The holidays plus the Year of Mercy have brought messages of hope from our bishop and others as 2016 begins.

Following their lead, we can ponder the virtue of hope, which is so vital to our wellbeing and our faith.

Perhaps we think of hope as something that comes along based on circumstances, particularly when there is a positive change. Someone whose illness begins to respond to treatment may experience a surge of hope. A wayward child’s phone call out of the blue can get a parent’s hopes up — or dash them just as quickly. A new job often brings an upwelling of hope for a better personal future.

Such earthly hopes, of course, lean heavily on our surroundings. As a result, they are rather precarious.

After all, we do not have much control over most things.

We might be able to encourage such hope through counseling, coaching or sheer determination to keep going toward what we think is a light at the end of the tunnel. Creating and sustaining such hopes can be exhausting. And even when great, they can be dramatically lost — as when a person hopes for an end to his country’s war based on what turns out to be only a brief ceasefire.

Fortunately, there is another kind of hope that can endure.

The theological virtues include faith, charity and the deeper hope that is a gift from God. The three are “infused by God into the souls of the faithful to make them capable of acting as His children and of meriting eternal life. They are the pledge of the presence and action of the Holy Spirit … .” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1813)

The theological virtue of hope endures beyond the fleeting hopes found on earth. But, like the other two theological virtues, benefits of the virtue of hope cannot fully come to fruition until we put it into practice.

This hope, although infused into our souls, does not automatically come forth when we need it to supernaturally lift our spirits and souls if some darkness envelopes us. It does have that greater-than-usual uplifting power, however. Consider those saintly martyrs who could smile and sing with real joy in the face of death. Such people stood ready to benefit from such amazing heights of hope because they did the spiritual work to grow the virtues within themselves before death overshadowed them.

But then there are the rest of us who have not yet advanced so far in faith. We too, every day, can grow in hope.

Hope is a virtue we can cement into place within ourselves — a thing of substance and a fixture to grab onto when we are losing our footing in day-to-day life. We remind ourselves and ponder that God indeed is our Rock, and then faith, hope and love become the handholds to make it possible for us to climb that Rock to higher heights.

With theological hope in God, we can keep progressing toward the kingdom of heaven. We can keep going through circumstances that may cause those who have neglected growing the virtues to fall by the wayside.

“The virtue of hope … takes up the (other) hopes that inspire men’s activities and purifies them so as to order them to the Kingdom of heaven; it keeps man from discouragement; it sustains him during times of abandonment; it opens up his heart in expectation of eternal beatitude. Buoyed up by hope, he is preserved from selfishness and led to the happiness that flows from charity.” (CCC, 1818)

As people of faith, we don’t have to strive to obtain such hope — God has given it to us already — but we do need to recognize, welcome and nurture it. If we set this gift on a dusty, inner shelf, we may well forget we have it, and we won’t know where to reach for it on a future, dark day.

As St. Paul prayed for the Romans, so should we pray for one another: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.”

All peace, joy and hope to you in this new year!