Creatureliness, despair and Hope

“For man who, in statu viatoris, in the state of being on the way, experiences the essential creatureliness, the “not yet really existing being” of his existence, there is only one appropriate answer to this experience. The answer cannot be despair–for the meaning of creaturely existence is not nothingness but rather is being, which means fulfillment. The response also cannot be the comfortable security of possessions–for the creature’s “being as becoming” still borders in peril on nothingness. Both of these, despair and assurance of possession, militate against the truth of real things. The only answer that is suitable for man’s authentic existential situation is hope. The virtue of hope is the first appropriate virtue of the status viatoris; it is the genuine virtue of the “not yet”. In the virtue of hope, before all others, man understands and affirms that he is a creature, a creation of God” (A Brief Reader on the Virtues of the Human Heart, p. 47-48).