In the last days of our recent Advent, Pope Francis inaugurated a “Jubilee Year of Hope, saying: “In the heart of each person, hope dwells as the desire and expectation of good things to come, despite our not knowing what the future may bring… (Intro paragraph #1, papal letter proclaiming the jubilee year of hope).
But how is it really possible to have a “desire and expectation of good things to come, despite our not knowing what the future may bring?” In our personal spiritual lives, we do arrive at impasses, moments when there seems to be no way to save a “hopeless” situation. And as we look out at the world, daily and insistently pressing in on us through the media, we see intractable problems that seem insolvable. So, is hope just naïve optimism? And if not, what are its spiritual foundations?
It seems to me that having persistent hope, as Pope Francis describes it, rests on what we believe about God, and on what we believe about human persons.
First about God: Who is this God who makes it possible to expect good things despite not knowing the future? It is a God who takes the long view. We can know this through both science and through scripture and theology (“faith seeking understanding).
Science tells us that the universe is 13.8 billion years old, is active and changing, and speculates that there may even be other universes than our own. The process of the universe includes things becoming and things dying (entropy). And we humans, a young species (200,000 years old), emerged from an evolutionary process of living things that began four billion years ago and continues.
Clearly what God is doing in this picture is “slow work,” as Teilhard said. But it is indeed “happening.” For we believe that it was God’s work that created all this hugeness and complexity and continues actively to guide what is becoming toward a universe we cannot even imagine. We believe that when tragedy strikes, God is not absent. Instead we believe that God’s role is to bring the best possible good from losses the universe experiences, and losses that we experience. Our short lives are lived within the hugeness of God’s slow work, before which we stand in wonder.
Jesus’s incarnation was/is God’s definitive statement that the huge God is right here with us, within the material stuff of human life and history. Jesus’ main teaching was about the kingdom, another “slow work” of God. He uses so many images to talk about this—seeds growing, nets filling, the need to wait, like the women with the oil lamps, for the Bridegroom. Within this “already here but not yet here” Kingdom, Jesus gives his disciples a role. We are to “promote” the Kingdom, to be laborers in the vineyard, servants of the Master, today’s disciples. Thy Kingdom come, we pray, and we act to help it happen.
We nourish hope when we stop and pay attention to all this. Hope is fragile, Pope Francis points out, overcome sometimes by apprehensiveness, anxiety, hesitation and doubt. We are tempted not to hope when our short lives prevent us from seeing the slowly emerging good. We nourish hope when we affirm what we see God doing—when we notice times when the better emerges from the less good (God at work), when we notice Jesus’ Kingdom values of joy, peace, and love becoming real in some way. Pope Francis says we are called to discover hope in the signs of the times that the Lord gives us. Examples he gives are the “desire for peace in our world…[and]enthusiasm for life and a readiness to share it (#7).” Yes, skeptics can “poo-poo” our hope perspective. But the universe story and Jesus’ revelation about God’s Kingdom keep us viewing the reality we live in from the perspective of God’s slow work, the perspective of hope.
What we believe about ourselves is the second foundation of hope. Hope is a “theological virtue” (as are faith and charity). These three virtues are not something we acquire by practicing, like patience. Theological virtues are “infused by God.” That idea relates to our belief that God has created human persons as ontologically good (at the level of being), and that despite sin, we never lose our created goodness. Our goodness is strengthened by the gifts of faith, hope, and love, gifts that help us act, help us do good ourselves. Because we are good, in Catholic theology it is the individual conscience, not human or Church law, that has the “final say” in determining the good (moral) thing to do.
This beautiful idea about our goodness needs to be embraced and lived. We begin by reflecting on our individual spiritual lives. Do we really appreciate our own goodness as something given to us, intrinsic to who we are? Do we notice how when life offers us choices, we recognize and gravitate toward the good? Do we notice that our sorrow for sin includes recognizing that we had left the good path? Catholic theology at its best never defines the person as a sinner. For every person images the goodness of God, even though sometimes we sin.
When we are really in touch with our own goodness, we more easily see goodness in others. We notice the intuitive good responses of people toward one another, in small ways, and in large ones when tragedy strikes. Today it is so easy to distrust one another, to be suspicious, to expect the worst instead of the best from people. But every day we witness human people, who out of their goodness, work to respond to evil (the absence of good). Hopeful people do not let evil have the last say.
And so, at the end of each day I find myself asking: where I have noticed hopeful things in the “signs of the times”? Where have I noticed “good things” coming about through my actions or those of others? Have I given thanks to God for the goodness implanted in me, for the gift of hope working in me, so that despite our not knowing what the future may bring, today I can live and act in hope? For all of us, Pope Francis prays, may the Jubilee be an opportunity to be renewed in hope.
Sister Mary Garascia, PhD (Theology), is a member of the Sisters of the Precious Blood of Dayton, Ohio, where she now resides. Until recently she lived and ministered at The Holy Name of Jesus in Redlands. You can follow her weekly Sunday scripture blogs at PreciousBloodSistersDayton.org.