I have been requested to bring to light which steps of discernment and reconciliation is religious life to take in order “to make visible Christian Hope in a multiethnic Europe. To my surprise I have seen that in the reports and conclusions of last year’s General Assembly and then in the “Instrumentum laboris” prepared for the 52^nd Assembly, practically we find everything. To a given extent the thing is complete. Therefore, nothing is left for me but to attempt giving a worthy frame to the picture- I don’t think it is useless. In fact the frame evidences the picture I a better way, and the picture gives relevance to the frame.

Our reflection, therefore, will have two parts: 1) in the first part we shall throw a glance on the present all together, by making a wisdom reading of the situation of the world and of today’s Europe ( the frame in its ensemble); 2) in the second part we shall throw a glance on the future: after a brief hint on the European ecclesial context, we shall see which specific steps Religious Life will have to follow so that it may contribute to render Christian hope visible in Europe (the four sides of the frame).

A glance at the present

1. The new world context

The falling of the Berlin wall (1989) has brought to an end the 50 years world balance. True, it was a precarious balance, founded on the confrontation between two ideologies (liberalism and communism) and on the missiles in one side against those in the other side; it was a peace founded on the fear of  the atomic war. The world was cut off into two parts, but it was “balanced”; two superpowers  functioned as a pivot of the divided world: The USA and the URSS.

We thought that the end of communism could happen without particular traumas, without the dramas which we expected. If we exclude the difficulties of the Balkan Countries; however, no world war broke out. Yet, the breaking of the planetary balance couldn’t help causing an earthquake: local wars (let us think of what happened in Yugoslavia), international terrorism (11^th September 2001: the Twin towers; 11^th March 2004: Madrid), war in Afghanistan and in Iraq … the planet has enjoyed peace no longer.

The world, economically globalized, has not yet found its new balance. One thing is sure: the new balance will not be the bipolar one which USA would like to impose, only because it is the only superpower left over. Today’s problems are all planetary problems (ecological balance, health defence, fight against organised criminality , drug, hunger and poverty in the South of the world, peace); No nation can face and solve them alone: this can be seen very clearly in the war of Iraq, where, after presuming to do everything alone, the USA invokes help from ONU and from NATO to get out of his problem. Either we commit all together or we shall die all together.

Meanwhile a new planetary balance appears in the horizon, after the bipolar one of XX century. We don’t know as yet whether it will be of three or five poles: USA, UE, China, India, Brasil.

This is the scenario as it appears in its surface, In reality, the Tsunami, following the seismic movement provoked by the end by the world bipolar balance, is much more serious: actually it is a confrontation-clash among different cultures and civilisations.

Particularly in Europe, the previous balance was founded on three main cultures: The Judaic-Christian culture (Christianity), the liberal illuminist (laicism), the Marxist culture (Communism). With the disappearance of the Marxist culture, it was unavoidable the confrontation-clash between the Christian culture and the lay culture was inevitable. Both cultures are now in crisis because of the processes of globalisation and the progress of the human sciences. Yet, despite all this, they are destined to meet in order to build together the new Europe, the new planetary balance and the world peace.

The crisis of the lay culture can be seen by all. On one side it has produced democracy, defending freedom and human rights, on the other side the illuminist project of realising historically a universal ethics, based only on reason. The illuminist thought has ended in the “weak thought” and the ethic relativism, in the egoistic individualism and in racism. It is clear that the liberal culture does not possess the force of giving back the balance to the world: it has not succeeded in his intention, not even when the Christian culture was in crisis because of secularisation and the fall of values (cfr Hon. G. Amato, “Where the selfish society is born” in Republica, 09.12.05).

Anyhow, even the crisis of the Christian culture is patent, above all because of the process of secularisation. This is in itself a positive phenomenon: the clearance of the differences between the religious plain and the political one, consents, among other things, clearer relationships between State and Church, and it guarantees the autonomy of each part. The problem is that the secularisation tends to degenerate into secularism , that is in the presumption of eliminating God from the human history and of reducing the religious phenomenon to a mere personal and private dimension, without any social incidence. Thus, after giving a soul to humanism and to civil right, the Christian culture has had to confront itself in Europe with the loss of any sense of God, actually losing the function it had always exercised, of social collant and undergoing the contra attack of the crisis of values and of the ethic  relativism.

Yet, after touching the depth of the crisis, today we see some symptoms of recuperation and they speak always more about a “going back” or of “revenge” of God. There is the danger of new risks, like that of a more subtle instrumentalisation of religion with political aims (the so called “Civil Religion”). Therefore, the overcoming of the crisis is to be guided and oriented, and not to be left to itself.

2. EUROPE, A DISAPPOINTED CONTINENT.

Coming in particular to Europe, we must say that, despite the extraordinary winning-posts already reached, today Europe presents itself as a disappointed continent. The negative heritage of many never kept promises, of many failed hopes weighs, above all, on the new generations. The “idols”, which in the past centuries had nourished Europe, have gone to fragments, one after the other: the illuminist myth of “Goddess of reason”, which presumed to do everything alone, has dissolved in the contemporary nihilism, which denies even the possibility of knowing the truth; the myth of “indefinite progress”, born with the industrial revolution has fragmented against the contradictions of the savage capitalism; The self-sufficiency of “nationalism” of the first half of ‘900 and of the regimes which were born from the October revolution has led to inhuman forms of totalitarism and dictatorship, opening the way to word wars and to frightening genocides: the myth of the primacy of the “economic development”  has finished by creating new forms of colonialism and has led us on to the margine of the ecological catastrophe; finally, the ideological mirage of “liberation”;, according to which man would be unchained from all chains only with his own strength, has remained buried under, the debris of the Berlin’s wall.

The failure of all these hopes has contributed to the disorientation which characterises this beginning of the third millennium. The climate of uncertainty and precariousness which characterise it   is an implicit recognition that reason, science, technique the economic growth – despite exceptional results – alone are not enough to free man; they are not enough to fulfil their hopes, to make them free and happy. An modern man, who had believed of being able to go on alone with his own strength, today is disappointed. Will he be able to hope again?

This the real problem, with which the 52^nd National Assembly of USMI has chosen of measuring itself. Which steps to take in order to make visible in Europe the hope which does not disappoint? Our research is facilitated by the fact that with this same problem the Special Assembly for Europe of the synod of the Bishops has confronted itself (1.23 October 1999), at the eve of the third millennium: “Yes, Brothers and Sisters: man cannot live without hope. But will it be possible and who will be able to donate it to him, when many hopes, also in the last times, have gone miserably deluded? (Final message, No. 1). John Paul II, collecting the issues of the Synod in the beautiful apostolic exhortation “Ecclesia in Europe” (28^th June, 2003), comments: “At the root of the loss of hope we find the tentative giving prevalence to an anthropology without God and without Christ. This type of thought has led us to consider man as the absolute centre of reality, making him to occupy artificially the place of God and making him to forget that it is not man to make God, but it is God who makes man (No.9).

Paradox ally, however, - as it often happens- man, just when he touches the depth, starts to hope again - “Our hope is certain”- we read in a message of the European bishops- , “the signs of this hope are concrete, capable of being experienced, and somehow tangible” (No-3). This is true not only of the signs of hope within the Church, but also for those which are manifested in the European society. “ We see with joy – we read in the final message of the special Assembly for Europe of the Synod of Bishops – “The growing opening of peoples, one towards the others, the reconciliation among nations which have been long hostile (…). Acknowledgements, collaborations, exchanges of every order are developing, so that, little by little, a culture, rather a European culture, which we hope may foster, mainly among the youths, the feeling of fraternity and the will of sharing. We record as possible the fact that all this process may be fulfilled with democratic methods, peacefully and in a spirit of freedom, which respects and gives value to the legitimate diversities (…). We greet with satisfaction all that has been done to clear the conditions and the modalities of the respect of human rights (…). While we record the signs of hope offered by the consideration given to the rights and quality of life, we wish vividly that the primacy of ethic and spiritual value may be guaranteed (No6). These are all “Signs of hope”, shown by the synod of Bishops, and that the Pope quotes literally (cfr Ecclesia in Europe, No. 12); The new generations reveal themselves particularly sensitive to them. We cannot allow ourselves to fail again. A further delusion would have moral and social unforeseeable effects.

The XXI century, therefore, offers the Christians a favourable occasion of contributing to a rebirth in the Union of the “Hope which does not disappoint” (Rm 5,5). The ideals of human dignity, of freedom, of solidarity, of justice and peace, contained in Art 1,2 of the Constitutional European treaty, to which the new generations aspire, make possible – as never before- the meeting of  Christian hope with other hopes of man,

Therefore, in order to determine the proper steps of consecrated life, to make visible hope in Europe, we need first to clear two points: 1) What Christian hope is all about; 2) how to witness it today in Europe; 3) through which ways Christian hope will meet the other hopes present in the Continent.

3. CHRISTIAN HOPE

Christian hope also is a human hope. Jesus has come to save us and to make us divine: that

is, He has revealed the true sense of human life, his true hope. To make Christian hope visible means, therefore, to confront it with all the human hopes. The Christian hope assumes and transcends them. The hope of liberation begins already here and now. However, its fullness is in the meeting with the Risen Lord. Therefore, Christian hope distinguishes itself from the other hopes above all for its origin and object. It is not base on a philosophy or ideology, nor on the unique strength of man, but rests on God –“The God of hope” (Rm.15,13)- and on His Word; it is born from faith in revelation and in the promise of salvation, which realizes historically in “Christ our hope” (1Tm, 1,1).  What has happened to the two disciples of Emmaus is Emblematic (Lk 24, 13-35). They were two disappointed men, “with sad face” (v.!7). “We hoped that He would free Israel (v.21). Hope comes back when Christ, in his humanity, hiding his divinity. Explains (exeghèsato, narrates, Jo, 1; 18, John would say) the sense of Scriptures, unveils the mystery of the Father, and at the same time, reveals man to man.

Christian hope is not exhausted in the tension towards a liberation, merely temporal and immanent, reachable with human strength, but –as Paul VI explains- it has as object the “salvation”, a great gift of God, which is not only liberation from all that oppresses man, but is above all liberation from sin and from the Malign, in the joy of knowing God and of being known by him, of seeing Him, of abandoning oneself to Him” (Evangelii Nuntiandi 1. No.9).

In other words, Christian hope is a transcendent hope, because it proposes to man the supernatural destiny to which he is called through a gratuitous gift of God: it begins to be realized down here, but does not remain closed like the other hopes, in the temporal horizon, It is “a prophetic announcement of a life to come, a deep definitive vocation of man, in continuation and together in discontinuity with the present situation” (N0.38). It is not first of all a doctrine, but an experience: “Did our heart not burn in our bosom?”, when he explained the Scriptures?” (Lk 24,32).

Therefore, to be silent or to out in the shadow the transcendent dimension of Christian hope, to present it exclusively or prevalently as a promise of social and political liberation, is equal – to use an incisive expression of St. Paul, “To water the Word of God (kapeleùontes, adulterating wine with water, just as the hosts do (2Cor 2,17). In reality, we are not Christian because we hope in justice, in peace, in the liberation of the poor and oppressed, but we hope, fight and firmly believe of being able to win every form of injustice. Because we are Christina.

In other words, to affirm that Christian hope is by nature religious and transcendent, does not mean at all that it is disincarnated or historically inefficient (as we can say, instead, of other “religious hopes”, which rather induce to apathy and passivity). In fact, if the salvation promised by God in Christ, is a hope that transcends the strength of man, it starts, however, to realise within human events: the gift of God “must be patiently conducted in the course of history, in order to be fully realised on the day of the definitive coming of Christ” (EN No.9). Therefore, Christian hope does not lead to escape the historical commitment, but rather pushes positively to action: “We toil and fight because we have put our hope in the living God (I Tm 4,10). It is not a sleeping opium, but an irresistible stimulus, which imposes “the duty of announcing the liberation of millions of human beings (…): the duty of helping this liberation to be born, of witnessing to it, of seeing that it be total (EN, No.30).

4. TO WITNESS HOPE

Why, then, the announcement and testimony of Christian hope today are not credible for men of our Continent? Surely, this depends on the delusion which today Europe suffers today, and on the cultural  and religious pluralism which today characterises the old continent: the disappointment leads to the religious indifference ( I don’t mind!), the pluralism leads to relativism (Christianity is one of the many religions),

At the same time, however, to make less interesting the Christian announcement the errors of the believers contribute, but with their behaviour they credit the conviction that Christian hope be one of the many human hopes which today confront themselves in the world. This is why –the European Bishops exhort - : “It is necessary to do all together a humble and courageous examination of conscience to acknowledge our fears and our errors, to confess with sincerity our slowness, omissions, unfaithfulness, faults”. (Message, 4).

One of the first causes of the little credibility of which today the announcement of Christian hope enjoys, is the dichotomy which many believers establish between faith and history. It is the matter of an undue fracture between earthly life and heavenly life, which pushes to flee away from the world and take refuge in a disincarnated and intimist vision of faith, confining every hope of justice, of peace and of fraternity exclusively in the life to come, at the end of times. These Christians are not aware that, by doing so,  paradoxically contribute to nourish secularism and the atheistic hopes, help – without knowing it- to put away God from history. “From the beginning of modern epoch” – J.Moltmann acutely notes in a 1972 writing – “Believers and non-believers have willingly divided the world between them, reserving to the first to hope in a heavenly future, to the others of hoping in an earthly future; the first cultivate the hope of the soul, or of the heart, the others the hope of a just society. By making such a division, the Christian and the atheist have in reality contracted an alliance: one alliance with the death of God in the world” (cit. Civiltà Cattolica 1974/1.530). Therefore, the first way of making credible the announcement and the testimony of Christian hope to men of third millennium is that of realising, first of all, in ourselves the coherent synthesis between faith and life, aware that there aren’t two different histories, one profane and the other sacred, but that history is only one, together human and divine, as one (human and divine) is man’s destiny, called to live it. It is the contrary of an aggressive, imposed or arrogant announcement.

A second error to be avoided is that of those, insisting dutifully on the fact that Christian hope concerns also the building of a more human and fraternal world, it ends , however, by reducing it to a mere hope of social and political liberation, leaving in the shadow the religious and transcendent dimension.

St. Paul himself warns us severely: “if we have had hope in Christ only in this life, we are to be compassioned more than all other men” (1 Cor, 15,19). In fact, Christian hope supposes, first of all, the liberation from sin, which is the radical evil of man separated from God. Only consequently, and as an integrating moment of interior conversion, Christian hope translates itself into determining contribution to liberation from sin, also from social and structural manifestations of sin, from the discriminations of every kind, from inhuman economic systems, from the oppressive political regimes.

The third difficulty that today removes the credibility to the announcement of hope which does not disappoint is the discouragement and the sadness from which often the Christians themselves suffer before the trials and the adversities of life.

This lack of joyful and fascinating  testimony, which is not afraid of failure and delays - the European Bishops underline in their message- is at the antipodes “of the Gospel of Hope” which, instead, teaches that true hope passes necessarily through the Mysterium Crucis;  embraced with trust and joy: suffering produces perseverance, perseverance makes us strong in faith, and this strength opens us to hope (cfr Rm 5,4). Therefore, to bring Christian hope to the world means to take, together with the cross of the Lord, the trust in his redeeming power which alone gives sense to suffering and to man’s death, and does not consent to go on being sad, “like those who do not have faith” (1 Ts 4,13).

The numerous martyrs of all Christian faiths, invite us to this with their example, whose testimony “ remind us that there is no salvation without the cross”. During the great jubilee the Pope wanted that the 7^th May 2000 there be in the Colosseum a commemoration of the witnesses of faith. The commission in charge of making the census, has found that the XX century has been the one which has had in absolute the highest number of martyrs: 12,962, out of whom 126 Bishops, 4,872 religious, 5,343 priests and 2,351 lay persons. They have given their life in all parts of the world: on the occasions of social revolutions or civil wars, from China to Mexico to Spain; because of the ideological wilderness, like that of the Nazists in Europe, or that of communists above all in the Eastern Countries; because of the opposition of the religious fundamentalists, above all in Africa and in Asia. 

Therefore, to bring the Gospel of hope to the disappointed Europe, is not an invitation to remain inactive, waiting for the problems to be solved from above, but it is a source of courage and newness of life, and tireless commitment to build a different world, obviously without never forgetting that “if the Lord does not edify the house, in vain the builders toil”. How Many contestations, how many fractures, how many crisis could have been avoided-both in the church life as well as in the social commitment- if the Christians had been able to detect in trials, in misunderstanding, in the apparent failure,  the mysterious logic of “the hope which does not disappoint”.

5. Hope and hope

Here the most delicate and difficult problems which the Christians will have to face in the new

Europe: which relation are we to establish between Christian hope and human hopes? Confrontation or contraposition? Fracture or dialogue?

If we keep the religious nature of Christian hope, it is possible to understand the reason why the meeting with the other hopes is not only useful in itself, but it is also necessary. In fact, Christian hope, being at the same time “historical” and “transcendent”. It is not alternative, but complementary with the other hopes.

This means, first of all, that Christian hope does not extinguish no other human hopes –little or partial as it may be- everywhere and whoever proposes it: but it works as and efficacious stimulus when it discloses towards horizons of a plenary humanism. On their part, the earthly hopes, in the measure in which they are true, good and leading to good, do not go out of the horizon of Christian hope, but contribute to strengthen it. As the Gospel and history enlighten themselves reciprocally, so Christian hope and the other human hopes help themselves reciprocally to understand each other and to grow together. The “difficulty of reaching a real dialogue at faith level” – Fr. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, Father General of the Company of Jesus – “it does not exclude the dialogue of life, in which all men of good will meet and help themselves reciprocally to build a more just , more peaceful and humane for all, according to the desire of God for humanity” ( Interview in Il Consulente, No 1, February 2005, p. 75).

However, not all earthly hopes coincides always with the good of man and with Christian hope: “Not all notion of liberation” – Evangelii Nuntiandi reminds - “It is necessarily coherent and compatible with an evangelical vision of man, of things and of events”. (No.35). Therefore, the meeting with the other hopes will always have also a “critical” aspect, in the sense that the prophetic nature of Christian hope, on one side encourages and supports every other hope of a better society and is in its turn comforted by it, on the other side, however, cannot contrast all that goes against man and against God. At the same time, the announcement and the testimony of the hope which does not disappoint cannot suffice, without a loyal and open confrontation with the different cultures. In today’s Europe –pluralistic, secularised and post-Christian for many aspects- the dialogue constitutes the indispensable instrument to the announcement of the “Gospel of hope”. It is the matter – as Jesus did- of “narrating” God to men with the testimony of a integral human life, justified by the reasons of hope. This is why, the intercultural and inter religious dialogue, is the obligatory passage to help the Europeans to meet the hope which does not disappoint. This hope is living person: it is the Risen Christ. To make hope visible to the citizens of new Europe means, therefore, to help them meet directly with the Living Being.

Longing for the hope which does not disappoint, they – even without being aware of it- they long to meet Him, after the deep delusion for so many beautiful, but failed hopes.

This, therefore, is the historical European context, made up of closures and openings, in which we are called to bring the “Gospel of Hope”.

(The entire text in “Consacrazione e Servizio No. 7-8 / 2005)