The recent encyclical Letter Spe salvi by Benedict XVI (30^th November, 2007) opens the scenario of hope, the cardinal virtue that the Holy Father wants to highlight with the Pauline expression «Spe salvi facti sumus» - we have been saved in hope (Rom 8,24). «Hope –the Pope states- is the central word of the Biblical faith, so much as in several passages the words “faith” and “hope” seem to be interchangeable» (n.1). Benedict XVI adduces the letter to the Hebrews as an example of this identification, precisely there, where the author binds strictly the immutable profession of hope” with the “fullness of faith” (Hebrew 10, 22).

However, we want to fix the reflector of our faro on the same juxtaposition that Paul shows in the Letter to the Romans. With reference to the faith of Abraham, in fact, Paul states that, «Though there seemed no hope, he hoped and believed…» (Rom 4,18). Abraham believed in an «unbelievable» and not immediately verifiable divine promise, hoping in God against every reasonable human hope. «Even the thought that his body was as good as dead –he was about hundred years old- and that Sara’s womb was dead too did not shake his faith» (Rom 4,19).

According to Paul, the faith of the patriarch, inexorably moving with his wife Sara towards the “necrosis” of the body (this is the strong term that resounds twice in the Greek text), pushes itself forward so much as to configure itself already as faith in the power of God to raise the dead: He «brings the dead to life and calls into existence what does not yet exist» (Rom 4, 17). We would say that hope set on its journey along the paths of history starting from the event of Abraham, the great «ancestor of us all» (Rom 4, 16). When the Israelites during their journey got stranded in the dryness of exile, in a blind path without any future perspective, the great prophet of hope, commonly called Second-Isaiah, called and invited them to orient themselves again trustfully towards the future, turning their sight towards this great model of the past, «Consider the rock from which you were hewn. Consider Abraham your father and Sara who gave you birth» (Is 51,1b-2a).

They say that, when Michelangelo had carved a masterpiece and people asked him how he had managed to create such a sublime work of arts, he answered, “I have done nothing: the figure was already within the marble block, I have just freed it by cutting away the surplus material with my chisel ». This is the masterpiece the Lord God made with our Father Abraham and our mother Sara: He foresaw the invisible and, out of the mass of men, he extracted an extraordinary personality with a faith as hard as “granite”.

The history of our faith started from this old and sterile couple that can be assumed as exemplar model also for the present state of religious life, which seems to have landed in a dead point. The genuine Biblical faith tells us that this is the favourable time to go ahead with a new vital enthusiasm, starting from where we are and with what we are, hoping against every evidence and in the awareness that the present moment is a precious occasion to exercise the peculiar attitude that configures the Christian as a «man/woman of hope», capable of pushing the sight beyond the visible and of showing boundless future horizons to a world heavily entangled in its own opacity. «In hope we already have salvation; in hope not visibly present, or we should not be hoping –nobody goes on hoping for something which is already visible. But, having this hope for what we cannot yet see, we are able to wait for it with persevering confidence» (Rom 8, 24-25). «Faith is a bridge without pillars carrying what we see towards the invisible scene, too slender for the eye», Emily Dickinson affirmed († 1886).

Hope does not disappoint

According to Paul, hope is forged by proved and “tested” maturity, which in its turn is a daughter of constancy flowing from tribulation, “Let us exult, too, in our hardships, understanding that hardships develop perseverance and perseverance develops a tested character, something that gives us hope» (Rom 5, 3-4).

The context of the Letter to the Romans does not speak about the hope of being saved: salvation by justification, object of faith, is already acquired because «we have been justified by faith, we are at peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ» (Rom. 5, 1). The “glory”, namely the value, the splendour and magnificence proper of God, instead, is still an object of hope. The luminous verse 5 explains the deep root of this tension of the Christian within and beyond sufferings, This hope will not let us down, because the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given to us». (Rom 5, 5).

The Stoic philosophy, which prevailed at the time of Paul, considered hope as a useless and dangerous passion, “Give up every useless hope, help yourself as much as possible (Marcus Aurelio 3, 14). Paul, instead, says that Christian hope “does not disappoint”, because of a powerful lever that raises it above all adversities and things apparently confuted by history: love. Love is the «fifth element» existing in the world, according to the title of Besson Luc e Bisson Terry’s Romance. This science fiction Romance is the narration of a group of scientists who, in their surveys, discovered that near the classic elements «earth, air, water and fire» a “fifth element” exists in the cosmos and governs everything: it s love.

This is the propelling force of a hope that projects itself forward without meeting failures and disappointments. For Paul, the «love of God poured into our hearts by the action of the Spirit» is not a vague feeling proclaimed in an abstract way, but rather a concrete reality, attested as well as proved by the fact that it makes us to understand what kind of love it is all about, «When we were still helpless, at the appointed time, Christ died for the godless. You could hardly find anyone ready to die even for someone upright (….) So it is proof of God’s own love for us , that Christ died for us while we were still sinners» (Rom 5,6-8). Now, if «no one can have greater love than to lay down his life for his friends» (John: 15,16); how great is the love of him who gives up his life for his «enemies»?

Christian hope “does not disappoint” because the love of Jesus will never be missing, since it has already overcome all the obstacles that might stand between him and us. «Man is redeemed by love», the Holy Father says in his encyclical letter. «When man experiences a great love in his life, he enjoys a moment of “redemption” that gives a new sense to his life. Very soon, however, he will be aware that the love given to him does not solve the problems of life by itself. It is a love that remains fragile and could be destroyed by death. Man needs unconditional love; he needs the certainty that lets him say, “Neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nothing already in existence and nothing still to come , nor any power, nor the height nor the depths, nor any created thing whatever, will be able to come between us and the love of God, known to us in Christ Jesus, our Lord”. (Rom 8,38-39). “Only when this absolute love exists with its absolute certainty –and only then- man is “redeemed”, whatever may happen to him in particular cases” (Spe salvi 26).

Cristina Caracciolo
Lecturer in the Theology Faculty of Central Italy
Via Sette Santi, 54/C - 50131 Florence