So, genuine Hope is a good thing…but how can we have it?  Aquinas reminds us that it comes from God…but how does He give it?  Does He just pass out Hope like a candy bar at Halloween? In Romans 5,...

Not everyone believes that Hope is a virtue.  Friedrich Nietzsche, who famously declared that God is dead, also thought that, “Hope, in reality, is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.”  That may sound harsh,...

Hope is one of the theological virtues.  As Thomas Aquinas explained, that is “first, because their object is God, inasmuch as they direct us aright to God: secondly, because they are infused in us by God alone: thirdly, because these virtues are...

If Faith is to trust and obey God, then Hope is the confidence that God will bring about the good he has promised—no matter how unlikely it seems. God told Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, after God had promised...

The gospel of Matthew tells us that one night, the disciples were out in the boat and Jesus came to them walking on the water.  “It’s a ghost,” they said, and cried out in fear. 27 But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take...

Is Faith a matter of your mind or your mood?  C.S. Lewis offers a compelling answer: “Now Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has...

Faith may be like a pair of glasses, but it requires more than just putting them on.  Abraham is regarded by many as the father of Faith.  Genesis says: “12 Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your countryand your kindred and your father’s...

Yesterday I said that Faith is a little bit like putting on a pair of glasses.  But there’s a catch: just putting on any old glasses won’t do the trick.  We only see clearly if we have the right lenses....

This week’s virtue is Faith. Hebrews 11:1-3 provides us with a clear but perhaps surprising definition of Faith: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. 2 For by it the people of old received their...

It is easy to think of Temperance as a kind of imprisonment—all this talk about moderation, self-restraint, too much of a good thing, pausing and thinking before we act.  You may wonder, why bother with all of that?  Indeed, the...