At No. 13 of the Motu Proprio Porta Fidei, written for the
proclamation of the faith’s year just started,
Benedict XVI writes: "In this time we shall keep our gaze fixed on Jesus
Christ," the one that gives rise to faith and brings it to fulfillment
"(Heb 12:2): in Him is fulfilled every labor and longing of the human
heart. The joy of love, the answer to the drama of suffering and pain,
the power of forgiveness in front of the offense received and the
victory of life before the emptiness of death, everything finds
fulfillment in the mystery of the Incarnation, of His becoming man,
sharing with us the human weakness turning with the power of His
resurrection. In Him who died and rose for our salvation, are fully
light the examples of faith that have marked these two thousand years of
our salvation history”.
In the light of Easter
At No. 6 of Porta fidei is spoken of baptism that has made us
sharers in the death and resurrection of Christ, where we were given the
gift of faith, through which "this new life mouldes whole of human
existence on the radical novelty of the resurrection. In his free
availability, thoughts and affections, mentality and behavior of man are
slowly purified and transformed, on a never completely finished journey
in this life".
The life of the believer is thus informed, even in the most hidden
fibers, in Easter light and the hope in the risen Christ is his source
and his fulfillment. The Paschal mystery of Christ is the starting point
of the journey of faith of every disciple and especially of those who
live a state of special consecration.
In this regard, always at n. 13 of the same letter, the Pope writes: "By
faith men and women have dedicated their lives to Christ, leaving
everything to live in evangelical simplicity obedience, poverty and
chastity, concrete signs of waiting for the Lord, who is not slow in
coming. By faith many Christians have promoted action for justice to
make concrete the word of the Lord, Who came to proclaim deliverance
from oppression and a year of favor for all (cf. Lk 4:18-19)". The
richness of these considerations are contained, in its essence, in the
second Encyclical Letter of Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, in
which the Pope put at the center of our attention the Christian hope.
"Christ our Hope"
At No. 8 of Spe Salvi, after referring to n. 7 the text of
Hebrews 11.1 we read: "Faith is the hypostasis of things hoped
for, proof of things not seen", Benedict XVI said that faith gives a new
foundation to life and makes you create a new freedom. Well, "this new
freedom, the awareness of the new ‘substance’ which we have been given,
is revealed not only in martyrdom [...]. It is shown especially in the
big waivers from the ancient monks to St. Francis of Assisi and to the
people of our time who, in our modern Religious Institutes and
Movements, for Christ's sake have left everything to bring people the
faith and the love of Christ, to help those who are suffering in body
and soul. There the new ‘substance’ has proved to really like
‘substance’, by the hope of these people touched by Christ, hope has
arisen for others who were living in darkness and without hope. It has
been demonstrated that this new life truly possesses ‘substance’ and is
a ‘substance’ that arouses life for others. For us who contemplate these
figures, their way of acting and living is de facto a ‘proof’
that the things to come, the promise of Christ is not only a reality
that we are awaiting, but a real presence: He is truly the ‘philosopher’
and ‘shepherd’ who shows us what it is and where it's life."
Later, at n. 24, speaking of what he calls ‘the shape of Christian hope’
because the Christian hope has a precise face and features, gets to
illuminate the community character. Hope, in fact, is Christ, and that
means that in Him the man is free from the risk of falling back into the
shallows of the individualism of salvation, in the clutches of a private
and false hope, because it forgets the other, regardless of their needs,
their hopes and fears.
In fact, the Pope writes to n.
28: "The relationship with God is established through communion with
Jesus - by ourselves and by our own chance we don’t get. The
relationship with Jesus, however, is a relationship with the one who
gave Himself as a ransom for all (cf. 1 Tim 2:6). Being in communion
with Jesus Christ draws us into his' being for all", it makes it our way
of being. He commits us to others, but only in communion with Him
becomes possible truly to be there for others, for all."
The hope, which has the features of the face of Christ, leads us to
transmit it to others and gives us the gift of communion, despite the
limitations and failures of every day. The hope that is Christ
knows, in fact, the signs of the passion and shall bear the weaknesses,
the selfishness and sin, but at the same time knows how to fix our gaze
away, to the final liberation of man and the world from corruption and
death (cf. Rom 8:22-23).
"Love hopes all things"
At No. 31 of Spe Salvi we read: "We need the hope - smaller or larger -
which, day by day, keep us going. But without the great hope, which must
surpass everything else, they are not enough. This great hope can only
be God, who encompasses the whole of reality and who can propose and
give us what we, by ourselves, can not attain. Recibing a gift it is
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 never comes; 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 the
impulse of hope, in a world which, by its very nature is imperfect. And
his love, at the same time, it is our guarantee of the existence of what
we only vaguely sense this and, nevertheless, in the intimate we are
awaiting: a life that is ‘truly’ life."
This passage reminds us of the urgency of the proclamation of hope to
the world today. We are encouraged to be ready to give a reason in the
world for the hope that is in us (cf. 1 Pt 3:15). For those who live a
special consecration which means being at the service of the "Gospel of
hope", with the strength that comes from the affirmation of faith that
the Church, immersed in the joy of Easter, says in the Sequence
of the holy night: "Christ, my hope is risen, and goeth before you into
Galilee."
This ancient liturgical poem, "which traces the major themes of the
Easter Triduum, ends with a message of hope that is both appealing to
the responsibility and choice for a mission" (R. Fisichella). It is
precisely here that we find the root of every authentic personal and
communal renewal and strength to start over again with the energy of the
Spirit. In this way we are invited to rediscover what Benedict XVI calls
the ‘places’ for learning hope: first, the Prayer as a school of hope,
acting and suffering as settings for learning hope and then the
judgment.
In a reference to the Last Judgment, at n. 41 the Pope wrote: "The
prospect of Judgment, from the earliest times, has influenced Christians
in their daily lives as a criterion by which to order their present
life, as a summons to their conscience and at the same time as hope in
God's justice. Faith in Christ has never looked merely backwards or only
ever upwards, but always also forwards to the hour of justice that the
Lord repeatedly proclaimed. This looking ahead has given to Christianity
its importance for the present."
No alienation, therefore, in a future that is to come, or nostalgia for
a past that is no more, but love for this by the light that is offered
to us by the memory of the deeds carried out. God and by the expectation
of performance final of His salvation.
Unique and binding task
There is a lot more to add, but only one can collect them into unity.
This is the affectionate and intense reference - at the very end of his
Encyclical Letter, nos. 49-50 – that Benedict XVI does to the Blessed
Virgin Mary ‘star of hope’ to which all believers, and especially
consecrated, must learn to look at. The Mother of God bore in her womb
Christ, hope of the world, and witnessed with his own life. She herself
is the "image of the future Church that, in her womb, carries the hope
of the world across the mountains of history"
Well, if it is true that "Christianity [...] is hope, guidance and
forward motion and therefore also revolutionizing and transforming the
present" (J. Moltmann), then the Christian hope - that in Christ has its
source and its support in Mary - of which the consecrated person is
privileged witness, shall be brought in our time too, marked by a
profound crisis that first crisis of hope and faith in a better future.
Consecrated person have the sole and inescapable responsibility to
announce this hope as a force capable of illuminating the difficult
journey of the world and even of the Church, without giving in to the
waste of a
facile and naive optimism, short-sighted in the face of human suffering
and insensitive towards the open questions of history. Christian hope
is, in fact, hope that bears engraved in his flesh the signs of the
passion, and does not allow the believer to put in brackets the
questions and dramas that are born and are consumed in the human heart,
but urges every believer to take charge because everything is
transfigured by the light of the Paschal Christ.
Salvatore Quasimodo, in his poem Specchio (Mirror) speaks of life
that finds the space between the fine meshes of death and sprouts from a
condition in which there seemed to be no room for any hope. It is the
miracle of a sunrise hidden behind the dark of night. It is the miracle
of the resurrection, the heart of the entire Christian message and its
proclamation, mission and preaching of the Church. Of this hope,
Benedict XVI reminded us, consecrated persons are living sign and
witnesses.
Francesco Brancato
Docente
di Teologia Dogmatica presso
lo Studio Teologico San Paolo di Catania
francobrancato@tiscali.it
