It was hope that guided my fingers from bead to bead it was hope that formed the mumbled, barely articulate prayers onto the lips of my mind. It was then, in the midst of “the earthquake, wind and fire” of my sinful passions, that I heard that whispering hope, the “still, small voice of calm” that would exorcise the demons and still the waters of my heart. What was I to do with this string of beads? I had been taught the Our Father many years earlier, at school, but had long since forgotten it.

I didn’t know the Hail Mary or the Apostles’ Creed or the Glory Be. I was not a Catholic, though the reading of Chesterton and Belloc had led me closer to the arms of Mother Church than I realized. And yet, hidden somewhere in the corner of my Pandora’s Box was the barest flicker of hope. I had no love, except for that love for family and friends that even the publicans and sinners have. A plethora of plague-ridden doubts besieged me. I was in fact surrounded by my own vices, my own sins, my own bitterness, my own hates. I was a leading member of a white supremacist organization, an angry young man, who had been sentenced to twelve months in prison for “publishing material likely to incite racial hatred.” It was during the first days of my sentence. It was during my own dark ages, before I was received into the Catholic Church. Many years ago, or once upon a time, I found myself alone in a prison cell. I happen to believe in Pandora’s Box, not merely because of the metaphors and allegories to be found in it, but because I once found myself actually living in it. There is so much truth to be discovered in the myth of Pandora’s Box that it’s a shame that “myth” is so often used as a synonym for “lie.” A lie is always a lie, but a myth is often true. Only hope remains in the box, the silver lining in the cloud that overshadows fallen humanity. The curse of this original sin plagues humanity as, like a cloud of licentious locusts, vice and disease pour forth from the opened casket. As with Eve’s plucking of the forbidden fruit, Pandora, the pagan Eve, opens the forbidden box.

It belonged to the gods and she had no right to open it. In point of fact, the box was not Pandora’s at all. Hope also has a special place in pagan mythology, a place reserved for it in Pandora’s Box. Hope, the humble David of the virtues, slays the mighty Goliath of the sins. Hopelessness is despair, and despair is the triumph of pride. Conversely, where hope is absent, pride prevails. Hope, as the humblest of the virtues, overthrows pride with humility. This convoluted paradox is exemplified by the fact that hope, as the “least” of the virtues, is the antidote to the poison of pride, the greatest of sins. If, therefore, hope is the least of the virtues it is, paradoxically, the least among equals. Like their source, of which they are a reflection and a type, they exhibit the Divine egalitarianism. Like the Trinity at the heart of reality, the theological virtues are One even as they are Three.

Pandoraman