The ‘Great Hope’ 

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 they were not, in reality, the whole. It becomes evident man has need of a hope that goes further. It becomes clear only something infinite will suffice for him, something that will always be more than he can ever attain.

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 man needs. It was capable of galvanizing—for a time—all of man’s energies. The great objective seemed worthy of full commitment. In the course of time, however, it has become clear this hope is constantly receding.

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 a hope that does not concern me personally is not a real hope. It has also become clear 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.

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”?

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 focus our attention on how we can learn in practice about hope and its exercise. 

To be continued next week

Spe Salvi Encyclical of Pope Benedict XVI to all “On Christian Hope” 

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Servant Leader: ‘Spe Salvi’–Part XII

The ‘Great Hope’

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.

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