Introduction to Abbot Vonier's "The Life of the World to Come", by Edward T. Oakes, S.J.

Introduction to Abbot Vonier's The Life of the World to Come | Edward T. Oakes, S.J. | Ignatius Insight

What distinguishes a Christian from a non-Christian? Perhaps behavior? No. Given the record of Christian sinfulness, history shows that virtues and vices can be found across the whole spectrum of human society. Who after all has a monopoly on vice or virtue? Where Christians have St. Francis of Assisi, Hindus have Mahatma Gandhi, and atheists Albert Camus.

Still, behavior must count for something, no? For when we grant that some Christians act disgracefully, we are already implying that some behaviors are incompatible with the faith. But if we then go on to assert that therefore behavior alone distinguishes the true from the false Christian, we run into the difficulty noted above: history knows of both Christian vices and non-Christian virtues.

Maybe, though, Christianity defines virtuous behavior in a way unique to itself. Indeed it does. In fact, one of the many merits of Abbot Vonier's short book, The Life of the World to Come, is his insistence that Christians necessarily see virtue differently from other religions and worldviews. Specifically, they acknowledge three key theological virtues above all: faith, hope, and love. One might object that other religions know of faith, hope, and love too, as they surely do; but Abbot Vonier will insist that the content of these virtues is utterly unique in the Christian understanding, and that holds true most especially the content of the Christian hope.

Given that fact, it seems odd how little theologians concentrate on the virtue of hope, at least in contrast to the other two theological virtues. Because St. Paul defined love as the greatest of the virtues, and because secular culture makes a life of faith so challenging in the contemporary setting, most theologians concentrate on faith and charity, as in Pope Benedict XVI's first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est (on love), or his famous book Introduction to Christianity (on faith). But if the net result of this concentration ends up slighting the virtue of hope, something essential is lost.

But what is the specifically Christian hope? St. Paul defines it this way: "If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory" (Colossians 3:1-4). In this passage Paul gives us his answer to the question asked above. Here we have, neatly formulated, at least one of the great marks that can help us distinguish the (authentic) Christian from the (virtuous) non-Christian: for true Christians, heaven should be more real than the earth on which they dwell.

In essence, Abbot Vonier's book, now before the reader in a new edition from Zaccheus Press after long having languished out of print, is an extended meditation on this maxim. First of all, as the title clearly indicates, the author insists that our hope does not terminate in heaven alone but, as the Creed says, in vitam venturi saeculi—that is, the Christian hopes for the life of the world to come, when there will be a "new heaven and a new earth" (Revelation 21:1).

Too often in the past, the focus of Christians had been one of, as they say, just "getting into heaven," an attitude that turns the sacraments into a kind of celestial life-insurance premium. True, as St. Paul says above, while we are still sojourning on this earth, we are called to focus on heaven (which is why a cultivation of friendship with the saints is so important to the devout life). But our ultimate hope is for the final restoration of all things into a new heaven and a new earth, with the resurrection of our bodies a key part of that hope.

So much for the content of our hope, what the medieval scholastics called spes quod. But what about the subjective state of hope, the spes qua, as it were? Is there something uniquely Christian here too? Again, Abbot Vonier illuminates the difference admirably in a passage so lucid that it bears quoting in full (not least because I hope it will motivate the reader to read the whole book!):

There is, then, this deep note of assurance and joy in our spiritual longings; instead of saying that we hope to have eternal life, we are made to say [in the Creed] that we await the life of the world to come. Hoping for something is profoundly different from waiting for something. You wait for a train; you hope for fine weather. The train is sure to arrive; if you are early you sit down and feel the contentment of certainty. But if you are bent on pleasure your hope of a fine day has a disturbing element of doubt; you are not quite certain whether the fine weather will hold. Hope is a very different thing from expectation. There is in hope an element of uncertainty, a kind of struggle; we have to work ourselves up to it when we hope earnestly.

The Swiss Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar once dryly observed that the real reason most nonbelievers won't make the leap of faith and accept the Christian message is because they are afraid that, deep down, it sounds simply too good to be true. Physics teaches entropy; Christians proclaim their revelation that earth will someday be transformed into heaven. Modern Stoics like Sigmund Freud, borrowing a page from Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, teach resignation in the face of inevitable death; Christians hold out hope for a resurrection of the body. In other words, as the Abbot rightly says, "spes est boni ardui: hope strains for what is difficult, arduous." And why so difficult? Because we are called "to possess now the life of God in our frail, poor souls, so much inclined to the life of sin. Incredible as it seems, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, through hope we feel confident that God's life is in us" even in the midst of all contradictory evidence (emphasis added).

The great marvel of this marvelous little book is that its author has made the arduous task of hoping a little bit easier for the struggling Christian.

Edward T. Oakes, S.J.
University of St. Mary of the Lake
Mundelein, Illinois
Sixth Sunday of Easter, 2007

Related IgnatiusInsight.com Articles and Book Excerpts:

• Introduction to Abbot Vonier's The Human Soul | by Ralph McInerny
• Abbot Vonier and the Christian Sacrifice | Introduction to Abbot Vonier's A Key to the Doctrine of the Eucharist | Aidan Nichols, O.P.
• The Question of Hope | Peter Kreeft
• The Encyclical on Hope: On the "De-immanentizing" of the Christian Eschaton | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.
• Life: Political, Endless, and Eternal | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.

Abbot Vonier was a Benedictine monk who lived from 1876 to 1938. He was elected Abbot of Buckfast Abbey, England, in 1906, and served in that capacity until his death. During his lifetime Vonier gained fame as the rebuilder of Buckfast, which had been left in ruins following the Reformation, and as the author of some 15 books of popular theology--works which developed :a vast company of admirers who welcomed every new book of his with enthusiasm." A bestselling author in England of the 1920s--that golden age of Catholic letters when Chesterton, Knox and Belloc flourished--Abbot Vonier was a gifted intellectual who regarded his literary activity as part of the mission with which Divine Providence had charged him. His great desire, and achievement, was to instruct in the Catholic Faith, to reveal its glories as available here and now to every Christian.