Spe Salvi – Saved in Hope

Have you read this document by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI? If not, it is definitely worth picking up! Saved. In. Hope. HOPE! Who doesn’t need HOPE in their lives?!

I could probably go on FOREVER about this encyclical because it’s pretty much awesome, but I’ll focus on 4 main points.

Point 1 - FAITH IS HOPE

Ok great. Faith = Hope. Papa B writes that Christians have a distinguishing mark about them in that they KNOW they have a future… maybe the details ABOUT this future aren’t all there, but the fact remains that their lives won’t end in emptiness. (Spe Salvi 2) We can have HOPE that there is more than just this world that we currently live in - the constant ups and downs, heartaches and losses, even the joys and successes we encounter – there’s something even GREATER yet to come. Papa B encourages that this Christian understanding of a life after death isn’t just information for you to store away as happy thoughts, but rather it is PERFORMATIVE. This is a hope that makes things happen and is LIFE CHANGING. The one who lives with hope lives differently! (2) “To come to know God – the true God – means to receive hope.” (3) Papa B talks about the great faith that St. Josephine Bakhita had without even really being taught who God was. She had heard there was one Master greater than all the other “masters” she had, and came to know His love and presence in her life. She gained hope. “I am definitively loved and whatever happens to me – I am awaited by this Love. And so my life is good.” (3) To grasp that you are known, loved, and created good by the ultimate Master… to believe that He has a plan for your life now and for the future no matter what happens…that, my sisters, is Hope.

Point 2 – CHRISTIAN HOPE IS RELATIONAL

What can we hope in? What can we not hope in? Science is good. Reason is good. But both of these cannot be void of Love. “It is not science that redeems man - man is redeemed by Love.” (26) This love is relational – with God and with those around us.Jesus, who died for you, for me, and for Susie down the hall, won redemption for US out of LOVE. “Christ died for all. To live for Him means allowing oneself to be drawn into His being for others.” (28) Jesus wants a relationship with you. He wants to tell you how good you are, how much He loves you, and how you were and still are worth dying for. This relationship = HOPE. “Man’s great, true hope which holds firm in spite of all disappointments can only be God – God who has loved us, and who continues to love us ‘to the end’…” (27) It is only by being in this communion with Jesus that we can truly be there for others. Papa B hits this relational point home again further in the document, but I’ll come back to that.

Point 3 – HOPE REMAINS

Basically. Papa B knew how to target a young audience when he wrote paragraphs 30 and 31. Hope is something that is infinite. We might have the hope of finding our one true love or the hope of getting that dream job… but once those things are fulfilled, then what? Hope for the everlasting is what remains. I’m just going to let Papa B speak:

“This great hope can only be God, who encompasses the whole of reality and who can bestow upon us what we, by ourselves, cannot attain…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 will never arrive; 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…His love is at the same time our guarantee of the existence of what we only vaguely sense and which nevertheless, in our deepest self, we await: a life that is ‘truly’ life.” (31)

Point 4 – PRAYER TEACHES US HOW TO HOPE – FOR ME AND FOR OTHERS

“When no one listens to me anymore, God still listens to me. When I can no longer talk to anyone or call upon anyone, I can always talk to God. When there is no longer anyone to help me deal with a need or expectation that goes beyond the human capacity for hope, He can help me.” (32)

Remember how Papa B said that a relationship with Jesus, with Love Incarnate is hope? Prayer, my sisters, is how we build that relationship with Him who loves us. He is always there, ready to hear what your heart has to say, and is ready to respond to you with Love. Papa B says that when we pray, we undergo an inner purification which opens our hearts up to God and thus to our fellow human beings as well. (33) Hope is always a hope for others. We pray for others, we interact with others, we LOVE each other. Especially when we suffer, we suffer with and for others.

“…No man is an island, entire of itself… no one sins alone. No one is saved alone… So my prayer for another is not something extraneous to that person, something external, not even after death. In the interconnectedness of Being, my gratitude to the other – my prayer for him – can play a small part in his purification…It is never too late to touch the heart of another, nor it is ever in vain.” (48)

Papa B ends the encyclical on Mary, the Star of Hope. Really. She’s the true model of what it means to have hope for something more in this world. Look to her, who will lead you to Him. And for real, PICK UP THIS DOCUMENT! It’s so good! 

Mary, Mother of Hope and Mother of Christ, lead us your daughters to His Heart, to have hope in all He has planned for our lives, and to know that we are truly good, loved, and enough. Amen. 

My HOPE and prayer remain with you in His Heart,

Caty

"The cross means there is no shipwreck without hope; there is no dark without dawn; nor storm without haven." ~ Blessed Pope John Paul II