NOTES for Luk 11:9-10
The apostle Paul tells us: now these three remain: faith, hope, and love (1 Cor 13:13), and through his word faith, hope, and love became the most important Christian virtues. People speak often and at length about what faith and love are. But what is hope? "Put not your trust in princes, in sons of men" (Ps 145:3), we sing at every liturgy. This is a kind of apophatic definition of hope. Our hope cannot dwell in the world of passing human relationships. This is sometimes hard to understand and accept, because we are used to hoping in one another; that, it would seem, is our brotherhood. But something else is meant here. Each of us is weak and sinful, and for that reason alone cannot always give another person what he asks for.
But we have another kind of hope, the holy promise that the Lord will always give us what we ask of him. Only one thing is needed: that we have faith, hope, and love. Faith, so that we direct our gaze toward God; hope, so that we have the strength to wait, knock, and seek; love, so that we give the fruits of God's kindness to others. But reasoning this way, one gradually comes to the thought that the division between these three virtues is to a certain extent conditional. Faith is akin to hope, for it is just as strong; hope is akin to love, for it is just as radiant. One without the other is meaningless. And perhaps even corrupt. Think what today's passage about hoping that God will answer would mean if there were no faith and no love. Then we could be called consumers of divine grace, and nothing more.