Hope and confidence: they are constant themes of the saints. Whether they address the topic head-on, like Little Thérèse or Little Văn – or simply in the choice of topics and exclamations they make before Almighty God – the saints speak about confidence in a God who is Father and Love, and hope, which, as a theological virtue, has not limit and delves into the Infinite Itself.

God, who is Love and Father, wants everyone to be saved. Is there any limit on our hope? We don’t know, in the trusting certainty of faith, that this will be achieved. But we know that we can hope for it; there is in that no limit:

God our Saviour… desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Tim 2:3–4)

This is, more or less, one question that Hans Urs von Balthasar put: The Church teaches that no particular human beings are deprived eternally of the vision of God and are thus in hell. There may be. The possibility is fully, horribly real. But there is no certainty in faith that anyone has gone there for eternity. The Church doesn’t teach that the possibility has been realized for any particular person.

We can dare to hope for the salvation of all. We can dare to let no created thing put a limit on our hope of the attainment of the will of God. Jesus came for all. He became a little baby, a little child, a young man, an adult; he took an obscure life, then a public life, then a public death; he did all this… because he desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. This is the desire of the one who is all-powerful Love. We know the desire. We can hope “all things”; indeed, that is what love does (1 Cor 13:7). What we do not know, we can hope. There are no imposed limits except what we know for certain and the impossibility of making something untrue that is already true.

Indeed, what about the last moments before death?

What about the power of God?

We are forbidden to claim to know things that are not given to us to know.

It is all a loving marvel. In fact, we are forbidden to despair. We must always hope. And hope is a virtue without limit. There’s no balance; there’s no upper ceiling. Hope is only bounded by God, who is infinite.

Blessed Charles de Foucauld said of hope,

Hope is a duty – charity hopes for all – hope is but faith in the goodness of God. He is good and all-powerful. Unquestionably, he leaves us free, and often we use our freedom lamentably, but while leaving us free, he still remains the master and can at his will send a grace so powerful that it overwhelms everything, transforms everything. He has already done enough for us to make us believe in his love…

Saint Teresa likewise had great hope and confidence, certain that the root cause of all is the immense fatherly love that is infinite, when she exclaimed,

Have pity on those who have no pity on themselves; now that their misfortune has placed them in a state in which the don’t want to come to You, come to them Yourself, my God. I beg this of You in their name; and I know that as they understand and turn within themselves and begin to taste You, these dead ones will rise.

And Thérèse and Marcel Văn prayed for notorious sinners whom everyone else gave up for lost – and they were confident that, through prayer, God granted great graces to save those sinners.

Whatever the mystery, the Loving, loveable Mystery of the Trinity works in the secrets of hearts and in the external and internal ways of providence, it is a better plan than we can conceive and narrow-down.

If we didn’t sit in the love of suffering divine things, the love of contemplation, this might all seem nonsense. How does one hope this? How does one hope for all things, yet not know that they will be accomplished? How does one know that there is no limit placed on hope? Perhaps the not-knowing is part of the leavening merit that makes the whole dough rise. perhaps experiencing the destruction of the ceiling is what makes all the light shine through.