By Clement Harrold

June 12, 2025

Sacred Scripture is filled with wisdom and consolation for people going through hard times. Without downplaying the difficulties of life, the Bible offers a resounding message of hope with its “Good News” about a God who enters into our suffering and transforms it from within. Even in our darkest moments, the Scriptures assure us that our present sufferings are only a passing thing, and that God is always close to us.

The Meaning of Hope

The Bible is very clear that Christian hope flows from our relationship with God: “we have our hope set on the living God” (1 Tim 4:10). Indeed, the Christian can have hope even in the toughest of times, because he knows that God is good and He is trustworthy: “let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful” (Heb 10:23). From a biblical perspective, hope is a gift given to us by God, and it directs our hearts back to Him:

For God alone my soul waits in silence,

    for my hope is from him.

He only is my rock and my salvation,

    my fortress; I shall not be shaken.

On God rests my deliverance and my honor;

    my mighty rock, my refuge is God. (Psalm 62:5-7)

At the same time, the Bible makes it clear that hope is different from mere optimism. Whereas optimism expects everything to go well, hope is often born of suffering (more on that below). In fact, St. Thomas Aquinas argued that the object of hope—eternal beatitude in heaven—is something arduous but possible to obtain. It is this realistic and gritty aspect of hope which allows it to be a “sure and steadfast anchor of the soul” (Heb 6:19).

Hope recognizes that many intense hardships and severe trials may still stand between us and heaven, yet it gives us the confidence that even these can be overcome provided we cling to Christ. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains, hope “keeps man from discouragement; it sustains him during times of abandonment; it opens up his heart in expectation of eternal beatitude” (§1818).

Refined through Suffering

Something which the Bible repeatedly emphasizes is the intimate connection between hope and suffering. It is primarily suffering which cultivates hope in the soul of the Christian, and it is hope which gives him the strength to face his trials with the peace and joy of the Gospel.

From a biblical standpoint, “hard times” are therefore not the antithesis of hope, but rather the context for it. As St. Paul exclaims in a famous passage:

More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. (Rom 5:3-5)

This radical proposal reminds us that the hope we receive through hardships is a cause for rejoicing. As Christians we know that even now this hope is purifying our desires and lifting our eyes to heaven: “And every one who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure” (1 John 3:3). It is this supernatural hope which allows us to pray without fear of disappointment: “Let thy steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, even as we hope in thee” (Psalm 33:22).

Lessons from the Saints

One of the great lessons we gain from the lives of saints is that hope “is expressed and nourished in prayer” (Catechism §1820). St. Augustine, for example, described prayer as an exercise of desire, which expands our hearts and makes us receptive to a deeper and more lasting hope (see Spe salvi §33).

Another saint who had ample opportunity to reflect on the meaning of Christian hope was the English convert and cardinal, St. John Henry Newman. Despite his extraordinary gifts, Newman’s life has been described by one of his biographers as “a history of failures.” Another called him the patron saint of the disappointed! Newman experienced more than his fair share of setbacks in this life, but this didn’t rob him of his hope in Christ.

In a particularly powerful passage, Newman offers encouragement to those of us who feel overwhelmed by the evil in our world and in our Church:

But in truth the whole course of Christianity from the first, when we come to examine it, is but one series of troubles and disorders. Every century is like every other, and to those who live in it seems worse than all times before it. The Church is ever ailing, and lingers on in weakness, “always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in her body.” Religion seems ever expiring, schisms dominant, the light of Truth dim, its adherents scattered. The cause of Christ is ever in its last agony, as though it were but a question of time whether it fails finally this day or another. The Saints are ever all but failing from the earth, and Christ all but coming; and thus the Day of Judgment is literally ever at hand; and it is our duty ever to be looking out for it, not disappointed that we have so often said, “now is the moment,” and that at the last, contrary to our expectation, Truth has somewhat rallied. Such is God’s will, gathering in His elect, first one and then another, by little and little, in the intervals of sunshine between storm and storm, or snatching them from the surge of evil, even when the waters rage most furiously. Well may prophets cry out, “How long will it be, O Lord, to the end of these wonders?” how long will this mystery proceed? how long will this perishing world be sustained by the feeble lights which struggle for existence in its unhealthy atmosphere? God alone knows the day and the hour when that will at length be, which He is ever threatening; meanwhile, thus much of comfort do we gain from what has been hitherto,—not to despond, not to be dismayed, not to be anxious, at the troubles which encompass us. They have ever been; they ever shall be; they are our portion. “The floods are risen, the floods have lift up their voice, the floods lift up their waves. The waves of the sea are mighty, and rage horribly; but yet the Lord, who dwelleth on high, is mightier.” (Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church, Lecture 14)

As Newman so clearly perceived, Christianity is no stranger to hard times. Yet this does not shake our hope. Though the darkness encompasses us on every side, still we know and loudly proclaim that “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5).

Further Reading

Benedict XVI, Spe salvi (2007)

Josef Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love (Ignatius Press, 1997)

About Clement Harrold

Clement Harrold earned his master’s degree in theology from the University of Notre Dame in 2024, and his bachelor’s from Franciscan University of Steubenville in 2021. His writings have appeared in First Things, Church Life Journal, Crisis Magazine, and the Washington Examiner.