Summary: The Second Vatican Council enriched the classical definition of the act of faith by adding the dimension of the total gift of oneself to God — a development warmly received by the Church. A similar deepening is now needed for the act of hope, whose definition, unchanged since the Middle Ages, points to eternal life but says little about the journey towards union with God already in this life. Drawing on the teaching of Saint Teresa of Avila and Saint John of the Cross, this article argues that the near and practical dimension of hope — union with God here on earth — must be integrated into its classical definition if hope is to recover its full power as the driving force of the Christian life.
The Second Vatican Council brought about a significant development in the understanding of the act of faith. Where the classical definition had emphasised primarily the assent of the mind to revealed truth, the Council enriched this with a far deeper and more personal dimension: faith is now understood as the total gift of oneself to God who reveals Himself. As the Dei Verbum states, “The obedience of faith is to be given to God who reveals, an obedience by which man commits his whole self freely to God, offering the full submission of intellect and will to God who reveals, and freely assenting to the truth revealed by Him.” (DV 5). This was a remarkable leap — not a contradiction of the tradition, but a genuine deepening of it, one that has transformed the way the Church understands and lives the act of faith.
Something similar is now needed for the act of hope. The classical definition, faithfully transmitted by the Catechism of the Catholic Church, presents hope as the desire for the Kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness (CCC 1817). This definition stands firmly within the tradition inherited from Saint Thomas Aquinas and has remained essentially unchanged since the Middle Ages. It is sound as far as it goes. But just as the act of faith called for a deepening that the Council provided, the act of hope is now waiting for a similar integration — one that the great spiritual masters of the Church have long prepared for us.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church presents the virtue of hope in the following terms: “Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the Kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit.” (CCC 1817). This definition stands firmly within the classical theological tradition inherited from Saint Thomas Aquinas, who wrote that “the proper and principal object of hope is eternal happiness.” (Summa Theologiae, II–II, q.17, a.2). It is a definition that has remained essentially unchanged since the Middle Ages, and the Catechism faithfully transmits it.
This doctrinal framework is sound as far as it goes. Hope is indeed ordered towards the final possession of God in eternal life, and this eschatological orientation is essential to any adequate understanding of the virtue. The question, however, is not whether this definition is wrong, but whether it is complete — whether it fully reflects what God has revealed to us through the great spiritual masters of the Church.
St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross, to name only the most important, describe in precise and experiential terms the journey of the soul towards union with God already in this life. For St. Teresa, this journey culminates in the spiritual marriage (Union with Jesus), a real and profound union with God granted here on earth. For St. John of the Cross, the soul in transforming union participates in the very life of God: it becomes God by participation. This is not a peripheral doctrine; it is the very heart of what these Doctors of the Church have bequeathed to us.
What emerges from their teaching is that God does not only promise us heaven after death. He promises us union with Himself here below, as the condition for the fullness of charity — which is itself the true goal of the Christian life on earth. The object of hope, in this light, is not only distant and eschatological; it is also near and practical. Jesus promises to give Himself fully to us, a union He has already accomplished on the Cross. The act of hope therefore consists in gathering all the energies of the soul around this one promise, dropping all lesser hopes, and desiring with our whole being the fulfilment of what He has offered.
Objection
An objection naturally arises at this point, one that gains particular weight in the light of the Second Vatican Council‘s call, expressed in Gaudium et Spes, for Christians to engage actively in the life of the world. Does not an emphasis on interior union with God risk encouraging a self-enclosed and ultimately self-centred spirituality, turned inward and disengaged from the needs of others and from the common life of society?
The objection deserves a serious response, and the response is twofold.
First, authentic spiritual growth is inseparable from the love of neighbour. One cannot advance in true union with God while remaining indifferent to others, for the neighbour is the Body of Christ. Love of neighbour is not an addition to the spiritual life; it is one of its essential conditions. Any form of interiority that bypasses this truth is not genuine Christian mysticism but a counterfeit of it.
Second, and more profoundly, the very object of hope undergoes a development as the soul grows in union with Christ. What begins as a desire for union with Jesus — a desire that is already rich and transforming — gradually reveals its full dimensions. As union deepens, the soul begins to perceive, as St. Paul did in his great apostolic letters to the Philippians, the Colossians, and the Ephesians, the full stature of Christ: not only Christ the Head, but Christ in His totality, Head and Body together. The desire for union with Jesus thus opens, slowly but surely, into a desire for union with His Mystical Body — that is, into a participation in His redemptive and saving work. As Saint Paul writes: “I complete in my flesh what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church.” (Colossians 1:24).
This development is precisely what the Blessed Marie-Eugène traces in his great two-volume work, I Want to See God, where he entitles his final section “The Saint in the Mystical Body of Jesus.” For him, the goal of everything is the Church — her growth until she reaches her full measure. Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus expresses the same desire with characteristic intensity: she would not rest, she said, until the last of the elect had entered heaven.
In this sense, the act of hope does not remain static as the soul advances. It deepens. The initial hope for union with Jesus does not disappear; rather, it expands into a hope for the full growth and completion of His Body. The journey inward and the engagement with the world are not opposites; they are, at the deepest level, one and the same movement. And all of this takes place here on earth, giving to the Christian life its fullest and most complete meaning.
Hope in Daily Life
This has an immediate and concrete impact on daily life. Each morning, when the soul deliberately opens itself to the promise of Christ — His desire to give Himself in union here and now — it receives the energy needed to remain faithful throughout the day. True theological hope, lived this way, becomes a filter: it quietly but powerfully displaces all lesser hopes, all the small and scattered desires that would otherwise fragment the heart and drain it of its deepest energy. It is not a vague sentiment or a distant consolation, but a precise and vigorous act — one that must be made, renewed, and deepened. It gives the soul its orientation, its clarity, and its drive. Everything else falls into place around it.
The soul learns, gradually, to desire one thing above all — and that one desire sustains everything else. Hope ceases to be an abstract orientation towards a distant heaven and becomes a powerful driving force, shaping every choice and every act of desire. As St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus reminds us: the more God wants to give, the more He makes us desire. And St. John of the Cross adds: the more we desire, the more we obtain.
If faith is eyes opened to see the presence of Jesus in our daily life, and ears made capable of hearing His word, then hope is like empty hands — hands relentlessly emptied of lesser hopes — extended to receive His Promise (Union with Him). These extended, empty hands are our most powerful drive.
It is in this sense that the classical definition of hope — as transmitted by the Catechism — needs to be deepened and completed by the teaching of the spiritual masters. The Catechism establishes the doctrinal horizon; the masters describe the concrete path. The near dimension of hope — union with God here on earth — and its remote dimension — the promise of heaven — must always be held together. When they are separated, hope risks becoming impoverished: a promise so far away that it loses its power to animate and transform the present life.
Honouring the development of Christian spiritual doctrine as handed down by the great Doctors of the Church is not optional. It is part of our fidelity to what God has chosen to reveal to us through them. The act of hope must be clearly shaped and defined — for it is the act that constitutes the virtue, and it is the virtue that gives meaning, direction, and energy to the whole of the Christian life.
Greater Urgency
All of this takes on an even greater urgency when seen in the light of what the Second Vatican Council most deeply intended. At the heart of the Council lies a call to renewal, and the most luminous expression of that renewal is the universal call to holiness proclaimed in Lumen Gentium. This is, in a real sense, what the Holy Spirit wanted to say to the Church in our time. It is the shining centre of the Council’s vision. But this call can only be heard and responded to wholeheartedly if the act of hope is properly understood and clearly defined. For it is hope — real, practical, daily hope — that gives the soul the energy to respond to this call, to set out on the journey, and to persevere through its stages.
When the act of hope is reduced to a distant orientation toward heaven, a gap opens up — and it is a serious one — between the grandeur of what the Council proposes and the poverty of the means offered to achieve it. The universal call to holiness demands a hope that is equal to it: a hope anchored in the promise of union with Christ here on earth, capable of shaping each day and sustaining the whole journey of transformation. When this hope is truly lived, the Church begins to resemble more and more the One to whom she belongs, and becomes, in the fullest sense of the Council’s own expression, a sacrament of salvation (Vat II) for the world.
This gap must be acknowledged and addressed. The act of hope needs to recover its true and practical dimension — not as a theological refinement for specialists, but as the living heartbeat of every Christian life.
Conclusion
The teaching of St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross points us toward a conclusion that is at once theological and deeply practical. Hope is not merely a doctrinal affirmation to be made once and stored away; it is a living act that must be renewed, tended, and exercised. St. John of the Cross insists that the soul must progressively purify its desires, gathering them around the one true promise that God offers — the gift of Himself. St. Teresa maps the journey by which this promise is progressively fulfilled, stage by stage, until the soul arrives at a real and transformative union with God already in this life.
What follows from this, concretely, is that the act of hope must become a daily act — indeed, a defining act of each morning. Before the day begins, the soul opens itself to the promise of Christ: His gift of Himself, here, now, on this earth. This single act, when made with full deliberateness and renewed throughout the day, has the power to reorient everything. It determines what we desire, what we seek, and what we are willing to let go of. It becomes, in the most practical sense, the driving force of the Christian life.
This is why the definition of hope matters so much. A hope directed only toward a distant heaven, however true, does not carry the same transforming energy as a hope anchored in a promise already being fulfilled. The act of hope needs to be reshaped, deepened, and brought into daily life — not as a pious exercise, but as the central act of the Christian day. In this, the spiritual masters show us the way. It remains for us to follow it.
The life of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus offers perhaps the most beautiful illustration of this journey. Having read the Spiritual Canticle and the Living Flame of Love of St. John of the Cross, she turned to Jesus in prayer and asked Him simply to realise in her everything she had read. It was an act of hope in its purest form — empty hands, extended, trusting entirely in the promise. And toward the end of her life, she could say something breathtakingly audacious, something that reveals the fruit of that hope: “Possessing Him, I possess Him already. I don’t see what more I could receive — and if in heaven there is nothing more, I will still act surprised, in order to please Him.”
Is this not precisely what hope promises? God never deceives. The promise, when truly hoped for, is already being possessed. This is the depth to which the act of hope is called — and this is what the Church, in her teaching, has yet to fully express.
If You Liked This, You Must Read:
The Forgotten Theological Act: Hope (Practical and needed)
The Distinctively Christian Hope
When I Die, Can I Go Directly to Heaven? (When Our Goal is Only Purgatory)