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I know it’s a cliché, but do forgive me, “Servant
Leader” begins 2008 with a bang. In several
installments, I will be sharing with you the latest
encyclical of our Pope.
Spe
Salvi,
Encyclical letter of the Supreme Pontiff, Benedictus PP.
XVI to all “On Christian Hope”
‘SPE
SALVI facti sumus”—in hope we were saved, says Saint
Paul to the Romans, and likewise to us (Romans 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 toward 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
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, “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” (Ephesians
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): so
says an epitaph of the 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 Thessalonians
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.
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.
(To be
continued next issue)
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