plans for your welfare and not for woe, so as to give you a future of hope. (Jeremiah 21: 11)

Jesus looked at them and said, “For human beings this is impossible, but for God all things are possible. (Matthew 19: 26)

Hope is meant to spring eternal. It is also meant to keep us in touch with eternity. The hope that we are called to is the hope that enables us to trust but it also gives us strength to be able to live the life we are called to live but also to have hope in ourselves in the midst of failures, in the midst of difficulties, in the midst of suffering and struggles. Hope enables us to trust that God is with us and is truly in charge of our lives.

I have found on a number of occasions, when I was working hard to get something accomplished and I finally let go and let God work instead of me, those were some of the most fruitful moments of my life. These occasions have also been very freeing for me.

Ultimately, hope brings freedom. Freedom from doubt. Freedom from slavery, especially slavery of sin. Freedom from having a sense of loss. Freedom from the sense of darkness and that nothing matters. Hope is about light and it is also about love.

The Prophet Isiah writes, “Do not fear: I am with you; do not be anxious: I am your God. I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand” (Isaiah 41:10). In the midst of stress and anxiety, it is essential to remember that God is with you and will not forsake you. This is just one of the comforting Bible verses that drives home the point of hope.

Another comforting verse about hope comes from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, “… we even boast of our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance, proven character, and proven character, hope, and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Romans 5: 3b-5).

St. Paul says that our pain and our struggles in life have purpose. We can rejoice when we run into problems and trials because we know that they help us develop endurance. I am not talking about endurance just for endurance’s sake. Rather, it is endurance in the sense of drawing closer to God and closer to His love, and a deeper relationship with Him.

In his Second Letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul writes, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and God of all encouragement, who encourages us in our every affliction, so that we may be able to encourage those who are in any affliction with the encouragement with which we ourselves are encouraged by God” (2 Corinthians 1: 3-4). That is part of us giving hope away. That is part of us sharing hope with others.

I think that is one of the struggles that we face when we watch the news. We lose our sense of hope. There is so much negativity and despair that it can really take the wind out of our sails. That is why, once again, it is essential for us to be a people of prayer and hope. By enabling the Word of God, the Bible, to be that hope we hold onto, we share the life and love of Jesus Christ.

There are moments when I celebrate the Mass that I realize this is the only place I want to be. I find in the Mass that Jesus is the only answer to all that is happening in the world today. We find in the Mass the center of hope and the center of God’s love.

Love

Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, [love] is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Corinthians 13: 4-7).

Most couples choose this reading to be proclaimed at their wedding. It is a reading that we all need to keep close to our hearts. Love is all these things and God is love. Faith draws us into hope, and hope draws us into love.

In John’s gospel, we read, “This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this,to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you” (John 15: 12-15). It is a powerful statement and one that really challenges us to live it. Our religious communities and our families can both struggle with this, but we also really strive to live it and to have love at the center of who we are.

If we really love one another as we are called to by Jesus, all the wars would cease. If we really believe that love can conquer everything, all that ails the world would cease to exist.

[Jesus] said to him, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself”(Matthew 22:37-39). This is where we begin. We need to learn to love ourselves and to give that love away, to be able to share that love with everyone we meet.

During a recent school visit, I told the kids to turn to one another and say, “Jesus loves you.” The reaction on their faces was amazing. Everybody was smiling. That was love-speak. I encouraged them when they went home to their parents or grandparents to say, “I love you.” Then tell them, “Jesus loves you.”

One of the things we need to remember, but sometimes forget, is “God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him” (1 John 4: 16). When we truly experience the love of God and share the love of God, those are all moments in which we experience God Himself, God loving us.

In the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation, it is extremely humbling to be the priest hearing confessions and experiencing souls being touched by the love of God in such a way that they know they are forgiven. They experience God’s forgiveness in such a way that their lives are genuinely changed in that moment. To be present when they come to realize that God loves them, even though they failed, and is calling them to live in His love – and not stay in the sin they committed – is really a powerful moment.

If we use the words of Jesus in St. Matthew’s Gospel quoted above as a starting point, imagine what the world could be like if we all would live it! If we all had faith in that, if we actually had hope in that, and if we all actually lived that type of love for each other! In many ways, I think that is what Heaven is like, to be able to live in eternal love and eternal hope and eternal life. It is just an awesome gift.

We are called to be a people of faith: faith that truly listens to the Word of God in our lives and allows God’s spirit to move within us. We are called to be a people of hope who trust that the victory has been won – that Jesus lived on the earth and endured His passion, died, resurrected from the dead, and ascended into heaven – and we hope in the resurrection, no matter what is going on in our world today, and that we will live with God forever if we follow and belong to Him.

Finally, we must hear His words, that the greatest of all the gifts is love and to live in the love of God in a way that allows it to drive everything we do, everything we say, and everything we think. It is truly a moment for us to experience Heaven, God’s love in Heaven, eternity.

[KDU1]I changed this to “toward,” but it might not be correct for this metaphor.