The figure of youth is the eternal symbol of hope, just as it is the symbol of magnanimity.
Natural hope blossoms with the strength of youth and withers when youth withers. “Youth is a cause of hope. For youth, the future is long and the past is short.” On the other hand, it is above all when life grows short that hope grows weary; the “not yet” is turned into the has-been, and old age turns, not to the “not yet”, but to memories of what is “no more”.
For supernatural hope, the opposite is true: not only is it not bound to natural youth; it is actually rooted in a much more substantial youthfulness. It bestows on mankind a “not yet” that is entirely superior to and distinct from the failing strength of man’s natural hope. Hence it gives man such a “long” future that the past seems “short” however long and rich his life. The theological virtue of hope is the power to wait patiently for a “not yet” that is the more immeasurably distant from us the more closely we approach it.
The supernatural vitality of hope overflows, moreover, and sheds its light also upon the rejuvenated powers of natural hope. The lives of countless saints attest to this truly astonishing fact. It seems surprising, however, how seldom the enchanting youthfulness of our great saints is noticed; especially of those saints who were active in the world as builders and founders. There is hardly anything comparable to just this youthfulness of the saint that testifies so challengingly to the fact that is surely most relevant for contemporary man: that, in the most literal sense of these words, nothing more eminently preserves and founds “eternal youth” than the theological virtue of hope. It alone can bestow on man the certain possession of that aspiration that is at once relaxed and disciplined, that adaptability and readiness, that strong-hearted freshness, that resilient joy, that steady preseverance in trust that so distinguish the young and make them lovable.
We must not regard this as a fatal concession to the Zeitgeist. As Saint Augustine so aptly says: “God is younger than all else.”