|
Faith-based hope in the New Testament and the early
Church
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 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? Let us
return to the early Church.
Christianity did not bring a message of social
revolution like that of Spartacus, whose struggle led to
so much bloodshed. Jesus was not Spartacus; he was not
engaged in a fight for political liberation. Jesus, who
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. Paul is sending the slave
Onesimus 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 forever, no longer as a
slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brother . . .”
Those who, as far as their civil status is concerned,
stand in relation to one another 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, 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.
We must
add a further point. The First Letter to the Corinthians
(1:18-31) tells us that many of the early Christians
belonged to the lower social strata, and for this reason
were open to the experience of new hope. Yet there were
also conversions in the aristocratic and cultured
circles, since they, too, were living “without hope and
without God in the world.”
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.
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 inquiring 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.
Spe
Salvi, Encyclical letter of the Supreme Pontiff,
Benedictus PP. XVI to all “On Christian Hope.”
To be
continued next week
For comments/feedback: e-mail: caritas_manila@yahoo.com;
for donations to Caritas Manila: 563-9311; and for
inquiries: 563-9308 and 563-9298; Fax: 563-9306. |
