The return to God --St Maximos the Confessor

The return to God clearly implies the fullest affirmation of hope in Him, for without this nobody can accept God in any way at all.

For it is characteristic of hope that it brings future things before us as if they were present, and so it assures those who are attacked by hostile powers that God, in whose name and for whose sake the saints go into battle, protects them and is in no way absent.

For without some expectation, pleasant or unpleasant, no one can ever undertake a return to the divine.

St Maximos the Confessor