Year of Faith to a Life of Faith (and Hope and Charity)

The Year of Faith will be over tomorrow, but our life of faith is hopefully forever strengthened. When we get to heaven (God willing and Our Lady leading), we will be eternally amazed at the graces poured out into our lives while traversing this valley of tears. We'll "look back" on this Year of Faith and marvel forever at God's goodness. 

This leads me to consider the importance of HOPE in our life of faith. What's the difference?

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

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. 

Faith is the theological virtue by which we believe in God and believe all that he has said and revealed to us, and that Holy Church proposes for our belief, because he is truth itself. 

Hope orders our human desire for happiness. It keeps us from indulging in the here and now, because we know that something greater is coming. We pass up that delicious steak or that gallon of ice cream on a Friday, because we know that our true happiness is coming --- we don't need that steak to be happy, we don't even need that ice cream. Hope tells us to hold on and live for what is greater. 

Hope also acts as a healing warmth when we can't understand the brokenness and evils around us, because we know that we are still waiting for our true home. It is much easier to put up with aches and pains when we know we are healing, or to sit still on an airplane for hours and hours when you know we are going somewhere, or to run those miles when we know there is a finish line. Hope tells us it's worth it. 

Faith, is more about the here and now, the eternal present. Faith tells you there is a God, it is an intellectual, willed decision to believe everything he tells us and to CONFORM our lives to this truth. 

Faith without works is dead. 
Faith without Hope is stagnant. 
Faith and Hope without Charity is impossible. 

But, put them all together and you have an unstoppable force for Good, and a joy that no one can take away. 

As we cross through the "Door of Faith," my prayer is that this year of faith will become a life of Faith, one day at a time, in the Hope of being with him forever, and enflamed by that Love that knows no limits.