(b) Hope and charity are normally equal as to duration, but accidentally hope may precede charity, as when one commits a mortal sin, but retains his hope of salvation, and later recovers charity. There is question now only of the habits, because the acts of the sinner leading up to charity—faith, fear, hope, contrition, etc.—are for the most part successive, although in a sudden conversion hope may be virtually included in charity.
(c) They are unequal as to natural precedence, hope being prior to charity, for, just as fear naturally leads to interested love such as is contained in hope, so does this interested love prepare one for a higher love that is disinterested: “The end of the commandment is charity from a pure heart” (I Tim., i. 5). We speak here of hope unanimated by charity; for animated or living hope trusts in God as a friend, and hence presupposes charity.
(d) They are unequal in excellence, for hope proceeds from imperfect love, which desires God for the sake of the one who loves, while charity is perfect love and desires God for His sake.
1031. Hope, as said above (see 1015-1017), is good and virtuous even when separated from charity, or when exercised without the actual motive of charity. But imperfect or less perfect hope must not be confused with the following acts, which have only the appearance of hope: (a) acts that remove the material object of hope, which are such as look for all beatitude in something different from God (e.g., in secondary joys of heaven); (b) acts that do injury to the objects of hope, such as those that subordinate them to lesser goods (e.g., hope which puts self above God or delight above virtue).
1082. Three types of the latter kind of pseudo-hope may be distinguished:
(a) Egotistical hope is that which places the end for which beatitude is hoped (i.e., self, as was said in 1022) above the end which is beatitude (i.e., God the Last End, as was said in 1019 sqq.), or which places subjective beatitude (i.e., the act of intuitive vision by which beatitude is attained) above objective beatitude (i.e., God as the object in which beatitude consists). Just as the intellect is in error when it mistakes the conclusion for the premise, so is the will in disorder when it takes a means for the end. Hence, while there is nothing inordinate in a man’s hoping for food on account of eating and in his eating on account of health (since in reality health is the purpose of eating, and eating the purpose of food), it is extremely inordinate to hope for God on account of the beatific vision or on account of self, since God is the End of all, and the beatific vision is only the condition for attaining to this Last End, and self merely the subject to whom God and the beatific vision are to be given for its perfection through them.
(b) Epicurean hope is that which places pleasure above the other elements that pertain to subjective beatitude. The subjective happiness of man consists essentially in the act that is highest and distinctly human—namely, in the act of the intellect seeing God intuitively; hence, pleasure—even the chief spiritual pleasures-should be esteemed as something secondary and consequent.
(c) Utilitarian hope is that which places reward above virtue, as if the latter were merely a means, as when one says: “If there were no heaven, I would practise no virtue.” There are three kinds of good: (i) useful good, or that which is desirable only because it serves as a means to something else (e.g., bitter medicine, which is wished, not for its own sake, but for the sake of health); (ii) moral good, or that which is desired for its own sake, as being agreeable to the rational nature of man (such as virtue); (iii) delightful good, that is, the repose or satisfaction of the will in possession of that which is desirable for its own sake. It is a mistake, therefore, to regard virtue as merely a useful good, something that is disagreeable in itself and cannot be practised on account of its inherent goodness. It is also a mistake to consider heaven as something above and apart from virtue; for eternal life is the perfect flowering and fruitage of the moral life that has been planted and developed here on earth. The things of this world are only means to virtue, and virtue reaches its climax in the beatific vision. The delights of heaven are results of that vision, not its end.
1033. Hope, therefore, must seek God as the chief good; it must not prefer the lesser to the greater, and it must not hold virtue as good only in view of the reward. But, on the other hand, hope seeks God as its own good, and it need not be joined to disinterested love, in order to be a true virtue.
(a) Hence, it is not necessary that one hope with the proviso that, in the impossible hypothesis that God were unwilling to reward virtue, the reward would not be expected; for it is not necessary to consider chimerical cases.