Faith, Hope & Love

Easter Tuesday 2020

An old friend who was a monk, a teacher and finally a Head Master of a monastic independent school always prefaced his 'Speech Day' orations with a reading of part of the second letter of St Paul to the Corinthians. He ended the reading with the sentence so many of us know by heart: " Faith, Hope and Love, these three abide, and the greatest of these is Love". #faith #hope #love

He then underlined that he believed the greatest, 'love', contained the other two. "We cannot divorce or separate them in our lives for they are mutually symbiotic, woven as one and the life force".

Today in the midst of the continuing pandemic we need all three as ever.

My teacher of English at school made me particularly aware of the prophetic wisdom, the human insight and often the spiritual genius of many poets.

I have re-visited Richard Crashaw, a 17th century poet. His "on hope" is, to me, deeply perceptive. The poem is 'by way of Question and Answer between Abraham Cowley and Richard Crashaw'. 

Crashaw notes: 

Dear Hope! Earth's dowry and Heaven's debt,

The entity of things that are not yet.

Subtlest but surest being thou by whom

Our nothing hath a definition.

Fair cloud of fire, both shade and light,

Our life in death, our day in night.

Fates cannot find out a capacity

Of hurting thee

Later in the piece come the lines:

Thou art love's legacy under lock

Of faith, the steward of our growing stock

This, to me, locks in the three, love with and in faith and hope and vice versa, inseparable.

As I muse before attempting to empty myself of thought so as to focus on listening, I wonder on my Faith or trust today, on my Hope for now and the future and on Love, that infinite ineffable spirit manifested in the here and now in a multitude of ways, active and passive, and the ground spring of all being. #listen

Do I have faith?

In Government, law, medical, political and economic authorities, in the generosity and courage and professionalism of scientists, doctors, nurses and all front line workers?

Do I have faith in myself, my goodness and in the positivity of humankind?

I do...yet I know that faith is sometimes misplaced yet ever valuable. #government

Do I have Love? Yes, but that too can fail.

Now, what of Hope?

One of my heroes is Vaclav Havel, first President of the Czech Republic, a scholar, playwright, poet and a man of huge courage, vision and charisma. At the height of tension and conflict and the bid for freedom and independence from the USSR he presented the picture of a leader of world stature, of principle, integrity and moral force. #havel

We need such figures and especially in such a world crisis as our pandemic.

Havel spoke of hope and three sayings echo powerfully today and fill us with determination.

Either we have hope within or we do not

Hope is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart. It transcends the world that is immediately expressed and is anchored somewhere beyond the horizons

Finally, and to me this is adoptable by us all. Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out..

In a real way hope today is something that makes sense for without it we flounder. It is also necessary to have faith that all will be righted and finally also Love, which will conquer all.

So Faith, Hope and Love, all three, are essential now.