Hope in S O S

WE have to rescue this virtue, now largely distorted and misunderstood, if not ignored and allowed to drift, it seems, toward extinction.

When Pope Benedict issued his second encyclical, Spe Salvi (Saved by hope) November last, there hardly was any ripple about it in the secular press.

Put bluntly, this extensive discussion on hope, the virtue that forms an inseparable troika with faith and charity, was left out in the cold. It’s telling that this sad phenomenon is happening. It exposes the real, sorry state of our Christian life.

In Christian understanding, these three virtues are indispensable. They bring us to God. They practically form Christian life’s essence.

They infuse our intelligence and will with the capacity to participate in the divine knowledge, activity and life itself, allowing us to be in sync with God’s ways. Without them, there really is no Christian life, no matter how impressive we manage to fake it.

The Pope himself offers some explanation for this turn of events. First, he says that many people are afraid of what faith and hope promise—eternal life.

“Many people,” he said, “do not find the prospect of eternal life attractive. What they desire is not eternal life at all, but this present life, for which faith in eternal life seems something of an impediment.”

This situation truly poses a tall order to those whose business is to evangelize souls. This, of course, requires nothing less than grace. But it also requires us to find convincing arguments and ways to link the present life with eternal life.

We have to find a way to show that it is God who adequately corresponds to our deepest yearning for joy and peace. It’s not just any lofty human goal or worldly idea of success.

This observation can provoke a second concern—that hope leads us to pursue only our own personal salvation, without regard to our duties toward others and the world in general.

The Pope answered by saying that this eternal life with God is always lived not by oneself alone, but in union with a people. Union with God is also always a union with others. It’s never just an individualistic affair.

It presupposes, he said, “that we escape from the prison of our ‘I’, because only in the openness of this universal subject (we) does our gaze open out to the source of joy, to love itself, to God.”

Again, this truth needs to be fleshed out in concrete forms imbued with a sense of immediacy, for us to appreciate it. It’s another hard task for the evangelizers.

A third question can also be raised: how did we come to conceive Christian hope as a selfish search for salvation which rejects the idea of serving others?

The Pope answers by saying that modernism’s attitude of replacing faith in God with modern science and praxis has relegated the faith and hope in God to a purely private and other-worldly level, irrelevant to the here and now.

That’s, of course, wrong. True faith and hope in God, while transcending worldly dimensions, are intrinsically immersed in earthly affairs. They play a crucial role in our lives and history, as individuals and as people.

For these truths to shine out, we need concrete examples and models. And they can be found in the lives of martyrs and saints who with God’s grace and their efforts show how faith and hope in God have shaped their lives.

This is the challenge of today’s evangelizers. And I’m sure that with the proper attitude and skills we can find such examples and models not only in ancient times but more so in contemporary life.

There’s need to present these wonderful narratives in a more secular style. We have to say enough to empty celebrity obsession.

An appropriate theology has to be developed, where the elements of dogma blend well with the cultural character of the people and of the times.

The spiritual has to be materialized, and the material spiritualized. In short, a theology that produces holiness in the flesh, and generates hope with substance and not just a matter of conviction. It should be one where God and we in all our dimensions enter into a living, vibrant relationship.