These everlasting virtues form a little incarnated Holy Trinity.
The three are intertwined and co-mingled. They are three persons but one unity. Faith is not faith without hope and love, and hope is not hope without faith and love, and love is not love without faith and hope.
The blessed three sit at the same table. They feed one another and nurture each other in a beautiful and never ending banquet of dignity and delight.
Hope springs naturally from faith; and love for all things is the result. Love springs naturally from hope and more faith in God’s goodness is the result. Faith springs naturally from love for what we love we trust, and hope springs from the other two because when we love and trust we hope.
These three not only remain, they multiply and populate the universe in an every widening spiral of light.
Father, Aren’t Faith, Hope and Love specifically mentioned in 1 Corinthians? It’s pulling at my memory, but I don’t have my Bible to hand…
1Cor 13:13 But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.Always instructive to me is that “the greatest of these is love.” I would’ve expected Paul to say faith.
When I first saw the image then your text, I thought that is not a depiction of three virtues. It’s Andrei Rublev’s Holy Trinity icon, which I recognized from a book I am reading, Windows to Heaven: Introducing Icons to Protestants and Catholics. In an earlier age, ecclesiastical concerns about “graven images” may have encouraged some to see the three only as men visiting Abraham by the oaks of Mamre. There is a simple, illuminating reflection at wellsprings.org.uk/rublevs_icon/ The more I ponder faith, love and hope, the better they work out as an incarnational trinity.