June 23, 2024
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I have been thinking a lot lately about hope. The recent dramatic rescue of four Israeli hostages from Hamas has brought home the intolerable situation in the Middle East. Humanly speaking, I could not imagine the pain of those families whose loved ones were abducted and kidnapped and being held as political pawns for leverage in negotiations. How do they live from day to day? And, of course, the victims themselves, the hostages. How do they survive from moment to moment in a hostile environment where life is receding, and death is approaching more and more? They must exercise some kind of hope in the midst of such despair! Without a sense of hope or even optimism in a positive outcome of a terrible situation, one cannot live. Human beings are made structurally to look toward the future, thus hope is absolutely essential. But for those without the Christian faith and without the theological virtue of hope, hope is only optimism, a human trait – helpful but ultimately inadequate. Human optimism is based on human being’s capacity to turn around a situation, to solve a problem, to overcome a difficulty. Human optimism, necessary as it is, fall short of its sustaining power, because at the end of the day, human beings are limited by what they could do. There is no way around human finitude.
On the other hand, hope is truly the one characteristic that definitively defines those who belong to Christ’s kingdom already in this world. Those who adhere to Christ know hope, because they have been given hope. It is a theological virtue, that is, a gift from God. This most wonderful virtue of hope is the only adequate antidote to a world crisis we are facing, especially in these times. All the polls in this election year indicate that for most people, the economy, including the severe problem of inflation and the immigration crisis are the most pressing concerns. These can certainly bring painful suffering and generate great anxieties. But for those who live with faith and hope, these intractable challenges cannot take away the meaning of life, which is to live in friendship with Christ. So, the most dangerous crisis in our age is not economic, environmental, or even political. Instead, it is spiritual. It's the tendency to rely on our own strength to advance our causes, to build our earthly city apart from God, to construct a utopia that could never be realized. When all is said and done, a world that tries to survive only on its own resources, a humanity that tries to thrive only on its own ingenuity, a society that trusts only its own institutions and traditions and customs, cannot but fail and unravel in the end. The rises and falls of great nations and empires, the coming and going of all the great ism-s (Communism, socialism, fascism, and the various forms of nationalisms), the explosions and implosions of all revolutions: these are sobering testimonies to the folly of the denial of God and the rejection of theological hope. But Christians, the subjects of Christ’s kingdom in this world, those who live on hope (a hope inspired by faith and manifest in love), they might indeed suffer greatly, but even in the midst of suffering, they know from the deepest part of their being that, despite all the horrors, humanity (and they as part of it) will not succumb to total annihilation, nor be allowed by God to be drowned in the night of self-destruction. This is what Pope Benedict said so long ago in a homily. Christians who live on hope have this heart-felt conviction that God will not let their lives be torn from His hands. What is more, even after Auschwitz and Chernobyl, even after Littleton and Sandy Hook, even after the most tragic catastrophes of history, God has never stopped being God. God always remains God: “He remains good with an indestructible goodness.” That is what Pope Benedict insists and he is right! God remains redeemer and savior in whose hands man’s barbaric and cruel treatment of each other can be transformed by love (think of St. Maximillian Kolbe!). Again, Pope Benedict tells us that “Christians who live on hope know that they are not the only actor on stage of history, and that is why death can never be allowed to have the last word in it.” Ultimately, Christians who live on hope with an eye towards the future while being mired in the suffering of the presence know deep down in their hearts that their hope is not futile, because there is this other Person who is active in the world and in their own lives and Who alone is the firm and certain anchor of a certainty that is stronger than all “frightfulnesses” of a world constantly threatened.
As conclusion let me say a word about prayer. For Pope Benedict the Great, prayer is the school of hope and people who hope pray. It is obvious, isn’t it, that those who have given in to despair no longer pray. It is also obvious that those who are sure of themselves, who rely only on their power, do not pray either. Only those who trust in a goodness and a power that transcend their own meager capabilities pray – especially when this goodness and this power has come to them in the Person of Jesus Christ. From the same great pope we learn that prayer is hope in execution, that prayer is hope coming alive!
