Hope in the Catholic Church is a virtue that points us beyond ourselves and invites us to look forward to the eternal reward God has prepared for us in Heaven.
The reality of an afterlife is what drives Christian hope, as it can give us all a concrete destination to strive for and long to reach.
Eternal life
Pope Benedict XVI reflects on this aspect of Christian hope in his encyclical, Spe salvi, by connecting it to baptism:
Today as in the past, this is what being baptized, becoming Christians, is all about: it is not just an act of socialization within the community, not simply a welcome into the Church. The parents expect more for the one to be baptized: they expect that faith, which includes the corporeal nature of the Church and her sacraments, will give life to their child—eternal life.
Yet, many of us have doubts about eternity, as Pope Benedict XVI points out:
Faith is the substance of hope. But then the question arises: do we really want this—to live eternally? Perhaps many people reject the faith today simply because they do not find the prospect of eternal life attractive. What they desire is not eternal life at all, but this present life, for which faith in eternal life seems something of an impediment. To continue living for ever —endlessly—appears more like a curse than a gift. Death, admittedly, one would wish to postpone for as long as possible. But to live always, without end—this, all things considered, can only be monotonous and ultimately unbearable.
Pope Benedict XVI believed that the key for Christian hope was to long for Heaven, seeing it as a destination that gives to us pure joy:
We can only attempt to grasp the idea that such a moment is life in the full sense, a plunging ever anew into the vastness of being, in which we are simply overwhelmed with joy. This is how Jesus expresses it in Saint John's Gospel: “I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you” (16:22). We must think along these lines if we want to understand the object of Christian hope, to understand what it is that our faith, our being with Christ, leads us to expect.
To cultivate Christian hope in our lives, we need to look forward to that day when we will be united fully with Jesus Christ.
It will not be a day of sadness, but one of pure and inexpressible joy, a joy we will experience for all eternity.
