Hope: the Pauline Epistles and other New Testament writings
We again ask for help from St. Paul to explore the theme of hope. He invites us to consider the past time: “Remember the time when you were without Christ…excluded from the promises…without hope and atheists in the world” (Eph. 2:12)
Before we knew the salvation and light brought by the Lord Jesus Christ, we were without footholds, without certainty, without hope that we could make it. For how many people life appears to be an impossible mountain to climb, a gloomy adventure, a journey one is forced to take.
Baptism, knowledge of and immersion in the Paschal Mystery of the Lord Jesus constitute the experience that gives meaning, flavor, direction, destination to the human adventure. To be able to count (i.e., hope) on Jesus is rebirth, it is openness to divine light, inclusion in a community of the saved who call on the name of the Lord.
Considering the fate of “those who have fallen asleep,” could lead to sadness, like “the sad who have no hope” (1 Thess 4:13). St. Paul reminds us that we must “understand to what hope we have been called” (Eph. 1:18), for it is “one hope to which we are called” (Eph. 4:4) and this one hope is based on historical fact, not on vain words, evanescent promises or sleight of hand.
The call to a holy, full, joyful, hope-filled life is “the hope of the Gospel” (Col 1:23), the “Good News” par excellence, “the hope that awaits us in heaven” (Col 1:5), in that heaven which is our heart, where dwells that Our Father we often invoke, “Christ in us, the hope of glory” (Col 1:27).
Choosing sides
Of course, a ceremony is not enough, it is not enough to be baptized to be immersed in hope. There always comes a time when we must and can independently decide which side we are on. Life is also a struggle, so we must put on the armor of Christ, “put on the breastplate of faith and gratuitous love, put on the helmet of the hope of salvation” (1Thess 5:8). We all remember the heavy armor put on the young shepherd David, to face the huge and well-armed Goliath.
He is the perfect example of those who lean on their earthly certainties: money, weapons, violence, powerful friendships… (cf. 1 Tim 6:17). David understands that he must dispose of them and confronts and overcomes Goliah armed only with his shepherd’s sling and trust in God. “For this,” says St. Paul, ‘we toil and fight, because we have put our hope in the living God’ (1 Tim. 4:10). “Wearing” Jesus Christ, trusting solely in his mercy, hoping firmly in him is the only condition for victory.
The farmer who plows and threshes has hope (= certainty) in his heart to see the fruits of his labor (1 Corinthians 9:10). Yet for many, life is just hard work, where one does not see the fruits of one’s labors, a struggle without quarter without the certainty of victory. It seems to go from defeat to defeat, and we find ourselves like the first community of believers in Christ facing failure: “We also hoped,” say the depressed disciples who are moving away from Jerusalem to Emmaus.
That is why Paul adds, “If we had hope in Christ for this life only, we are to be pitied more than all men” (1 Cor. 15:19). Under the cross, the powerful of this world mock, feel victorious, blaspheme, despise and commiserate those poor people who have founded their hope in the preacher from Galilee, now dead as a transgressor, a wrongdoer, a loser.
Christ gives hope
But Christ is risen from the dead, “He has given us consolation and hope” (2 Thess 2:16), He is the Living One and transmits, to those who hope in Him, the keys to life. He has given us “hope in eternal life, promised from everlasting ages by God, who does not lie, and manifested in the word of the preaching entrusted to me,” St. Paul boldly says (Titus 1:2). In God from everlasting ages we have the hope of a full, meaningful life, where our every tear is counted, where our every effort and toil to work with the very mercy we have received is held in esteem and rewarded as only God can do, with infinite generosity.
In a not-so-easy passage from the not-so-easy Letter to the Hebrews, a foundational text of the New Testament, the anonymous author exhorts us to “demonstrate to the end the same zeal to reach the fullness of hope” (Heb 6:11). He is speaking of God’s promise to Abraham, of which believers become heirs. God’s promise is a certainty, it arouses hope, and Christians are heirs of the promise.
With a complex grammatical structure, typical of the style of his entire letter, the author recalls the irrevocable promise of God’s blessing, which brings “strong encouragement to grasp firmly to the hope that is proposed to us. For in it we have as a sure and steadfast anchor for our lives” (Heb. 6:18).
It is the passage that has inspired so many Christian artists. The anchor of a ship has been a recurring symbol since early Christian art. The Jews are notoriously not a seafaring people, but the author of the letter reports what is found in some Greek authors. The anchor provides security for a ship, preventing it from being carried adrift by the wind.
Leaving behind the seafaring metaphor, the anchor becomes in our text that which penetrates “beyond the veil,” that is, the Holy of Holies of the Temple, specifying at once, however, that it is not the temple in Jerusalem, but rather the place where Jesus entered, that is, the heavenly sanctuary, the place of God’s presence (Heb 9:24). Jesus becomes the forerunner of all, for in his paschal mystery he introduced us into the intimacy of God, inaugurating a new and living way (Heb 10:20).
St. Peter
This is what St. Peter also reiterates at the beginning of his letter, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy has regenerated us , through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to a living hope” (1 Peter 1:3). Through the resurrection of his Son Jesus, the heavenly Father has once again demonstrated his merciful heart, causing us to be born again for a hope that inserts us into the resurrected life and therefore always alive. It is also the text that unites hope with mercy (with its works), so dear to our spazio + spadoni.
Salvation, which we already experience in Christ, will be manifested in all its reality in the eschatological time: “Girding the loins of your mind and remaining sober, put all your hope in that grace which will be given you when Christ is manifested” (1 Pet. 1:13). We are in joy, in light, in hope, “though for a while afflicted with various trials” (1 Pet. 1:6), like the faithful servants in the Gospel parable who remain vigilant in the night awaiting the arrival of the Bridegroom. When he comes and manifests himself in fullness, his merciful love will confirm our firm hope.
Meanwhile, St. Peter invites us not to be frightened or upset, but to be “always ready to answer anyone who asks you for the reason for the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15). And even in our day we can experience, albeit in a small way, the truth of this statement, knowing how important it is to be witnesses of hope in a time when many other certainties and anchors of human life are collapsing miserably. With our anchor firmly planted in the Paschal event of the Lord Jesus that changed history, let us not fear the winds that shake the small boats of our human existences.
St. John
The last New Testament text comes from the voice of St. John. In his letters, he sums up our experience of hope in a masterful way. Let us read the whole context: “You see what great love the Father has given us to be called children of God, and we really are! That is why the world does not know us, because it has not known Him. Beloved, we as of now are children of God, but what we will be has not yet been revealed. However, we know that when He is manifested, we will be like Him, because we will see Him as He is. Whoever has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure” (1 John 3:2-3).
Once again these are texts that make us dizzy. Immersed in our own poor lives, we struggle to believe that we are already, at the same time, anchored in such a living, joyful and pure hope. Already now! We can therefore profitably return to meditating on the words we have briefly proposed, throughout the Jubilee year that is about to open. A special year, a year not to be wasted, a time when the Word of God can be our guide, beacon of light, oil of consolation for the heart, living hope, merciful love that always and still spurs us to transform our actions according to works of mercy.
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