Means.



We are not perfectly free until we live in pure hope. For when our hope is pure, it no longer trusts exclusively in human and visible means, nor rests in any visible end.  He who hopes in God trusts God, Whom he never sees, to bring him to the possession of things that are beyond imagination. When we do not desire the things of this world for their own sake, we become able to see them as they are. We see at once their goodness and purpose, and we become able to appreciate them as we never have before...

Hope deprives us of everything that is not God, in order that all things may serve their true purpose as means to bring us to God. -Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island, p. 14-15