ENCYCLICAL LETTER
SPE SALVI
OF THE SUPREME PONTIFF
BENEDICT XVI
TO THE BISHOPS
PRIESTS AND DEACONS
MEN AND WOMEN RELIGIOUS
AND ALL THE LAY FAITHFUL
ON CHRISTIAN HOPE
Introduction
1. “SPE SALVI facti
sumus”—in hope we were saved, says Saint Paul to the Romans, and
likewise to us (Rom
8:24). According to the
Christian faith, “redemption”—salvation—is not simply a given. Redemption
is offered to us in the sense that we have been given hope, trustworthy
hope, by virtue of which we can face our present: the present, even if it
is arduous, can be lived and accepted if it leads towards a goal, if we
can be sure of this goal, and if this goal is great enough to justify the
effort of the journey. Now the question immediately arises: what sort of
hope could ever justify the statement that, on the basis of that hope and
simply because it exists, we are redeemed? And what sort of certainty is
involved here?
Faith is Hope
2. Before turning our
attention to these timely questions, we must listen a little more closely
to the Bible's testimony on hope. “Hope”, in fact, is a key word in
Biblical faith—so much so that in several passages the words “faith” and
“hope” seem interchangeable. Thus the Letter to the Hebrews closely
links the “fullness of faith” (10:22) to “the confession of our hope
without wavering” (10:23). Likewise, when the First Letter of Peter
exhorts Christians to be always ready to give an answer concerning the
logos—the meaning and the reason—of their hope (cf. 3:15), “hope” is
equivalent to “faith”. We see how decisively the self-understanding of the
early Christians was shaped by their having received the gift of a
trustworthy hope, when we compare the Christian life with life prior to
faith, or with the situation of the followers of other religions. Paul
reminds the Ephesians that before their encounter with Christ they were
“without hope and without God in the world” (Eph 2:12). Of course
he knew they had had gods, he knew they had had a religion, but their gods
had proved questionable, and no hope emerged from their contradictory
myths. Notwithstanding their gods, they were “without God” and
consequently found themselves in a dark world, facing a dark future. In
nihil ab nihilo quam cito recidimus (How quickly we fall back from
nothing to nothing)[1]:
so says an epitaph of that period. In this phrase we see in no uncertain
terms the point Paul was making. In the same vein he says to the
Thessalonians: you must not “grieve as others do who have no hope” (1
Th 4:13). Here too we see as a distinguishing mark of Christians the
fact that they have a future: it is not that they know the details of what
awaits them, but they know in general terms that their life will not end
in emptiness. Only when the future is certain as a positive reality does
it become possible to live the present as well. So now we can say:
Christianity was not only “good news”—the communication of a hitherto
unknown content. In our language we would say: the Christian message was
not only “informative” but “performative”. That means: the Gospel is not
merely a communication of things that can be known—it is one that makes
things happen and is life-changing. The dark door of time, of the future,
has been thrown open. The one who has hope lives differently; the one who
hopes has been granted the gift of a new life.
3. Yet at this point a
question arises: in what does this hope consist which, as hope, is
“redemption”? The essence of the answer is given in the phrase from the
Letter to the Ephesians quoted above: the Ephesians, before their
encounter with Christ, were without hope because they were “without God in
the world”. To come to know God—the true God—means to receive hope. We who
have always lived with the Christian concept of God, and have grown
accustomed to it, have almost ceased to notice that we possess the hope
that ensues from a real encounter with this God. The example of a saint of
our time can to some degree help us understand what it means to have a
real encounter with this God for the first time. I am thinking of the
African Josephine Bakhita, canonized by Pope John Paul II. She was born
around 1869—she herself did not know the precise date—in Darfur in Sudan.
At the age of nine, she was kidnapped by slave-traders, beaten till she
bled, and sold five times in the slave-markets of Sudan. Eventually she
found herself working as a slave for the mother and the wife of a general,
and there she was flogged every day till she bled; as a result of this she
bore 144 scars throughout her life. Finally, in 1882, she was bought by an
Italian merchant for the Italian consul Callisto Legnani, who returned to
Italy as the Mahdists advanced. Here, after the terrifying “masters” who
had owned her up to that point, Bakhita came to know a totally different
kind of “master”—in Venetian dialect, which she was now learning, she used
the name “paron” for the living God, the God of Jesus Christ. Up to
that time she had known only masters who despised and maltreated her, or
at best considered her a useful slave. Now, however, she heard that there
is a “paron” above all masters, the Lord of all lords, and that
this Lord is good, goodness in person. She came to know that this Lord
even knew her, that he had created her—that he actually loved her. She too
was loved, and by none other than the supreme “Paron”, before whom
all other masters are themselves no more than lowly servants. She was
known and loved and she was awaited. What is more, this master had himself
accepted the destiny of being flogged and now he was waiting for her “at
the Father's right hand”. Now she had “hope” —no longer simply the modest
hope of finding masters who would be less cruel, but the great hope: “I am
definitively loved and whatever happens to me—I am awaited by this Love.
And so my life is good.” Through the knowledge of this hope she was
“redeemed”, no longer a slave, but a free child of God. She understood
what Paul meant when he reminded the Ephesians that previously they were
without hope and without God in the world—without hope because
without God. Hence, when she was about to be taken back to Sudan, Bakhita
refused; she did not wish to be separated again from her “Paron”.
On 9 January 1890, she was baptized and confirmed and received her first
Holy Communion from the hands of the Patriarch of Venice. On 8 December
1896, in Verona, she took her vows in the Congregation of the Canossian
Sisters and from that time onwards, besides her work in the sacristy and
in the porter's lodge at the convent, she made several journeys round
Italy in order to promote the missions: the liberation that she had
received through her encounter with the God of Jesus Christ, she felt she
had to extend, it had to be handed on to others, to the greatest possible
number of people. The hope born in her which had “redeemed” her she could
not keep to herself; this hope had to reach many, to reach everybody.
The concept of
faith-based hope in the New Testament and the early Church
4. We have raised the
question: can our encounter with the God who in Christ has shown us his
face and opened his heart be for us too not just “informative” but
“performative”—that is to say, can it change our lives, so that we know we
are redeemed through the hope that it expresses? Before attempting to
answer the question, let us return once more to the early Church. It is
not difficult to realize that the experience of the African slave-girl
Bakhita was also the experience of many in the period of nascent
Christianity who were beaten and condemned to slavery. Christianity did
not bring a message of social revolution like that of the ill-fated
Spartacus, whose struggle led to so much bloodshed. Jesus was not
Spartacus, he was not engaged in a fight for political liberation like
Barabbas or Bar- Kochba. Jesus, who himself died on the Cross, brought
something totally different: an encounter with the Lord of all lords, an
encounter with the living God and thus an encounter with a hope stronger
than the sufferings of slavery, a hope which therefore transformed life
and the world from within. What was new here can be seen with the utmost
clarity in Saint Paul's Letter to Philemon. This is a very personal
letter, which Paul wrote from prison and entrusted to the runaway slave
Onesimus for his master, Philemon. Yes, Paul is sending the slave back to
the master from whom he had fled, not ordering but asking: “I appeal to
you for my child ... whose father I have become in my imprisonment ... I
am sending him back to you, sending my very heart ... perhaps this is why
he was parted from you for a while, that you might have him back for ever,
no longer as a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brother ...” (Philem
10-16). Those who, as far as their civil status is concerned, stand in
relation to one an other as masters and slaves, inasmuch as they are
members of the one Church have become brothers and sisters—this is how
Christians addressed one another. By virtue of their Baptism they had been
reborn, they had been given to drink of the same Spirit and they received
the Body of the Lord together, alongside one another. Even if external
structures remained unaltered, this changed society from within. When the
Letter to the Hebrews says that Christians here on earth do not
have a permanent homeland, but seek one which lies in the future (cf.
Heb 11:13-16; Phil 3:20), this does not mean for one moment
that they live only for the future: present society is recognized by
Christians as an exile; they belong to a new society which is the goal of
their common pilgrimage and which is anticipated in the course of that
pilgrimage.
5. We must add a further
point of view. The First Letter to the Corinthians (1:18-31) tells
us that many of the early Christians belonged to the lower social strata,
and precisely for this reason were open to the experience of new hope, as
we saw in the example of Bakhita. Yet from the beginning there were also
conversions in the aristocratic and cultured circles, since they too were
living “without hope and without God in the world”. Myth had lost its
credibility; the Roman State religion had become fossilized into simple
ceremony which was scrupulously carried out, but by then it was merely
“political religion”. Philosophical rationalism had confined the gods
within the realm of unreality. The Divine was seen in various ways in
cosmic forces, but a God to whom one could pray did not exist. Paul
illustrates the essential problem of the religion of that time quite
accurately when he contrasts life “according to Christ” with life under
the dominion of the “elemental spirits of the universe” (Col 2:8).
In this regard a text by Saint Gregory Nazianzen is enlightening. He says
that at the very moment when the Magi, guided by the star, adored Christ
the new king, astrology came to an end, because the stars were now moving
in the orbit determined by Christ[2].
This scene, in fact, overturns the world-view of that time, which in a
different way has become fashionable once again today. It is not the
elemental spirits of the universe, the laws of matter, which ultimately
govern the world and mankind, but a personal God governs the stars, that
is, the universe; it is not the laws of matter and of evolution that have
the final say, but reason, will, love—a Person. And if we know this Person
and he knows us, then truly the inexorable power of material elements no
longer has the last word; we are not slaves of the universe and of its
laws, we are free. In ancient times, honest enquiring minds were aware of
this. Heaven is not empty. Life is not a simple product of laws and the
randomness of matter, but within everything and at the same time above
everything, there is a personal will, there is a Spirit who in Jesus has
revealed himself as Love[3].
6. The sarcophagi of the
early Christian era illustrate this concept visually—in the context of
death, in the face of which the question concerning life's meaning becomes
unavoidable. The figure of Christ is interpreted on ancient sarcophagi
principally by two images: the philosopher and the shepherd. Philosophy at
that time was not generally seen as a difficult academic discipline, as it
is today. Rather, the philosopher was someone who knew how to teach the
essential art: the art of being authentically human—the art of living and
dying. To be sure, it had long since been realized that many of the people
who went around pretending to be philosophers, teachers of life, were just
charlatans who made money through their words, while having nothing to say
about real life. All the more, then, the true philosopher who really did
know how to point out the path of life was highly sought after. Towards
the end of the third century, on the sarcophagus of a child in Rome, we
find for the first time, in the context of the resurrection of Lazarus,
the figure of Christ as the true philosopher, holding the Gospel in one
hand and the philosopher's travelling staff in the other. With his staff,
he conquers death; the Gospel brings the truth that itinerant philosophers
had searched for in vain. In this image, which then became a common
feature of sarcophagus art for a long time, we see clearly what both
educated and simple people found in Christ: he tells us who man truly is
and what a man must do in order to be truly human. He shows us the way,
and this way is the truth. He himself is both the way and the truth, and
therefore he is also the life which all of us are seeking. He also shows
us the way beyond death; only someone able to do this is a true teacher of
life. The same thing becomes visible in the image of the shepherd. As in
the representation of the philosopher, so too through the figure of the
shepherd the early Church could identify with existing models of Roman
art. There the shepherd was generally an expression of the dream of a
tranquil and simple life, for which the people, amid the confusion of the
big cities, felt a certain longing. Now the image was read as part of a
new scenario which gave it a deeper content: “The Lord is my shepherd: I
shall not want ... Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of
death, I fear no evil, because you are with me ...” (Ps 23 [22]:1,
4). The true shepherd is one who knows even the path that passes through
the valley of death; one who walks with me even on the path of final
solitude, where no one can accompany me, guiding me through: he himself
has walked this path, he has descended into the kingdom of death, he has
conquered death, and he has returned to accompany us now and to give us
the certainty that, together with him, we can find a way through. The
realization that there is One who even in death accompanies me, and with
his “rod and his staff comforts me”, so that “I fear no evil” (cf. Ps
23 [22]:4)—this was the new “hope” that arose over the life of believers.
7. We must return once
more to the New Testament. In the eleventh chapter of the Letter to the
Hebrews (v. 1) we find a kind of definition of faith which closely
links this virtue with hope. Ever since the Reformation there has been a
dispute among exegetes over the central word of this phrase, but today a
way towards a common interpretation seems to be opening up once more. For
the time being I shall leave this central word untranslated. The sentence
therefore reads as follows: “Faith is the hypostasis of things
hoped for; the proof of things not seen”. For the Fathers and for the
theologians of the Middle Ages, it was clear that the Greek word
hypostasis was to be rendered in Latin with the term substantia.
The Latin translation of the text produced at the time of the early Church
therefore reads: Est autem fides sperandarum substantia rerum,
argumentum non apparentium—faith is the “substance” of things hoped
for; the proof of things not seen. Saint Thomas Aquinas[4],
using the terminology of the philosophical tradition to which he belonged,
explains it as follows: faith is a habitus, that is, a stable
disposition of the spirit, through which eternal life takes root in us and
reason is led to consent to what it does not see. The concept of
“substance” is therefore modified in the sense that through faith, in a
tentative way, or as we might say “in embryo”—and thus according to the
“substance”—there are already present in us the things that are hoped for:
the whole, true life. And precisely because the thing itself is already
present, this presence of what is to come also creates certainty: this
“thing” which must come is not yet visible in the external world (it does
not “appear”), but because of the fact that, as an initial and dynamic
reality, we carry it within us, a certain perception of it has even now
come into existence. To Luther, who was not particularly fond of the
Letter to the Hebrews, the concept of “substance”, in the context of
his view of faith, meant nothing. For this reason he understood the term
hypostasis/substance not in the objective sense (of a reality
present within us), but in the subjective sense, as an expression of an
interior attitude, and so, naturally, he also had to understand the term
argumentum as a disposition of the subject. In the twentieth century
this interpretation became prevalent—at least in Germany—in Catholic
exegesis too, so that the ecumenical translation into German of the New
Testament, approved by the Bishops, reads as follows: Glaube aber ist:
Feststehen in dem, was man erhofft, Überzeugtsein von dem, was man nicht
sieht (faith is: standing firm in what one hopes, being convinced of
what one does not see). This in itself is not incorrect, but it is not the
meaning of the text, because the Greek term used (elenchos) does
not have the subjective sense of “conviction” but the objective sense of
“proof”. Rightly, therefore, recent Prot- estant exegesis has arrived at a
different interpretation: “Yet there can be no question but that this
classical Protestant understanding is untenable”[5].
Faith is not merely a personal reaching out towards things to come that
are still totally absent: it gives us something. It gives us even now
something of the reality we are waiting for, and this present reality
constitutes for us a “proof” of the things that are still unseen. Faith
draws the future into the present, so that it is no longer simply a “not
yet”. The fact that this future exists changes the present; the present is
touched by the future reality, and thus the things of the future spill
over into those of the present and those of the present into those of the
future.
8. This explanation is
further strengthened and related to daily life if we consider verse 34 of
the tenth chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews, which is linked by
vocabulary and content to this definition of hope-filled faith and
prepares the way for it. Here the author speaks to believers who have
undergone the experience of persecution and he says to them: “you had
compassion on the prisoners, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of
your property (hyparchonton—Vg. bonorum), since you knew
that you yourselves had a better possession (hyparxin—Vg.
substantiam) and an abiding one.” Hyparchonta refers to
property, to what in earthly life constitutes the means of support, indeed
the basis, the “substance” for life, what we depend upon. This
“substance”, life's normal source of security, has been taken away from
Christians in the course of persecution. They have stood firm, though,
because they considered this material substance to be of little account.
They could abandon it because they had found a better “basis” for their
existence—a basis that abides, that no one can take away. We must not
overlook the link between these two types of “substance”, between means of
support or material basis and the word of faith as the “basis”, the
“substance” that endures. Faith gives life a new basis, a new foundation
on which we can stand, one which relativizes the habitual foundation, the
reliability of material income. A new freedom is created with regard to
this habitual foundation of life, which only appears to be capable
of providing support, although this is obviously not to deny its normal
meaning. This new freedom, the awareness of the new “substance” which we
have been given, is revealed not only in martyrdom, in which people resist
the overbearing power of ideology and its political organs and, by their
death, renew the world. Above all, it is seen in the great acts of
renunciation, from the monks of ancient times to Saint Francis of Assisi
and those of our contemporaries who enter modern religious Institutes and
movements and leave everything for love of Christ, so as to bring to men
and women the faith and love of Christ, and to help those who are
suffering in body and spirit. In their case, the new “substance” has
proved to be a genuine “substance”; from the hope of these people who have
been touched by Christ, hope has arisen for others who were living in
darkness and without hope. In their case, it has been demonstrated that
this new life truly possesses and is “substance” that calls forth life for
others. For us who contemplate these figures, their way of acting and
living is de facto a “proof” that the things to come, the promise
of Christ, are not only a reality that we await, but a real presence: he
is truly the “philosopher” and the “shepherd” who shows us what life is
and where it is to be found.
9. In order to understand
more deeply this reflection on the two types of substance—hypostasis
and hyparchonta—and on the two approaches to life expressed by
these terms, we must continue with a brief consideration of two words
pertinent to the discussion which can be found in the tenth chapter of the
Letter to the Hebrews. I refer to the words hypomone (10:36)
and hypostole (10:39). Hypo- mone is normally translated as
“patience”—perseverance, constancy. Knowing how to wait, while patiently
enduring trials, is necessary for the believer to be able to “receive what
is promised” (10:36). In the religious context of ancient Judaism, this
word was used expressly for the expectation of God which was
characteristic of Israel, for their persevering faithfulness to God on the
basis of the certainty of the Covenant in a world which contradicts God.
Thus the word indicates a lived hope, a life based on the certainty of
hope. In the New Testament this expectation of God, this standing with
God, takes on a new significance: in Christ, God has revealed himself. He
has already communicated to us the “substance” of things to come, and thus
the expectation of God acquires a new certainty.
It is the expectation of
things to come from the perspective of a present that is already given. It
is a looking-forward in Christ's presence, with Christ who is present, to
the perfecting of his Body, to his definitive coming. The word
hypostole, on the other hand, means shrinking back through lack of
courage to speak openly and frankly a truth that may be dangerous. Hiding
through a spirit of fear leads to “destruction” (Heb 10:39). “God
did not give us a spirit of timidity but a spirit of power and love and
self-control”—that, by contrast, is the beautiful way in which the
Second Letter to Timothy (1:7) describes the fundamental attitude of
the Christian.
Eternal life – what
is it?
10. We have spoken thus
far of faith and hope in the New Testament and in early Christianity; yet
it has always been clear that we are referring not only to the past: the
entire reflection concerns living and dying in general, and therefore it
also concerns us here and now. So now we must ask explicitly: is the
Christian faith also for us today a life-changing and life-sustaining
hope?
Is it “performative” for
us—is it a message which shapes our life in a new way, or is it just
“information” which, in the meantime, we have set aside and which now
seems to us to have been superseded by more recent information? In the
search for an answer, I would like to begin with the classical form of the
dialogue with which the rite of Baptism expressed the reception of an
infant into the community of believers and the infant's rebirth in Christ.
First of all the priest asked what name the parents had chosen for the
child, and then he continued with the question: “What do you ask of the
Church?” Answer: “Faith”. “And what does faith give you?” “Eternal life”.
According to this dialogue, the parents were seeking access to the faith
for their child, communion with believers, because they saw in faith the
key to “eternal life”. Today as in the past, this is what being baptized,
becoming Christians, is all about: it is not just an act of socialization
within the community, not simply a welcome into the Church. The parents
expect more for the one to be baptized: they expect that faith, which
includes the corporeal nature of the Church and her sacraments, will give
life to their child—eternal life. Faith is the substance of hope. But then
the question arises: do we really want this—to live eternally? Perhaps
many people reject the faith today simply because they 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. To continue living for ever —endlessly—appears
more like a curse than a gift. Death, admittedly, one would wish to
postpone for as long as possible. But to live always, without end—this,
all things considered, can only be monotonous and ultimately unbearable.
This is precisely the point made, for example, by Saint Ambrose, one of
the Church Fathers, in the funeral discourse for his deceased brother
Satyrus: “Death was not part of nature; it became part of nature. God did
not decree death from the beginning; he prescribed it as a remedy. Human
life, because of sin ... began to experience the burden of wretchedness in
unremitting labour and unbearable sorrow. There had to be a limit to its
evils; death had to restore what life had forfeited. Without the
assistance of grace, immortality is more of a burden than a blessing”[6].
A little earlier, Ambrose had said: “Death is, then, no cause for
mourning, for it is the cause of mankind's salvation”[7].
11. Whatever precisely
Saint Ambrose may have meant by these words, it is true that to eliminate
death or to postpone it more or less indefinitely would place the earth
and humanity in an impossible situation, and even for the individual would
bring no benefit. Obviously there is a contradiction in our attitude,
which points to an inner contradiction in our very existence. On the one
hand, we do not want to die; above all, those who love us do not want us
to die. Yet on the other hand, neither do we want to continue living
indefinitely, nor was the earth created with that in view. So what do we
really want? Our paradoxical attitude gives rise to a deeper question:
what in fact is “life”? And what does “eternity” really mean? There are
moments when it suddenly seems clear to us: yes, this is what true “life”
is—this is what it should be like. Besides, what we call “life” in our
everyday language is not real “life” at all. Saint Augustine, in the
extended letter on prayer which he addressed to Proba, a wealthy Roman
widow and mother of three consuls, once wrote this: ultimately we want
only one thing—”the blessed life”, the life which is simply life, simply
“happiness”. In the final analysis, there is nothing else that we ask for
in prayer. Our journey has no other goal—it is about this alone. But then
Augustine also says: looking more closely, we have no idea what we
ultimately desire, what we would really like. We do not know this reality
at all; even in those moments when we think we can reach out and touch it,
it eludes us. “We do not know what we should pray for as we ought,” he
says, quoting Saint Paul (Rom 8:26). All we know is that it is not
this. Yet in not knowing, we know that this reality must exist. “There is
therefore in us a certain learned ignorance (docta ignorantia), so
to speak”, he writes. We do not know what we would really like; we do not
know this “true life”; and yet we know that there must be something we do
not know towards which we feel driven[8].
12. I think that in this
very precise and permanently valid way, Augustine is describing man's
essential situation, the situation that gives rise to all his
contradictions and hopes. In some way we want life itself, true life,
untouched even by death; yet at the same time we do not know the thing
towards which we feel driven. We cannot stop reaching out for it, and yet
we know that all we can experience or accomplish is not what we yearn for.
This unknown “thing” is the true “hope” which drives us, and at the same
time the fact that it is unknown is the cause of all forms of despair and
also of all efforts, whether positive or destructive, directed towards
worldly authenticity and human authenticity. The term “eternal life” is
intended to give a name to this known “unknown”. Inevitably it is an
inadequate term that creates confusion. “Eternal”, in fact, suggests to us
the idea of something interminable, and this frightens us; “life” makes us
think of the life that we know and love and do not want to lose, even
though very often it brings more toil than satisfaction, so that while on
the one hand we desire it, on the other hand we do not want it. To imagine
ourselves outside the temporality that imprisons us and in some way to
sense that eternity is not an unending succession of days in the calendar,
but something more like the supreme moment of satisfaction, in which
totality embraces us and we embrace totality—this we can only attempt. It
would be like plunging into the ocean of infinite love, a moment in which
time—the before and after—no longer exists. We can only attempt to grasp
the idea that such a moment is life in the full sense, a plunging ever
anew into the vastness of being, in which we are simply overwhelmed with
joy. This is how Jesus expresses it in Saint John's Gospel: “I will see
you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from
you” (16:22). We must think along these lines if we want to understand the
object of Christian hope, to understand what it is that our faith, our
being with Christ, leads us to expect[9].
Is Christian hope
individualistic?
13. In the course of their
history, Christians have tried to express this “knowing without knowing”
by means of figures that can be represented, and they have developed
images of “Heaven” which remain far removed from what, after all, can only
be known negatively, via unknowing. All these attempts at the
representation of hope have given to many people, down the centuries, the
incentive to live by faith and hence also to abandon their hyparchonta,
the material substance for their lives. The author of the Letter to the
Hebrews, in the eleventh chapter, outlined a kind of history of those
who live in hope and of their journeying, a history which stretches from
the time of Abel into the author's own day. This type of hope has been
subjected to an increasingly harsh critique in modern times: it is
dismissed as pure individualism, a way of abandoning the world to its
misery and taking refuge in a private form of eternal salvation. Henri de
Lubac, in the introduction to his seminal book Catholicisme. Aspects
sociaux du dogme, assembled some characteristic articulations of this
viewpoint, one of which is worth quoting: “Should I have found joy? No ...
only my joy, and that is something wildly different ... The joy of
Jesus can be personal. It can belong to a single man and he is saved. He
is at peace ... now and always, but he is alone. The isolation of this joy
does not trouble him. On the contrary: he is the chosen one! In his
blessedness he passes through the battlefields with a rose in his hand”[10].
14. Against this, drawing
upon the vast range of patristic theology, de Lubac was able to
demonstrate that salvation has always been considered a “social” reality.
Indeed, the Letter to the Hebrews speaks of a “city” (cf. 11:10,
16; 12:22; 13:14) and therefore of communal salvation. Consistently with
this view, sin is understood by the Fathers as the destruction of the
unity of the human race, as fragmentation and division. Babel, the place
where languages were confused, the place of separation, is seen to be an
expression of what sin fundamentally is. Hence “redemption” appears as the
reestablishment of unity, in which we come together once more in a union
that begins to take shape in the world community of believers. We need not
concern ourselves here with all the texts in which the social character of
hope appears. Let us concentrate on the Letter to Proba in which
Augustine tries to illustrate to some degree this “known unknown” that we
seek. His point of departure is simply the expression “blessed life”. Then
he quotes Psalm 144 [143]:15: “Blessed is the people whose God is
the Lord.” And he continues: “In order to be numbered among this people
and attain to ... everlasting life with God, ‘the end of the commandment
is charity that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and sincere
faith' (1 Tim 1:5)”[11].
This real life, towards which we try to reach out again and again, is
linked to a lived union with a “people”, and for each individual it can
only be attained within this “we”. It presupposes that we escape from the
prison of our “I”, because only in the openness of this universal subject
does our gaze open out to the source of joy, to love itself—to God.
15. While this
community-oriented vision of the “blessed life” is certainly directed
beyond the present world, as such it also has to do with the building up
of this world—in very different ways, according to the historical context
and the possibilities offered or excluded thereby. At the time of
Augustine, the incursions of new peoples were threatening the cohesion of
the world, where hitherto there had been a certain guarantee of law and of
living in a juridically ordered society; at that time, then, it was a
matter of strengthening the basic foundations of this peaceful societal
existence, in order to survive in a changed world. Let us now consider a
more or less randomly chosen episode from the Middle Ages, that serves in
many respects to illustrate what we have been saying. It was commonly
thought that monasteries were places of flight from the world (contemptus
mundi) and of withdrawal from responsibility for the world, in search
of private salvation. Bernard of Clairvaux, who inspired a multitude of
young people to enter the monasteries of his reformed Order, had quite a
different perspective on this. In his view, monks perform a task for the
whole Church and hence also for the world. He uses many images to
illustrate the responsibility that monks have towards the entire body of
the Church, and indeed towards humanity; he applies to them the words of
pseudo-Rufinus: “The human race lives thanks to a few; were it not for
them, the world would perish ...”[12].
Contemplatives—contemplantes—must become agricultural labourers—laborantes—he
says. The nobility of work, which Christianity inherited from Judaism, had
already been expressed in the monastic rules of Augustine and Benedict.
Bernard takes up this idea again. The young noblemen who flocked to his
monasteries had to engage in manual labour. In fact Bernard explicitly
states that not even the monastery can restore Paradise, but he maintains
that, as a place of practical and spiritual “tilling the soil”, it must
prepare the new Paradise. A wild plot of forest land is rendered
fertile—and in the process, the trees of pride are felled, whatever weeds
may be growing inside souls are pulled up, and the ground is thereby
prepared so that bread for body and soul can flourish[13].
Are we not perhaps seeing once again, in the light of current history,
that no positive world order can prosper where souls are overgrown?
The transformation
of Christian faith-hope in the modern age
16. How could the idea
have developed that Jesus's message is narrowly individualistic and aimed
only at each person singly? How did we arrive at this interpretation of
the “salvation of the soul” as a flight from responsibility for the whole,
and how did we come to conceive the Christian project as a selfish search
for salvation which rejects the idea of serving others? In order to find
an answer to this we must take a look at the foundations of the modern
age. These appear with particular clarity in the thought of Francis Bacon.
That a new era emerged—through the discovery of America and the new
technical achievements that had made this development possible—is
undeniable. But what is the basis of this new era? It is the new
correlation of experiment and method that enables man to arrive at an
interpretation of nature in conformity with its laws and thus finally to
achieve “the triumph of art over nature” (victoria cursus artis super
naturam)[14].
The novelty—according to Bacon's vision—lies in a new correlation between
science and praxis. This is also given a theological application: the new
correlation between science and praxis would mean that the dominion over
creation —given to man by God and lost through original sin—would be
reestablished[15].
17. Anyone who reads and
reflects on these statements attentively will recognize that a disturbing
step has been taken: up to that time, the recovery of what man had lost
through the expulsion from Paradise was expected from faith in Jesus
Christ: herein lay “redemption”. Now, this “redemption”, the restoration
of the lost “Paradise” is no longer expected from faith, but from the
newly discovered link between science and praxis. It is not that faith is
simply denied; rather it is displaced onto another level—that of purely
private and other-worldly affairs—and at the same time it becomes somehow
irrelevant for the world. This programmatic vision has determined the
trajectory of modern times and it also shapes the present-day crisis of
faith which is essentially a crisis of Christian hope. Thus hope too, in
Bacon, acquires a new form. Now it is called: faith in progress.
For Bacon, it is clear that the recent spate of discoveries and inventions
is just the beginning; through the interplay of science and praxis,
totally new discoveries will follow, a totally new world will emerge, the
kingdom of man[16].
He even put forward a vision of foreseeable inventions—including the
aeroplane and the submarine. As the ideology of progress developed
further, joy at visible advances in human potential remained a continuing
confirmation of faith in progress as such.
18. At the same time, two
categories become increasingly central to the idea of progress: reason and
freedom. Progress is primarily associated with the growing dominion of
reason, and this reason is obviously considered to be a force of good and
a force for good. Progress is the overcoming of all forms of dependency—it
is progress towards perfect freedom. Likewise freedom is seen purely as a
promise, in which man becomes more and more fully himself. In both
concepts—freedom and reason—there is a political aspect. The kingdom of
reason, in fact, is expected as the new condition of the human race once
it has attained total freedom. The political conditions of such a kingdom
of reason and freedom, however, appear at first sight somewhat ill
defined. Reason and freedom seem to guarantee by themselves, by virtue of
their intrinsic goodness, a new and perfect human community. The two key
concepts of “reason” and “freedom”, however, were tacitly interpreted as
being in conflict with the shackles of faith and of the Church as well as
those of the political structures of the period. Both concepts therefore
contain a revolutionary potential of enormous explosive force.
19. We must look briefly
at the two essential stages in the political realization of this hope,
because they are of great importance for the development of Christian
hope, for a proper understanding of it and of the reasons for its
persistence. First there is the French Revolution—an attempt to establish
the rule of reason and freedom as a political reality. To begin with, the
Europe of the Enlightenment looked on with fascination at these events,
but then, as they developed, had cause to reflect anew on reason and
freedom. A good illustration of these two phases in the reception of
events in France is found in two essays by Immanuel Kant in which he
reflects on what had taken place. In 1792 he wrote Der Sieg des guten
Prinzips über das böse und die Gründung eines Reiches Gottes auf Erden
(“The Victory of the Good over the Evil Principle and the Founding of a
Kingdom of God on Earth”). In this text he says the following: “The
gradual transition of ecclesiastical faith to the exclusive sovereignty of
pure religious faith is the coming of the Kingdom of God”[17].
He also tells us that revolutions can accelerate this transition from
ecclesiastical faith to rational faith. The “Kingdom of God” proclaimed by
Jesus receives a new definition here and takes on a new mode of presence;
a new “imminent expectation”, so to speak, comes into existence: the
“Kingdom of God” arrives where “ecclesiastical faith” is vanquished and
superseded by “religious faith”, that is to say, by simple rational faith.
In 1794, in the text Das Ende aller Dinge (“The End of All Things”)
a changed image appears. Now Kant considers the possibility that as well
as the natural end of all things there may be another that is unnatural, a
perverse end. He writes in this connection: “If Christianity should one
day cease to be worthy of love ... then the prevailing mode in human
thought would be rejection and opposition to it; and the Antichrist ...
would begin his—albeit short—regime (presumably based on fear and
self-interest); but then, because Christianity, though destined to be the
world religion, would not in fact be favoured by destiny to become so,
then, in a moral respect, this could lead to the (perverted) end of all
things”[18].
20. The nineteenth century
held fast to its faith in progress as the new form of human hope, and it
continued to consider reason and freedom as the guiding stars to be
followed along the path of hope. Nevertheless, the increasingly rapid
advance of technical development and the industrialization connected with
it soon gave rise to an entirely new social situation: there emerged a
class of industrial workers and the so-called “industrial proletariat”,
whose dreadful living conditions Friedrich Engels described alarmingly in
1845. For his readers, the conclusion is clear: this cannot continue; a
change is necessary. Yet the change would shake up and overturn the entire
structure of bourgeois society. After the bourgeois revolution of 1789,
the time had come for a new, proletarian revolution: progress could not
simply continue in small, linear steps. A revolutionary leap was needed.
Karl Marx took up the rallying call, and applied his incisive language and
intellect to the task of launching this major new and, as he thought,
definitive step in history towards salvation—towards what Kant had
described as the “Kingdom of God”. Once the truth of the hereafter had
been rejected, it would then be a question of establishing the truth of
the here and now. The critique of Heaven is transformed into the critique
of earth, the critique of theology into the critique of politics. Progress
towards the better, towards the definitively good world, no longer comes
simply from science but from politics—from a scientifically conceived
politics that recognizes the structure of history and society and thus
points out the road towards revolution, towards all-encompassing change.
With great precision, albeit with a certain onesided bias, Marx described
the situation of his time, and with great analytical skill he spelled out
the paths leading to revolution—and not only theoretically: by means of
the Communist Party that came into being from the Communist Manifesto of
1848, he set it in motion. His promise, owing to the acuteness of his
analysis and his clear indication of the means for radical change, was and
still remains an endless source of fascination. Real revolution followed,
in the most radical way in Russia.
21. Together with the
victory of the revolution, though, Marx's fundamental error also became
evident. He showed precisely how to overthrow the existing order, but he
did not say how matters should proceed thereafter. He simply presumed that
with the expropriation of the ruling class, with the fall of political
power and the socialization of means of production, the new Jerusalem
would be realized. Then, indeed, all contradictions would be resolved, man
and the world would finally sort themselves out. Then everything would be
able to proceed by itself along the right path, because everything would
belong to everyone and all would desire the best for one another. Thus,
having accomplished the revolution, Lenin must have realized that the
writings of the master gave no indication as to how to proceed. True, Marx
had spoken of the interim phase of the dictatorship of the proletariat as
a necessity which in time would automatically become redundant. This
“intermediate phase” we know all too well, and we also know how it then
developed, not ushering in a perfect world, but leaving behind a trail of
appalling destruction. Marx not only omitted to work out how this new
world would be organized—which should, of course, have been unnecessary.
His silence on this matter follows logically from his chosen approach. His
error lay deeper. He forgot that man always remains man. He forgot man and
he forgot man's freedom. He forgot that freedom always remains also
freedom for evil. He thought that once the economy had been put right,
everything would automatically be put right. His real error is
materialism: man, in fact, is not merely the product of economic
conditions, and it is not possible to redeem him purely from the outside
by creating a favourable economic environment.
22. Again, we find
ourselves facing the question: what may we hope? A self-critique of
modernity is needed in dialogue with Christianity and its concept of hope.
In this dialogue Christians too, in the context of their knowledge and
experience, must learn anew in what their hope truly consists, what they
have to offer to the world and what they cannot offer. Flowing into this
self-critique of the modern age there also has to be a self-critique of
modern Christianity, which must constantly renew its self-understanding
setting out from its roots. On this subject, all we can attempt here are a
few brief observations. First we must ask ourselves: what does “progress”
really mean; what does it promise and what does it not promise? In the
nineteenth century, faith in progress was already subject to critique. In
the twentieth century, Theodor W. Adorno formulated the problem of faith
in progress quite drastically: he said that progress, seen accurately, is
progress from the sling to the atom bomb. Now this is certainly an aspect
of progress that must not be concealed. To put it another way: the
ambiguity of progress becomes evident. Without doubt, it offers new
possibilities for good, but it also opens up appalling possibilities for
evil—possibilities that formerly did not exist. We have all witnessed the
way in which progress, in the wrong hands, can become and has indeed
become a terrifying progress in evil. If technical progress is not matched
by corresponding progress in man's ethical formation, in man's inner
growth (cf. Eph 3:16; 2 Cor 4:16), then it is not progress
at all, but a threat for man and for the world.
23. As far as the two
great themes of “reason” and “freedom” are concerned, here we can only
touch upon the issues connected with them. Yes indeed, reason is God's
great gift to man, and the victory of reason over unreason is also a goal
of the Christian life. But when does reason truly triumph? When it is
detached from God? When it has become blind to God? Is the reason behind
action and capacity for action the whole of reason? If progress, in order
to be progress, needs moral growth on the part of humanity, then the
reason behind action and capacity for action is likewise urgently in need
of integration through reason's openness to the saving forces of faith, to
the differentiation between good and evil. Only thus does reason become
truly human. It becomes human only if it is capable of directing the will
along the right path, and it is capable of this only if it looks beyond
itself. Otherwise, man's situation, in view of the imbalance between his
material capacity and the lack of judgement in his heart, becomes a threat
for him and for creation. Thus where freedom is concerned, we must
remember that human freedom always requires a convergence of various
freedoms. Yet this convergence cannot succeed unless it is determined by a
common intrinsic criterion of measurement, which is the foundation and
goal of our freedom. Let us put it very simply: man needs God, otherwise
he remains without hope. Given the developments of the modern age, the
quotation from Saint Paul with which I began (Eph 2:12) proves to
be thoroughly realistic and plainly true. There is no doubt, therefore,
that a “Kingdom of God” accomplished without God—a kingdom therefore of
man alone—inevitably ends up as the “perverse end” of all things as
described by Kant: we have seen it, and we see it over and over again. Yet
neither is there any doubt that God truly enters into human affairs only
when, rather than being present merely in our thinking, he himself comes
towards us and speaks to us. Reason therefore needs faith if it is to be
completely itself: reason and faith need one another in order to fulfil
their true nature and their mission.
The true shape of
Christian hope
24. Let us ask once again:
what may we hope? And what may we not hope? First of all, we must
acknowledge that incremental progress is possible only in the material
sphere. Here, amid our growing knowledge of the structure of matter and in
the light of ever more advanced inventions, we clearly see continuous
progress towards an ever greater mastery of nature. Yet in the field of
ethical awareness and moral decision-making, there is no similar
possibility of accumulation for the simple reason that man's freedom is
always new and he must always make his decisions anew. These decisions can
never simply be made for us in advance by others—if that were the case, we
would no longer be free. Freedom presupposes that in fundamental
decisions, every person and every generation is a new beginning.
Naturally, new generations can build on the knowledge and experience of
those who went before, and they can draw upon the moral treasury of the
whole of humanity. But they can also reject it, because it can never be
self-evident in the same way as material inventions. The moral treasury of
humanity is not readily at hand like tools that we use; it is present as
an appeal to freedom and a possibility for it. This, however, means that:
a)
The right state of human affairs, the moral well-being of the world can
never be guaranteed simply through structures alone, however good they
are. Such structures are not only important, but necessary; yet they
cannot and must not marginalize human freedom. Even the best structures
function only when the community is animated by convictions capable of
motivating people to assent freely to the social order. Freedom requires
conviction; conviction does not exist on its own, but must always be
gained anew by the community.
b)
Since man always remains free and since his freedom is always fragile, the
kingdom of good will never be definitively established in this world.
Anyone who promises the better world that is guaranteed to last for ever
is making a false promise; he is overlooking human freedom. Freedom must
constantly be won over for the cause of good. Free assent to the good
never exists simply by itself. If there were structures which could
irrevocably guarantee a determined—good—state of the world, man's freedom
would be denied, and hence they would not be good structures at all.
25. What this means is
that every generation has the task of engaging anew in the arduous search
for the right way to order human affairs; this task is never simply
completed. Yet every generation must also make its own contribution to
establishing convincing structures of freedom and of good, which can help
the following generation as a guideline for the proper use of human
freedom; hence, always within human limits, they provide a certain
guarantee also for the future. In other words: good structures help, but
of themselves they are not enough. Man can never be redeemed simply from
outside. Francis Bacon and those who followed in the intellectual current
of modernity that he inspired were wrong to believe that man would be
redeemed through science. Such an expectation asks too much of science;
this kind of hope is deceptive. Science can contribute greatly to making
the world and mankind more human. Yet it can also destroy mankind and the
world unless it is steered by forces that lie outside it. On the other
hand, we must also acknowledge that modern Christianity, faced with the
successes of science in progressively structuring the world, has to a
large extent restricted its attention to the individual and his salvation.
In so doing it has limited the horizon of its hope and has failed to
recognize sufficiently the greatness of its task—even if it has continued
to achieve great things in the formation of man and in care for the weak
and the suffering.
26. It is not science that
redeems man: man is redeemed by love. This applies even in terms of this
present world. When someone has the experience of a great love in his
life, this is a moment of “redemption” which gives a new meaning to his
life. But soon he will also realize that the love bestowed upon him cannot
by itself resolve the question of his life. It is a love that remains
fragile. It can be destroyed by death. The human being needs unconditional
love. He needs the certainty which makes him say: “neither death, nor
life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to
come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all
creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus
our Lord” (Rom 8:38- 39). If this absolute love exists, with its
absolute certainty, then—only then—is man “redeemed”, whatever should
happen to him in his particular circumstances. This is what it means to
say: Jesus Christ has “redeemed” us. Through him we have become certain of
God, a God who is not a remote “first cause” of the world, because his
only-begotten Son has become man and of him everyone can say: “I live by
faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal
2:20).
27. In this sense it is
true that anyone who does not know God, even though he may entertain all
kinds of hopes, is ultimately without hope, without the great hope that
sustains the whole of life (cf. Eph 2:12). Man's great, true hope
which holds firm in spite of all disappointments can only be God—God who
has loved us and who continues to love us “to the end,” until all “is
accomplished” (cf. Jn 13:1 and 19:30). Whoever is moved by love
begins to perceive what “life” really is. He begins to perceive the
meaning of the word of hope that we encountered in the Baptismal Rite:
from faith I await “eternal life”—the true life which, whole and
unthreatened, in all its fullness, is simply life. Jesus, who said that he
had come so that we might have life and have it in its fullness, in
abundance (cf. Jn 10:10), has also explained to us what “life”
means: “this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and
Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (Jn 17:3). Life in its true sense
is not something we have exclusively in or from ourselves: it is a
relationship. And life in its totality is a relationship with him who is
the source of life. If we are in relation with him who does not die, who
is Life itself and Love itself, then we are in life. Then we “live”.
28. Yet now the question
arises: are we not in this way falling back once again into an
individualistic understanding of salvation, into hope for myself alone,
which is not true hope since it forgets and overlooks others? Indeed we
are not! Our relationship with God is established through communion with
Jesus—we cannot achieve it alone or from our own resources alone. The
relationship with Jesus, however, is a relationship with the one who gave
himself as a ransom for all (cf. 1 Tim 2:6). Being in communion
with Jesus Christ draws us into his “being for all”; it makes it our own
way of being. He commits us to live for others, but only through communion
with him does it become possible truly to be there for others, for the
whole. In this regard I would like to quote the great Greek Doctor of the
Church, Maximus the Confessor († 662), who begins by exhorting us to
prefer nothing to the knowledge and love of God, but then quickly moves on
to practicalities: “The one who loves God cannot hold on to money but
rather gives it out in God's fashion ... in the same manner in accordance
with the measure of justice”[19].
Love of God leads to participation in the justice and generosity of God
towards others. Loving God requires an interior freedom from all
possessions and all material goods: the love of God is revealed in
responsibility for others[20].
This same connection between love of God and responsibility for others can
be seen in a striking way in the life of Saint Augustine. After his
conversion to the Christian faith, he decided, together with some
like-minded friends, to lead a life totally dedicated to the word of God
and to things eternal. His intention was to practise a Christian version
of the ideal of the contemplative life expressed in the great tradition of
Greek philosophy, choosing in this way the “better part” (cf. Lk
10:42). Things turned out differently, however. While attending the Sunday
liturgy at the port city of Hippo, he was called out from the assembly by
the Bishop and constrained to receive ordination for the exercise of the
priestly ministry in that city. Looking back on that moment, he writes in
his Confessions: “Terrified by my sins and the weight of my misery,
I had resolved in my heart, and meditated flight into the wilderness; but
you forbade me and gave me strength, by saying: ‘Christ died for all, that
those who live might live no longer for themselves but for him who for
their sake died' (cf. 2 Cor 5:15)”[21].
Christ died for all. To live for him means allowing oneself to be drawn
into his being for others.
29. For Augustine this
meant a totally new life. He once described his daily life in the
following terms: “The turbulent have to be corrected, the faint-hearted
cheered up, the weak supported; the Gospel's opponents need to be refuted,
its insidious enemies guarded against; the unlearned need to be taught,
the indolent stirred up, the argumentative checked; the proud must be put
in their place, the desperate set on their feet, those engaged in quarrels
reconciled; the needy have to be helped, the oppressed to be liberated,
the good to be encouraged, the bad to be tolerated; all must be loved”[22].
“The Gospel terrifies me”[23]—producing
that healthy fear which prevents us from living for ourselves alone and
compels us to pass on the hope we hold in common. Amid the serious
difficulties facing the Roman Empire—and also posing a serious threat to
Roman Africa, which was actually destroyed at the end of Augustine's
life—this was what he set out to do: to transmit hope, the hope which came
to him from faith and which, in complete contrast with his introverted
temperament, enabled him to take part decisively and with all his strength
in the task of building up the city. In the same chapter of the
Confessions in which we have just noted the decisive reason for his
commitment “for all”, he says that Christ “intercedes for us, otherwise I
should despair. My weaknesses are many and grave, many and grave indeed,
but more abundant still is your medicine. We might have thought that your
word was far distant from union with man, and so we might have despaired
of ourselves, if this Word had not become flesh and dwelt among us”[24].
On the strength of his hope, Augustine dedicated himself completely to the
ordinary people and to his city—renouncing his spiritual nobility, he
preached and acted in a simple way for simple people.
30. Let us summarize what
has emerged so far in the course of our reflections. Day by day, man
experiences many greater or lesser hopes, different in kind according to
the different periods of his life. Sometimes one of these hopes may appear
to be totally satisfying without any need for other hopes. Young people
can have the hope of a great and fully satisfying love; the hope of a
certain position in their profession, or of some success that will prove
decisive for the rest of their lives. When these hopes are fulfilled,
however, it becomes clear that they were not, in reality, the whole. It
becomes evident that man has need of a hope that goes further. It becomes
clear that only something infinite will suffice for him, something that
will always be more than he can ever attain. In this regard our
contemporary age has developed the hope of creating a perfect world that,
thanks to scientific knowledge and to scientifically based politics,
seemed to be achievable. Thus Biblical hope in the Kingdom of God has been
displaced by hope in the kingdom of man, the hope of a better world which
would be the real “Kingdom of God”. This seemed at last to be the great
and realistic hope that man needs. It was capable of galvanizing—for a
time—all man's energies. The great objective seemed worthy of full
commitment. In the course of time, however, it has become clear that this
hope is constantly receding. Above all it has become apparent that this
may be a hope for a future generation, but not for me.
And however much “for all”
may be part of the great hope—since I cannot be happy without others or in
opposition to them—it remains true that a hope that does not concern me
personally is not a real hope. It has also become clear that this hope is
opposed to freedom, since human affairs depend in each generation on the
free decisions of those concerned. If this freedom were to be taken away,
as a result of certain conditions or structures, then ultimately this
world would not be good, since a world without freedom can by no means be
a good world. Hence, while we must always be committed to the improvement
of the world, tomorrow's better world cannot be the proper and sufficient
content of our hope. And in this regard the question always arises: when
is the world “better”? What makes it good? By what standard are we to
judge its goodness? What are the paths that lead to this “goodness”?
31. Let us say once again:
we need the greater and lesser hopes that keep us going day by day. But
these are not enough without the great hope, which must surpass everything
else. This great hope can only be God, who encompasses the whole of
reality and who can bestow upon us what we, by ourselves, cannot attain.
The fact that it comes to us as a gift is actually part of hope. God is
the foundation of hope: not any god, but the God who has a human face and
who has loved us to the end, each one of us and humanity in its entirety.
His Kingdom is not an imaginary hereafter, situated in a future that will
never arrive; his Kingdom is present wherever he is loved and wherever his
love reaches us. His love alone gives us the possibility of soberly
persevering day by day, without ceasing to be spurred on by hope, in a
world which by its very nature is imperfect. His love is at the same time
our guarantee of the existence of what we only vaguely sense and which
nevertheless, in our deepest self, we await: a life that is “truly” life.
Let us now, in the final section, develop this idea in more detail as we
focus our attention on some of the “settings” in which we can learn in
practice about hope and its exercise.
“Settings” for
learning and practising hope
I. Prayer as a school of hope
32. A first essential
setting for learning hope is prayer. When no one listens to me any more,
God still listens to me. When I can no longer talk to anyone or call upon
anyone, I can always talk to God. When there is no longer anyone to help
me deal with a need or expectation that goes beyond the human capacity for
hope, he can help me[25].
When I have been plunged into complete solitude ...; if I pray I am never
totally alone. The late Cardinal Nguyen Van Thuan, a prisoner for thirteen
years, nine of them spent in solitary confinement, has left us a precious
little book: Prayers of Hope. During thirteen years in jail, in a
situation of seemingly utter hopelessness, the fact that he could listen
and speak to God became for him an increasing power of hope, which enabled
him, after his release, to become for people all over the world a witness
to hope—to that great hope which does not wane even in the nights of
solitude.
33. Saint Augustine, in a
homily on the First Letter of John, describes very beautifully the
intimate relationship between prayer and hope. He defines prayer as an
exercise of desire. Man was created for greatness—for God himself; he was
created to be filled by God. But his heart is too small for the greatness
to which it is destined. It must be stretched. “By delaying [his gift],
God strengthens our desire; through desire he enlarges our soul and by
expanding it he increases its capacity [for receiving him]”. Augustine
refers to Saint Paul, who speaks of himself as straining forward to the
things that are to come (cf. Phil 3:13). He then uses a very
beautiful image to describe this process of enlargement and preparation of
the human heart. “Suppose that God wishes to fill you with honey [a symbol
of God's tenderness and goodness]; but if you are full of vinegar, where
will you put the honey?” The vessel, that is your heart, must first be
enlarged and then cleansed, freed from the vinegar and its taste. This
requires hard work and is painful, but in this way alone do we become
suited to that for which we are destined[26].
Even if Augustine speaks directly only of our capacity for God, it is
nevertheless clear that through this effort by which we are freed from
vinegar and the taste of vinegar, not only are we made free for God, but
we also become open to others. It is only by becoming children of God,
that we can be with our common Father. To pray is not to step outside
history and withdraw to our own private corner of happiness. When we pray
properly we undergo a process of inner purification which opens us up to
God and thus to our fellow human beings as well. In prayer we must learn
what we can truly ask of God—what is worthy of God. We must learn that we
cannot pray against others. We must learn that we cannot ask for the
superficial and comfortable things that we desire at this moment—that
meagre, misplaced hope that leads us away from God. We must learn to
purify our desires and our hopes. We must free ourselves from the hidden
lies with which we deceive ourselves. God sees through them, and when we
come before God, we too are forced to recognize them. “But who can discern
his errors? Clear me from hidden faults” prays the Psalmist (Ps
19:12 [18:13]). Failure to recognize my guilt, the illusion of my
innocence, does not justify me and does not save me, because I am culpable
for the numbness of my conscience and my incapacity to recognize the evil
in me for what it is. If God does not exist, perhaps I have to seek refuge
in these lies, because there is no one who can forgive me; no one who is
the true criterion. Yet my encounter with God awakens my conscience in
such a way that it no longer aims at self-justification, and is no longer
a mere reflection of me and those of my contemporaries who shape my
thinking, but it becomes a capacity for listening to the Good itself.
34. For prayer to develop
this power of purification, it must on the one hand be something very
personal, an encounter between my intimate self and God, the living God.
On the other hand it must be constantly guided and enlightened by the
great prayers of the Church and of the saints, by liturgical prayer, in
which the Lord teaches us again and again how to pray properly. Cardinal
Nguyen Van Thuan, in his book of spiritual exercises, tells us that during
his life there were long periods when he was unable to pray and that he
would hold fast to the texts of the Church's prayer: the Our Father, the
Hail Mary and the prayers of the liturgy[27].
Praying must always involve this intermingling of public and personal
prayer. This is how we can speak to God and how God speaks to us. In this
way we undergo those purifications by which we become open to God and are
prepared for the service of our fellow human beings. We become capable of
the great hope, and thus we become ministers of hope for others. Hope in a
Christian sense is always hope for others as well. It is an active hope,
in which we struggle to prevent things moving towards the “perverse end”.
It is an active hope also in the sense that we keep the world open to God.
Only in this way does it continue to be a truly human hope.
II. Action and suffering as settings for
learning hope
35. All serious and
upright human conduct is hope in action. This is so first of all in the
sense that we thereby strive to realize our lesser and greater hopes, to
complete this or that task which is important for our onward journey, or
we work towards a brighter and more humane world so as to open doors into
the future. Yet our daily efforts in pursuing our own lives and in working
for the world's future either tire us or turn into fanaticism, unless we
are enlightened by the radiance of the great hope that cannot be destroyed
even by small-scale failures or by a breakdown in matters of historic
importance. If we cannot hope for more than is effectively attainable at
any given time, or more than is promised by political or economic
authorities, our lives will soon be without hope. It is important to know
that I can always continue to hope, even if in my own life, or the
historical period in which I am living, there seems to be nothing left to
hope for. Only the great certitude of hope that my own life and history in
general, despite all failures, are held firm by the indestructible power
of Love, and that this gives them their meaning and importance, only this
kind of hope can then give the courage to act and to persevere. Certainly
we cannot “build” the Kingdom of God by our own efforts—what we build will
always be the kingdom of man with all the limitations proper to our human
nature. The Kingdom of God is a gift, and precisely because of this, it is
great and beautiful, and constitutes the response to our hope. And we
cannot—to use the classical expression—”merit” Heaven through our works.
Heaven is always more than we could merit, just as being loved is never
something “merited”, but always a gift. However, even when we are fully
aware that Heaven far exceeds what we can merit, it will always be true
that our behaviour is not indifferent before God and therefore is not
indifferent for the unfolding of history. We can open ourselves and the
world and allow God to enter: we can open ourselves to truth, to love, to
what is good. This is what the saints did, those who, as “God's fellow
workers”, contributed to the world's salvation (cf. 1 Cor 3:9; 1
Th 3:2). We can free our life and the world from the poisons and
contaminations that could destroy the present and the future. We can
uncover the sources of creation and keep them unsullied, and in this way
we can make a right use of creation, which comes to us as a gift,
according to its intrinsic requirements and ultimate purpose. This makes
sense even if outwardly we achieve nothing or seem powerless in the face
of overwhelming hostile forces. So on the one hand, our actions engender
hope for us and for others; but at the same time, it is the great hope
based upon God's promises that gives us courage and directs our action in
good times and bad.
36. Like action, suffering
is a part of our human existence. Suffering stems partly from our
finitude, and partly from the mass of sin which has accumulated over the
course of history, and continues to grow unabated today. Certainly we must
do whatever we can to reduce suffering: to avoid as far as possible the
suffering of the innocent; to soothe pain; to give assistance in
overcoming mental suffering. These are obligations both in justice and in
love, and they are included among the fundamental requirements of the
Christian life and every truly human life. Great progress has been made in
the battle against physical pain; yet the sufferings of the innocent and
mental suffering have, if anything, increased in recent decades. Indeed,
we must do all we can to overcome suffering, but to banish it from the
world altogether is not in our power. This is simply because we are unable
to shake off our finitude and because none of us is capable of eliminating
the power of evil, of sin which, as we plainly see, is a constant source
of suffering. Only God is able to do this: only a God who personally
enters history by making himself man and suffering within history. We know
that this God exists, and hence that this power to “take away the sin of
the world” (Jn 1:29) is present in the world. Through faith in the
existence of this power, hope for the world's healing has emerged in
history. It is, however, hope—not yet fulfilment; hope that gives us the
courage to place ourselves on the side of good even in seemingly hopeless
situations, aware that, as far as the external course of history is
concerned, the power of sin will continue to be a terrible presence.
37. Let us return to our
topic. We can try to limit suffering, to fight against it, but we cannot
eliminate it. It is when we attempt to avoid suffering by withdrawing from
anything that might involve hurt, when we try to spare ourselves the
effort and pain of pursuing truth, love, and goodness, that we drift into
a life of emptiness, in which there may be almost no pain, but the dark
sensation of meaninglessness and abandonment is all the greater. It is not
by sidestepping or fleeing from suffering that we are healed, but rather
by our capacity for accepting it, maturing through it and finding meaning
through union with Christ, who suffered with infinite love. In this
context, I would like to quote a passage from a letter written by the
Vietnamese martyr Paul Le-Bao-Tinh († 1857) which illustrates this
transformation of suffering through the power of hope springing from
faith. “I, Paul, in chains for the name of Christ, wish to relate to you
the trials besetting me daily, in order that you may be inflamed with love
for God and join with me in his praises, for his mercy is for ever (Ps
136 [135]). The prison here is a true image of everlasting Hell: to cruel
tortures of every kind—shackles, iron chains, manacles—are added hatred,
vengeance, calumnies, obscene speech, quarrels, evil acts, swearing,
curses, as well as anguish and grief. But the God who once freed the three
children from the fiery furnace is with me always; he has delivered me
from these tribulations and made them sweet, for his mercy is for ever.
In the midst of these torments, which usually terrify others, I am, by
the grace of God, full of joy and gladness, because I am not alone —Christ
is with me ... How am I to bear with the spectacle, as each day I see
emperors, mandarins, and their retinue blaspheming your holy name, O Lord,
who are enthroned above the Cherubim and Seraphim? (cf. Ps 80:1
[79:2]). Behold, the pagans have trodden your Cross underfoot! Where is
your glory? As I see all this, I would, in the ardent love I have for you,
prefer to be torn limb from limb and to die as a witness to your love. O
Lord, show your power, save me, sustain me, that in my infirmity your
power may be shown and may be glorified before the nations ... Beloved
brothers, as you hear all these things may you give endless thanks in joy
to God, from whom every good proceeds; bless the Lord with me, for his
mercy is for ever ... I write these things to you in order that your faith
and mine may be united. In the midst of this storm I cast my anchor
towards the throne of God, the anchor that is the lively hope in my
heart”[28].
This is a letter from “Hell”. It lays bare all the horror of a
concentration camp, where to the torments inflicted by tyrants upon their
victims is added the outbreak of evil in the victims themselves, such that
they in turn become further instruments of their persecutors' cruelty.
This is indeed a letter from Hell, but it also reveals the truth of the
Psalm text: “If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I sink to the
nether world, you are present there ... If I say, ‘Surely the darkness
shall hide me, and night shall be my light' —for you darkness itself is
not dark, and night shines as the day; darkness and light are the same” (Ps
139 [138]:8-12; cf. also Ps 23 [22]:4). Christ descended into
“Hell” and is therefore close to those cast into it, transforming their
darkness into light. Suffering and torment is still terrible and well-
nigh unbearable. Yet the star of hope has risen—the anchor of the heart
reaches the very throne of God. Instead of evil being unleashed within
man, the light shines victorious: suffering—without ceasing to be
suffering—becomes, despite everything, a hymn of praise.
38. The true measure of
humanity is essentially determined in relationship to suffering and to the
sufferer. This holds true both for the individual and for society. A
society unable to accept its suffering members and incapable of helping to
share their suffering and to bear it inwardly through “com-passion” is a
cruel and inhuman society. Yet society cannot accept its suffering members
and support them in their trials unless individuals are capable of doing
so themselves; moreover, the individual cannot accept another's suffering
unless he personally is able to find meaning in suffering, a path of
purification and growth in maturity, a journey of hope. Indeed, to accept
the “other” who suffers, means that I take up his suffering in such a way
that it becomes mine also. Because it has now become a shared suffering,
though, in which another person is present, this suffering is penetrated
by the light of love. The Latin word con-solatio, “consolation”,
expresses this beautifully. It suggests being with the other in his
solitude, so that it ceases to be solitude. Furthermore, the capacity to
accept suffering for the sake of goodness, truth and justice is an
essential criterion of humanity, because if my own well-being and safety
are ultimately more important than truth and justice, then the power of
the stronger prevails, then violence and untruth reign supreme. Truth and
justice must stand above my comfort and physical well-being, or else my
life itself becomes a lie. In the end, even the “yes” to love is a source
of suffering, because love always requires expropriations of my “I”, in
which I allow myself to be pruned and wounded. Love simply cannot exist
without this painful renunciation of myself, for otherwise it becomes pure
selfishness and thereby ceases to be love.
39. To suffer with the
other and for others; to suffer for the sake of truth and justice; to
suffer out of love and in order to become a person who truly loves—these
are fundamental elements of humanity, and to abandon them would destroy
man himself. Yet once again the question arises: are we capable of this?
Is the other important enough to warrant my becoming, on his account, a
person who suffers? Does truth matter to me enough to make suffering
worthwhile? Is the promise of love so great that it justifies the gift of
myself? In the history of humanity, it was the Christian faith that had
the particular merit of bringing forth within man a new and deeper
capacity for these kinds of suffering that are decisive for his humanity.
The Christian faith has shown us that truth, justice and love are not
simply ideals, but enormously weighty realities. It has shown us that God
—Truth and Love in person—desired to suffer for us and with us. Bernard of
Clairvaux coined the marvellous expression: Impassibilis est Deus, sed
non incompassibilis[29]—God
cannot suffer, but he can suffer with. Man is worth so much to God
that he himself became man in order to suffer with man in an
utterly real way—in flesh and blood—as is revealed to us in the account of
Jesus's Passion. Hence in all human suffering we are joined by one who
experiences and carries that suffering with us; hence con-solatio
is present in all suffering, the consolation of God's compassionate
love—and so the star of hope rises. Certainly, in our many different
sufferings and trials we always need the lesser and greater hopes too—a
kind visit, the healing of internal and external wounds, a favourable
resolution of a crisis, and so on. In our lesser trials these kinds of
hope may even be sufficient. But in truly great trials, where I must make
a definitive decision to place the truth before my own welfare, career and
possessions, I need the certitude of that true, great hope of which we
have spoken here. For this too we need witnesses—martyrs—who have given
themselves totally, so as to show us the way—day after day. We need them
if we are to prefer goodness to comfort, even in the little choices we
face each day—knowing that this is how we live life to the full. Let us
say it once again: the capacity to suffer for the sake of the truth is the
measure of humanity. Yet this capacity to suffer depends on the type and
extent of the hope that we bear within us and build upon. The saints were
able to make the great journey of human existence in the way that Christ
had done before them, because they were brimming with great hope.
40. I would like to add
here another brief comment with some relevance for everyday living. There
used to be a form of devotion—perhaps less practised today but quite
widespread not long ago—that included the idea of “offering up” the minor
daily hardships that continually strike at us like irritating “jabs”,
thereby giving them a meaning. Of course, there were some exaggerations
and perhaps unhealthy applications of this devotion, but we need to ask
ourselves whether there may not after all have been something essential
and helpful contained within it. What does it mean to offer something up?
Those who did so were convinced that they could insert these little
annoyances into Christ's great “com-passion” so that they somehow became
part of the treasury of compassion so greatly needed by the human race. In
this way, even the small inconveniences of daily life could acquire
meaning and contribute to the economy of good and of human love. Maybe we
should consider whether it might be judicious to revive this practice
ourselves.
III. Judgement as a setting for learning and
practising hope
41. At the conclusion of
the central section of the Church's great Credo—the part that
recounts the mystery of Christ, from his eternal birth of the Father and
his temporal birth of the Virgin Mary, through his Cross and Resurrection
to the second coming—we find the phrase: “he will come again in glory to
judge the living and the dead”. From the earliest times, the prospect of
the Judgement has influenced Christians in their daily living as a
criterion by which to order their present life, as a summons to their
conscience, and at the same time as hope in God's justice. Faith in Christ
has never looked merely backwards or merely upwards, but always also
forwards to the hour of justice that the Lord repeatedly proclaimed. This
looking ahead has given Christianity its importance for the present
moment. In the arrangement of Christian sacred buildings, which were
intended to make visible the historic and cosmic breadth of faith in
Christ, it became customary to depict the Lord returning as a king—the
symbol of hope—at the east end; while the west wall normally portrayed the
Last Judgement as a symbol of our responsibility for our lives—a scene
which followed and accompanied the faithful as they went out to resume
their daily routine. As the iconography of the Last Judgement developed,
however, more and more prominence was given to its ominous and frightening
aspects, which obviously held more fascination for artists than the
splendour of hope, often all too well concealed beneath the horrors.
42. In the modern era, the
idea of the Last Judgement has faded into the background: Christian faith
has been individualized and primarily oriented towards the salvation of
the believer's own soul, while reflection on world history is largely
dominated by the idea of progress. The fundamental content of awaiting a
final Judgement, however, has not disappeared: it has simply taken on a
totally different form. The atheism of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries is—in its origins and aims—a type of moralism: a protest against
the injustices of the world and of world history. A world marked by so
much injustice, innocent suffering, and cynicism of power cannot be the
work of a good God. A God with responsibility for such a world would not
be a just God, much less a good God. It is for the sake of morality that
this God has to be contested. Since there is no God to create justice, it
seems man himself is now called to establish justice. If in the face of
this world's suffering, protest against God is understandable, the claim
that humanity can and must do what no God actually does or is able to do
is both presumptuous and intrinsically false. It is no accident that this
idea has led to the greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice;
rather, it is grounded in the intrinsic falsity of the claim. A world
which has to create its own justice is a world without hope. No one and
nothing can answer for centuries of suffering. No one and nothing can
guarantee that the cynicism of power—whatever beguiling ideological mask
it adopts—will cease to dominate the world. This is why the great thinkers
of the Frankfurt School, Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, were
equally critical of atheism and theism. Horkheimer radically excluded the
possibility of ever finding a this-worldly substitute for God, while at
the same time he rejected the image of a good and just God. In an extreme
radicalization of the Old Testament prohibition of images, he speaks of a
“longing for the totally Other” that remains inaccessible—a cry of
yearning directed at world history. Adorno also firmly upheld this total
rejection of images, which naturally meant the exclusion of any “image” of
a loving God. On the other hand, he also constantly emphasized this
“negative” dialectic and asserted that justice —true justice—would require
a world “where not only present suffering would be wiped out, but also
that which is irrevocably past would be undone”[30].
This, would mean, however—to express it with positive and hence, for him,
inadequate symbols—that there can be no justice without a resurrection of
the dead. Yet this would have to involve “the resurrection of the flesh,
something that is totally foreign to idealism and the realm of Absolute
spirit”[31].
43. Christians likewise
can and must constantly learn from the strict rejection of images that is
contained in God's first commandment (cf. Ex 20:4). The truth of
negative theology was highlighted by the Fourth Lateran Council, which
explicitly stated that however great the similarity that may be
established between Creator and creature, the dissimilarity between them
is always greater[32].
In any case, for the believer the rejection of images cannot be carried so
far that one ends up, as Horkheimer and Adorno would like, by saying “no”
to both theses—theism and atheism. God has given himself an “image”: in
Christ who was made man. In him who was crucified, the denial of false
images of God is taken to an extreme. God now reveals his true face in the
figure of the sufferer who shares man's God-forsaken condition by taking
it upon himself. This innocent sufferer has attained the certitude of
hope: there is a God, and God can create justice in a way that we cannot
conceive, yet we can begin to grasp it through faith. Yes, there is a
resurrection of the flesh[33].
There is justice[34].
There is an “undoing” of past suffering, a reparation that sets things
aright. For this reason, faith in the Last Judgement is first and foremost
hope—the need for which was made abundantly clear in the upheavals of
recent centuries. I am convinced that the question of justice constitutes
the essential argument, or in any case the strongest argument, in favour
of faith in eternal life. The purely individual need for a fulfilment that
is denied to us in this life, for an everlasting love that we await, is
certainly an important motive for believing that man was made for
eternity; but only in connection with the impossibility that the injustice
of history should be the final word does the necessity for Christ's return
and for new life become fully convincing.
44. To protest against God
in the name of justice is not helpful. A world without God is a world
without hope (cf. Eph 2:12). Only God can create justice. And faith
gives us the certainty that he does so. The image of the Last Judgement is
not primarily an image of terror, but an image of hope; for us it may even
be the decisive image of hope. Is it not also a frightening image? I would
say: it is an image that evokes responsibility, an image, therefore, of
that fear of which Saint Hilary spoke when he said that all our fear has
its place in love[35].
God is justice and creates justice. This is our consolation and our hope.
And in his justice there is also grace. This we know by turning our gaze
to the crucified and risen Christ. Both these things—justice and
grace—must be seen in their correct inner relationship. Grace does not
cancel out justice. It does not make wrong into right. It is not a sponge
which wipes everything away, so that whatever someone has done on earth
ends up being of equal value. Dostoevsky, for example, was right to
protest against this kind of Heaven and this kind of grace in his novel
The Brothers Karamazov. Evildoers, in the end, do not sit at table at
the eternal banquet beside their victims without distinction, as though
nothing had happened. Here I would like to quote a passage from Plato
which expresses a premonition of just judgement that in many respects
remains true and salutary for Christians too. Albeit using mythological
images, he expresses the truth with an unambiguous clarity, saying that in
the end souls will stand naked before the judge. It no longer matters what
they once were in history, but only what they are in truth: “Often, when
it is the king or some other monarch or potentate that he (the judge) has
to deal with, he finds that there is no soundness in the soul whatever; he
finds it scourged and scarred by the various acts of perjury and
wrong-doing ...; it is twisted and warped by lies and vanity, and nothing
is straight because truth has had no part in its development. Power,
luxury, pride, and debauchery have left it so full of disproportion and
ugliness that when he has inspected it (he) sends it straight to prison,
where on its arrival it will undergo the appropriate punishment ...
Sometimes, though, the eye of the judge lights on a different soul which
has lived in purity and truth ... then he is struck with admiration and
sends him to the isles of the blessed”[36].
In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (cf. Lk 16:19-31), Jesus
admonishes us through the image of a soul destroyed by arrogance and
opulence, who has created an impassable chasm between himself and the poor
man; the chasm of being trapped within material pleasures; the chasm of
forgetting the other, of incapacity to love, which then becomes a burning
and unquenchable thirst. We must note that in this parable Jesus is not
referring to the final destiny after the Last Judgement, but is taking up
a notion found, inter alia, in early Judaism, namely that of an
intermediate state between death and resurrection, a state in which the
final sentence is yet to be pronounced.
45. This early Jewish idea
of an intermediate state includes the view that these souls are not simply
in a sort of temporary custody but, as the parable of the rich man
illustrates, are already being punished or are experiencing a provisional
form of bliss. There is also the idea that this state can involve
purification and healing which mature the soul for communion with God. The
early Church took up these concepts, and in the Western Church they
gradually developed into the doctrine of Purgatory. We do not need to
examine here the complex historical paths of this development; it is
enough to ask what it actually means. With death, our life-choice becomes
definitive—our life stands before the judge. Our choice, which in the
course of an entire life takes on a certain shape, can have a variety of
forms. There can be people who have totally destroyed their desire for
truth and readiness to love, people for whom everything has become a lie,
people who have lived for hatred and have suppressed all love within
themselves. This is a terrifying thought, but alarming profiles of this
type can be seen in certain figures of our own history. In such people all
would be beyond remedy and the destruction of good would be irrevocable:
this is what we mean by the word Hell[37].
On the other hand there can be people who are utterly pure, completely
permeated by God, and thus fully open to their neighbours—people for whom
communion with God even now gives direction to their entire being and
whose journey towards God only brings to fulfilment what they already are[38].
46. Yet we know from
experience that neither case is normal in human life. For the great
majority of people—we may suppose—there remains in the depths of their
being an ultimate interior openness to truth, to love, to God. In the
concrete choices of life, however, it is covered over by ever new
compromises with evil—much filth covers purity, but the thirst for purity
remains and it still constantly re-emerges from all that is base and
remains present in the soul. What happens to such individuals when they
appear before the Judge? Will all the impurity they have amassed through
life suddenly cease to matter? What else might occur? Saint Paul, in his
First Letter to the Corinthians, gives us an idea of the differing
impact of God's judgement according to each person's particular
circumstances. He does this using images which in some way try to express
the invisible, without it being possible for us to conceptualize these
images—simply because we can neither see into the world beyond death nor
do we have any experience of it. Paul begins by saying that Christian life
is built upon a common foundation: Jesus Christ. This foundation endures.
If we have stood firm on this foundation and built our life upon it, we
know that it cannot be taken away from us even in death. Then Paul
continues: “Now if any one builds on the foundation with gold, silver,
precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each man's work will become manifest;
for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and
the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work which
any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If
any man's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will
be saved, but only as through fire” (1 Cor 3:12-15). In this text,
it is in any case evident that our salvation can take different forms,
that some of what is built may be burned down, that in order to be saved
we personally have to pass through “fire” so as to become fully open to
receiving God and able to take our place at the table of the eternal
marriage-feast.
47. Some recent
theologians are of the opinion that the fire which both burns and saves is
Christ himself, the Judge and Saviour. The encounter with him is the
decisive act of judgement. Before his gaze all falsehood melts away. This
encounter with him, as it burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us
to become truly ourselves. All that we build during our lives can prove to
be mere straw, pure bluster, and it collapses. Yet in the pain of this
encounter, when the impurity and sickness of our lives become evident to
us, there lies salvation. His gaze, the touch of his heart heals us
through an undeniably painful transformation “as through fire”. But it is
a blessed pain, in which the holy power of his love sears through us like
a flame, enabling us to become totally ourselves and thus totally of God.
In this way the inter-relation between justice and grace also becomes
clear: the way we live our lives is not immaterial, but our defilement
does not stain us for ever if we have at least continued to reach out
towards Christ, towards truth and towards love. Indeed, it has already
been burned away through Christ's Passion. At the moment of judgement we
experience and we absorb the overwhelming power of his love over all the
evil in the world and in ourselves. The pain of love becomes our salvation
and our joy. It is clear that we cannot calculate the “duration” of this
transforming burning in terms of the chronological measurements of this
world. The transforming “moment” of this encounter eludes earthly
time-reckoning—it is the heart's time, it is the time of “passage” to
communion with God in the Body of Christ[39].
The judgement of God is hope, both because it is justice and because it is
grace. If it were merely grace, making all earthly things cease to matter,
God would still owe us an answer to the question about justice—the crucial
question that we ask of history and of God. If it were merely justice, in
the end it could bring only fear to us all. The incarnation of God in
Christ has so closely linked the two together—judgement and grace—that
justice is firmly established: we all work out our salvation “with fear
and trembling” (Phil 2:12). Nevertheless grace allows us all to
hope, and to go trustfully to meet the Judge whom we know as our
“advocate”, or parakletos (cf. 1 Jn 2:1).
48. A further point must
be mentioned here, because it is important for the practice of Christian
hope. Early Jewish thought includes the idea that one can help the
deceased in their intermediate state through prayer (see for example 2
Macc 12:38-45; first century BC). The equivalent practice was readily
adopted by Christians and is common to the Eastern and Western Church. The
East does not recognize the purifying and expiatory suffering of souls in
the afterlife, but it does acknowledge various levels of beatitude and of
suffering in the intermediate state. The souls of the departed can,
however, receive “solace and refreshment” through the Eucharist, prayer
and almsgiving. The belief that love can reach into the afterlife, that
reciprocal giving and receiving is possible, in which our affection for
one another continues beyond the limits of death—this has been a
fundamental conviction of Christianity throughout the ages and it remains
a source of comfort today. Who would not feel the need to convey to their
departed loved ones a sign of kindness, a gesture of gratitude or even a
request for pardon? Now a further question arises: if “Purgatory” is
simply purification through fire in the encounter with the Lord, Judge and
Saviour, how can a third person intervene, even if he or she is
particularly close to the other? When we ask such a question, we should
recall that no man is an island, entire of itself. Our lives are involved
with one another, through innumerable interactions they are linked
together. No one lives alone. No one sins alone. No one is saved alone.
The lives of others continually spill over into mine: in what I think,
say, do and achieve. And conversely, my life spills over into that of
others: for better and for worse. So my prayer for another is not
something extraneous to that person, something external, not even after
death. In the interconnectedness of Being, my gratitude to the other—my
prayer for him—can play a small part in his purification. And for that
there is no need to convert earthly time into God's time: in the communion
of souls simple terrestrial time is superseded. It is never too late to
touch the heart of another, nor is it ever in vain. In this way we further
clarify an important element of the Christian concept of hope. Our hope is
always essentially also hope for others; only thus is it truly hope for me
too[40].
As Christians we should never limit ourselves to asking: how can I save
myself? We should also ask: what can I do in order that others may be
saved and that for them too the star of hope may rise? Then I will have
done my utmost for my own personal salvation as well.
Mary, Star of Hope
49. With a hymn composed
in the eighth or ninth century, thus for over a thousand years, the Church
has greeted Mary, the Mother of God, as “Star of the Sea”: Ave maris
stella. Human life is a journey. Towards what destination? How do we
find the way? Life is like a voyage on the sea of history, often dark and
stormy, a voyage in which we watch for the stars that indicate the route.
The true stars of our life are the people who have lived good lives. They
are lights of hope. Certainly, Jesus Christ is the true light, the sun
that has risen above all the shadows of history. But to reach him we also
need lights close by—people who shine with his light and so guide us along
our way. Who more than Mary could be a star of hope for us? With her “yes”
she opened the door of our world to God himself; she became the living Ark
of the Covenant, in whom God took flesh, became one of us, and pitched his
tent among us (cf. Jn 1:14).
50. So we cry to her: Holy
Mary, you belonged to the humble and great souls of Israel who, like
Simeon, were “looking for the consolation of Israel” (Lk 2:25) and
hoping, like Anna, “for the redemption of Jerusalem” (Lk 2:38).
Your life was thoroughly imbued with the sacred scriptures of Israel which
spoke of hope, of the promise made to Abraham and his descendants (cf.
Lk 1:55). In this way we can appreciate the holy fear that overcame
you when the angel of the Lord appeared to you and told you that you would
give birth to the One who was the hope of Israel, the One awaited by the
world. Through you, through your “yes”, the hope of the ages became
reality, entering this world and its history. You bowed low before the
greatness of this task and gave your consent: “Behold, I am the handmaid
of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Lk 1:38).
When you hastened with holy joy across the mountains of Judea to see your
cousin Elizabeth, you became the image of the Church to come, which
carries the hope of the world in her womb across the mountains of history.
But alongside the joy which, with your Magnificat, you proclaimed
in word and song for all the centuries to hear, you also knew the dark
sayings of the prophets about the suffering of the servant of God in this
world. Shining over his birth in the stable at Bethlehem, there were
angels in splendour who brought the good news to the shepherds, but at the
same time the lowliness of God in this world was all too palpable. The old
man Simeon spoke to you of the sword which would pierce your soul (cf.
Lk 2:35), of the sign of contradiction that your Son would be in this
world. Then, when Jesus began his public ministry, you had to step aside,
so that a new family could grow, the family which it was his mission to
establish and which would be made up of those who heard his word and kept
it (cf. Lk 11:27f). Notwithstanding the great joy that marked the
beginning of Jesus's ministry, in the synagogue of Nazareth you must
already have experienced the truth of the saying about the “sign of
contradiction” (cf. Lk 4:28ff). In this way you saw the growing
power of hostility and rejection which built up around Jesus until the
hour of the Cross, when you had to look upon the Saviour of the world, the
heir of David, the Son of God dying like a failure, exposed to mockery,
between criminals. Then you received the word of Jesus: “Woman, behold,
your Son!” (Jn 19:26). From the Cross you received a new mission.
From the Cross you became a mother in a new way: the mother of all those
who believe in your Son Jesus and wish to follow him. The sword of sorrow
pierced your heart. Did hope die? Did the world remain definitively
without light, and life without purpose? At that moment, deep down, you
probably listened again to the word spoken by the angel in answer to your
fear at the time of the Annunciation: “Do not be afraid, Mary!” (Lk
1:30). How many times had the Lord, your Son, said the same thing to his
disciples: do not be afraid! In your heart, you heard this word again
during the night of Golgotha. Before the hour of his betrayal he had said
to his disciples: “Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world” (Jn
16:33). “Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (Jn
14:27). “Do not be afraid, Mary!” In that hour at Nazareth the angel had
also said to you: “Of his kingdom there will be no end” (Lk 1:33).
Could it have ended before it began? No, at the foot of the Cross, on the
strength of Jesus's own word, you became the mother of believers. In this
faith, which even in the darkness of Holy Saturday bore the certitude of
hope, you made your way towards Easter morning. The joy of the
Resurrection touched your heart and united you in a new way to the
disciples, destined to become the family of Jesus through faith. In this
way you were in the midst of the community of believers, who in the days
following the Ascension prayed with one voice for the gift of the Holy
Spirit (cf. Acts 1:14) and then received that gift on the day of
Pentecost. The “Kingdom” of Jesus was not as might have been imagined. It
began in that hour, and of this “Kingdom” there will be no end. Thus you
remain in the midst of the disciples as their Mother, as the Mother of
hope. Holy Mary, Mother of God, our Mother, teach us to believe, to hope,
to love with you. Show us the way to his Kingdom! Star of the Sea, shine
upon us and guide us on our way!
Given in Rome, at Saint
Peter's, on 30 November, the Feast of Saint Andrew the Apostle, in the
year 2007, the third of my Pontificate.
BENEDICTUS PP. XVI
[1]
Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum VI, no. 26003.
[2] Cf.
Dogmatic Poems, V, 53-64: PG 37, 428-429.
[3] Cf.
Catechism of the Catholic Church,
1817-1821.
[4]
Summa Theologiae, II-IIae, q.4, a.1.
[5] H.
Köster in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament VIII (1972),
p.586.
[6]
De excessu fratris sui Satyri, II, 47: CSEL 73, 274.
[7]
Ibid., II, 46: CSEL 73, 273.
[8] Cf.
Ep. 130 Ad Probam 14, 25-15, 28: CSEL 44, 68-73.
[9] Cf.
Catechism of the Catholic Church,
1025.
[10]
Jean Giono, Les vraies richesses, Paris 1936, Preface, quoted in
Henri de Lubac, Catholicisme. Aspects sociaux du dogme, Paris 1983,
p. VII.
[11] Ep.
130 Ad Probam 13, 24: CSEL 44, 67.
[12]
Sententiae III, 118: CCL 6/2, 215.
[13]
Cf. ibid. III, 71: CCL 6/2, 107-108.
[14]
Novum Organum I, 117.
[15]
Cf. ibid. I, 129.
[16]
Cf. New Atlantis.
[17] In
Werke IV, ed. W. Weischedel (1956), p.777. The essay on “The
Victory of the Good over the Evil Principle” constitutes the third chapter
of the text Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft
(“Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone”), which Kant published in
1793.
[18] I.
Kant, Das Ende aller Dinge, in Werke VI, ed. W. Weischedel
(1964), p.190.
[19]
Chapters on charity, Centuria 1, ch. 1: PG 90, 965.
[20]
Cf. ibid.: PG 90, 962-966.
[21]
Conf. X 43, 70: CSEL 33, 279.
[22]
Sermo 340, 3: PL 38, 1484; cf. F. Van der Meer, Augustine
the Bishop, London and New York 1961, p.268.
[23]
Sermo 339, 4: PL 38,
1481.
[24]
Conf. X 43, 69: CSEL
33, 279.
[25]
Cf.
Catechism of the Catholic Church,
2657.
[26]
Cf. In 1 Ioannis 4, 6: PL 35, 2008f.
[27]
Testimony of Hope, Boston 2000, pp.121ff.
[28]
The Liturgy of the Hours, Office of Readings, 24 November.
[29]
Sermones in Cant., Sermo 26, 5: PL 183, 906.
[30]
Negative Dialektik (1966), Third part, III, 11, in Gesammelte
Schriften VI, Frankfurt am Main 1973, p.395.
[31]
Ibid., Second part, p.207.
[32] DS
806.
[33]
Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church,
988-1004.
[34]
Cf.
ibid.,
1040.
[35]
Cf. Tractatus super Psalmos, Ps 127, 1-3: CSEL 22,
628-630.
[36]
Gorgias 525a-526c.
[37]
Cf.
Catechism of the Catholic Church,
1033-1037.
[38]
Cf.
ibid.,
1023-1029.
[39]
Cf.
Catechism of the Catholic Church,
1030-1032.
[40]
Cf.
Catechism of the Catholic Church,
1032.
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