A group of Boy Scouts went on an excursion to a mountain. As they passed through the small town on the way, the parish priest saw the group walking by and went out to meet them to ask who they were and what they were doing. Upon learning where they were going, knowing that the forest they were going to cross was very dense and that many had gotten lost, he asked them if they had a guide.
The guides, who were the leaders of the group, answered yes. However, from the answers they gave to some of the questions the priest asked them, he realized that they did not have much experience. So, he said to them: “Be attentive to the trumpet.” The guides did not understand what the priest said to them, but since they acted like experts, they pretended to understand and continued toward the forest.
Hours later, seeing that the group had not yet come back, the priest went out with his trumpet and, approaching where the forest began, played it so that the Boy Scouts would hear it and know how to get out of the forest. Upon hearing the trumpet, the leaders understood the priest’s message and followed the sound of the trumpet. The forest was so dense that many times they had to take detours that took them away from the sound of the trumpet until they heard it again. One of the boys, at a moment when the trumpet could barely be heard, said to the leader: “If that trumpet stops sounding, I’ll sit down and stay right here.”
Hope is like the sound of the trumpet: as long as we hear it resounding in our soul, we do not stop on the path toward eternity, but if we stop hearing its sound, we have the temptation that the boy had to stop and go no further.
We must make true hope grow; Christian hope, which is the hope that makes us hope God from God. There are two kinds of hope, and this is what distinguishes true Christians from the rest of men: 1) the hope of those who think of the earth and therefore hope for things for this life and put all their efforts into obtaining a life as pleasant as possible, 2) and the hope of those who think of heaven, hope for eternal life which is their main concern.
These two hopes are incompatible, so the growth of one silences the other one. The more we hope for the things of this earth, the more we forget eternal things; and the more we hope for eternal things, the more we forget the things of this life.
In this sense, making hope grow means ceasing to worry with anxious solicitude about the things of this life, since that disordered solicitude makes us increasingly attentive to material things, forgetting eternal realities. If we feed the desire to see God, which is none other than the desire of Christian hope, together with the increase of hope, the anxiety to possess things in this life diminishes. The soul realizes that this desire cannot be satisfied by created goods but only by the Creator. Thus, the soul increasingly experiences true yearning, which is the yearning for eternity.
