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On Wednesday of Thanksgiving week, the USS Kitty Hawk battle group with its 8,000 sailors was scheduled to drop anchor in the port of Hong Kong for a five-day holiday visit. Families and friends had made plans to travel halfway around the world to enjoy Thanksgiving dinner with their beloved sailor on Thursday in Hong Kong. But, officials of the People’s Republic of China denied the Kitty Hawk battle group entry to the port of Hong Kong. Then, following all of the negative publicity broadcast on television, the government of China reversed its position and allowed the Kitty Hawk to drop anchor in the port of Hong Kong for what it called “humanitarian” reasons. The reversal was too late, however, because the battle group had already been ordered to return to its base in Yokosuka, Japan. For all of the friends and family members who had flown halfway across the globe full of hope and expectation for a Thanksgiving holiday reunion, they returned home with nothing more than dashed hopes. That same week, Pope Benedict XVI published a letter to the Church—that’s a letter addressed to you and me—entitled Spe Salvi (“In Hope We Are Saved”). Perhaps you may have heard about this encyclical, perhaps not. Following its publication, some have asked, “With so many problems of horrifying proportions in our world—war, starvation, poverty, global warming, to name just a few—why would the Pope write an encyclical about hope? One answer to that question is that without the light of hope, we live in hopelessness. The clouds of depression and despair make our days increasingly dark. With nothing to hope in, we find ourselves tempted to ease the pain by opting out of reality. Some find prescription drugs, narcotics, and alcohol helpful in this regard. So others find fantasy, promiscuity, and illicit sexual relations helpful in distracting attention away from their sadness and pain. And, that’s to say nothing about those who go into debt over their heads—characterized so well in that television commercial where the fellow seems to have it all but asks “Can someone help me?”—in order to surround themselves with all sorts of material things that make these people feel good temporarily. All of these elixirs dull the pain of depression and despair, but none has the power to bring the light of God’s hope into a soul filled with darkness. We live in a world with many people who feel hopeless. But, if we are to live our lives as God intended, we need hope. And, if our young people are to have hope, it’s up to you and to me to explain our hope to them. I believe that’s why Pope Benedict XVI wrote In Hope We Are Saved, namely, so that those of us who read and thoughtfully consider its contents will be able to understand better for ourselves why Christians hope and the basis for their hope. Then, in turn, we will be able to challenge our young people to hope and to be people of hope. We hope in many things. The family members and friends of those sailors belonging to the Kitty Hawk battle group hoped to see their loved ones and to celebrate Thanksgiving with them in Hong Kong. Right now, at this very moment, many of our young people are hoping to receive much-cherished Christmas presents. Political operatives are hoping that their candidate will win in next year’s elections. With Alzheimer’s having shown up in my father’s side of the family—his with mother and sister both having struggled with the disease in the years prior to their deaths—I hope that scientists will find a cure for Alzheimer’s so that I won’t end up forgetting who I am and where I am or to put my pants on before leaving the house to teach class. Those hopes—good as they may be—have absolutely nothing to do with Christian hope and the basis of this hope. Once again, the poverty of our English language system figures into the equation. Most of what we call “hope” is really “optimism,” that is, a belief that something good will happen. A person can be optimistic and not be a Christian at all. What distinguishes Christian hope from optimism is that, as you and I confront the challenges that pain and suffering inevitably brings our way, we don’t dupe ourselves into false optimism that “things will get better.” That’s not Christian hope; it’s simply the power of positive thinking! No, as events conspire in our lives to darken our days with pain and suffering that challenge us to embrace depression and despair—and, ultimately, hopelessness—our hope is found somewhere else, namely, in God’s love that we experience in the midst of pain and suffering. Yes, it sounds counter-intuitive when we are the ones in pain and suffering. But, for Christians, God is not the “Great Absent One.” Rather, God is the “All-Present Loving One.” Hope is not the thought that things might get better—again, that’s optimism—but the sure knowledge provided by faith that come what may, I will experience God’s love for me. It sounds so trite, doesn’t it? “God loves me.” Pass the nachos and salsa, please. But, Pope Benedict XVI reminds us, Christian hope is not a matter of some trite saying. No, Christian hope is a lived experience. To widows and widowers who are experiencing the darkness of loss especially during the holiday season, the hope of God’s love is the antidote to your depression and despair. To the divorced whose hopes went up in smoke and are find yourselves now struggling with the darkness of alienation and anger, the hope of God’s love is the antidote to your depression and despair. To anyone suffering from a chronic or terminal disease, the hope of God’s love is the antidote to your depression and despair. To young people who are all messed up in your minds and don’t know where to turn or who feel alienated or are estranged from your parents, the hope of God’s love is the antidote to your depression and despair. To anyone who has committed what they feel is an unforgivable sin, the hope of God’s love is the antidote to your depression and despair. Christian hope isn’t optimism that what has happened and the subsequent darkness of soul will somehow disappear magically. No, Christian hope is the faith-filled conviction that God loves is present and continues to love us even in the darkness of pain, suffering, depression, and despair filling our souls. Absent Christian hope, the only place where pain and suffering lead is to depression. As this characterizes our days, we then decide to host pity parties for ourselves. As anyone who is depressed and has hosted a pity party can attest, the trouble is that we’re the only ones who show up which, of course, only leads to depression...all self-inflicted, by the way. “Brothers and sisters: Whatever was written previously was written for our instruction, that by endurance and by the encouragement of Scriptures, we might have hope.” That is what St. Paul told the Christian community of Rome and tells us today. When we allow Christian hope to illuminate the darkness of our souls, its power will transform our lives. This is how Christians are truly “reborn” because the power of hope saves Christians from the darkness of depression and despair which lead to the kind of “Night of the Living Dead” where there is no joy in life. To illustrate this idea, Pope Benedict tells two story In Hope We Are Saved The first story is that of the late Vietnamese Cardinal, Francois Nguyen Van Thuan, who spent thirteen years in prison, nine of them in solitary confinement. “In that situation of seemingly utter hopelessness,” Pope Benedict XVI writes, “the fact that he could still listen and speak to God gave him an increasing power of hope.” According to Pope Benedict XVI, the prayers of Cardinal Van Thuan was not isolating, they did not focus on superficial objective, nor did he pray against others. Instead, Cardinal Van Thuan’s prayers—uttered in the midst of his isolation, pain, and suffering—led him through a process of inner purification which opened him to God’s love and thus to his fellow human beings as well. The second story is that of a 19th century woman, St. Josephine Bakhita. When she was about nine years old, slave traders kidnapped Josephine and sold her in the slave markets of Sudan. The wife of a general bought Josephine and treated her cruelly. Josephine was whipped and beaten so often, that 144 scars adorned her body. An Italian merchant eventually purchased Josephine from her cruel slave mistress and found herself now living in a family whose members treated Josephine kindly and introduced her to the God of Jesus Christ. Josephine discovered what it meant not only to be free but, more importantly, to be beloved by God. As Josephine wrote in her diary, “I am definitively loved and whatever happens to me—I am awaited by this Love. And so my life is good.” The conversion of St. Josephine Bakhita led her to discover what she called the “great hope” that liberated and redeemed her. This wasn’t the political or social liberation of a slave, Pope Benedict XVI argues. Instead, this was something entirely different: “the encounter of a hope stronger than the sufferings of slavery, a hope which therefore transformed life and the world from within Josephine Bakhita.” When bad things happen to us, we tend to focus not upon God’s love for us but instead upon ourselves and our suffering. We then begin to believe and convince ourselves that nobody understands us. We feel sorry for ourselves and our miserable plight. Slowly, we isolate ourselves, learning to feel comfortable existing in a tiny and narrow world of our own making. As we recognize the darkness in our soul slowly and almost imperceptibly increasing, we convince ourselves that the light of God’s love is decreasing. No longer experiencing God’s love, we believe ourselves and our lives are bad. This is not the life for which God has created us! No, it is the life we create for ourselves when we choose to be hopeless. “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths,” John the Baptist declares. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” One valuable way we can prepare the way of the Lord—for God to be with us, “Emmanuel”— is to allow the light of God’s love to dispel the darkness present in our souls. Allowing God’s love to be the touchstone of daily life, we will grow as people of hope. One practical way to achieve this end, a Christmas gift we can give ourselves that will only cost only a little bit of our time—but which has the power to transform our lives—is to read Pope Benedict XVI’s In Hope We Are Saved during the remaining two weeks of Advent. The encyclical is available for free on the Internet. For the investment of only five minutes each day, we can invite God to stir up in our souls the power of authentic Christian hope. By taking time to reflect upon why we hope and the basis for our hope as Christians, we will be using what remains of this Advent season to repent, which in Hebrew means “turning” and, in particular, turning away from the hopelessness of sin and returning to the love of God which will make us whole. Then, unlike those friends and relatives of the 8000 sailors belonging to the USS Kitty Hawk battle group who returned home from their Thanksgiving in Hong Kong with their hopes dashed, we will be able to challenge our young people to hope, because we will be able to say about our lives along with Francois Nguyen Van Thuan and St. Josephine Bakhita, “I am definitively loved and whatever happens to me—I am awaited by this Love. And so my life is good.” Let us not forget Matthew’s basic premise: “Emmanuel”...“God is with us” because, as Pope Benedict XVI reminds us, “In Hope We Are Saved.”
To read Spe Salvi, click on this link: In Hope We Are Saved |
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HOMILY
