“A first essential setting for learning hope is prayer. When no one listens to me anymore, God still listens to me. When I can no longer talk to anyone or call upon anyone, I can always talk to God. When there is no longer anyone to help me deal with a need or expectation that goes beyond the human capacity for hope, he can help me.” – Pope Benedict XVI, On Christian Hope
In my previous column on hope, I focused on how faith and hope are closely connected. In this column, my focus will be on the sins against hope, the opposite, deadly sins of despair and presumption. If we fall into these areas unwittingly, we might also undermine our faith.
“Therefore, I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.” (Matthew 12:31) The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) connects this verse against the virtue of hope.
We read in CCC 1864, “There are no limits to the mercy of God, but anyone who deliberately refuses to accept his mercy by repenting, rejects the forgiveness of his sins and the salvation offered by the Holy Spirit. Such hardness of heart can lead to final impenitence and eternal loss.”
Regarding despair: “By despair, man ceases to hope for his personal salvation from God, for help in attaining it or for the forgiveness of his sins. Despair is contrary to God’s goodness, to his justice – for the Lord is faithful to his promises – and to his mercy.” (CCC 2091)
We see despair most manifested in depression and treated with medicine under mental health. I will not pretend to be a psychologist or assert that there aren’t physical/chemical contributions for depression. We are spirit and matter.
But I think we are in a “world or time” when too few in the science/medical community want to talk about the lack of/or weak faith as a cause/symptom of depression.
One final word on despair. Suicide is all too prevalent. CCC gives the Church teaching in paragraph 2283. “We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives.” The Church is hopeful.
On presumption. “There are two kinds of presumption. Either man presumes upon his own capacities, (hoping to be able to save himself without help from on high), or he presumes upon God’s almighty power or his mercy (hoping to obtain his forgiveness without conversion and glory without merit).” (CCC 2092)
Whenever we hear people talk of presumption, it almost always has to do with the presumption of innocence in legal cases, which is a good thing. What you don’t hear are people going to psychologists for problems with “clinical presumption.”
The first kind of presumption has been around for a long time. The heresy of Pelagianism, which proposed humanity was so good as to not need redemption, is a type of presumption. It denied original sin and promulgated a belief in human goodness, apart from divine grace. In Jesus, we don’t have a redeemer but a good example and moral teacher.
The second is often manifested in the idea “once saved, always saved.” We are surely redeemed by Christ in baptism, but we can freely choose to reject this gift through serious sin.
As St. Paul writes, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23)
We also read, “For if we sin deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful prospect of judgment, and a fury of fire which will consume the adversaries.” (Hebrews 10:26-27)
Peter Kreeft in Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from St. Thomas Aquinas, sees presumption and despair linked. He writes, “We find in modern Western civilization great presumption and great despair together.
“For instance, the presumption that we can by our science and technology make ourselves unlimitedly intelligent and create a Heaven on earth – this presumption naturally begets a despairing disappointment and resentment against the few physical pains that remain in our lives, and the naïve optimism of this presumption begets a pessimism when it fails to deliver.
“Thus the ‘Enlightenment’ begets the Existentialists’ despair.”
Presumption and despair, being sins against hope, resides in the will. In sinning, they obey the passions, vice, intellect. This is why it is so hard to recognize, hard to help people and hard to combat. To recognize, use a good examination of conscience. To treat, frequent confession and the Eucharist.
